JFShea

October 2010

Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute to Wikipedia, at least one of your recent edits, such as the one you made to Joseph Francis Shea, did not appear to be constructive and has been reverted or removed. Please use the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and read the welcome page to learn more about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. The reverted edit can be found here. Thank you. — Gfoley4 Wanna chat? 03:43, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Please do not add commentary or your own personal analysis to Wikipedia articles, as you did to Joseph Francis Shea. Doing so violates Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy and breaches the formal tone expected in an encyclopedia. Thank you. RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 04:08, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Shea

Although you're free to edit the article, as the above message says, please refrain from putting personal thoughts or statements into the article space. You can say such things on the article's talk page (click the article's discussion tab at the top). Just try to keep it on how to improve the article. Of course, you can fix problems yourself, but please use an edit summary to explain what you're doing and why in each edit. If you need any help with anything, let me know. Swarm^Talk 04:25, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Advice

Hello. I see that you have taken issue with an article and also might be related to the subject of an article. We take this sort of responsibility very seriously. If there are factual errors with the article, you currently have the following options:

• As long as this page is not locked, you can post proposed amendments on the talk page of the article and ask for assistance from another editor. To do this, click "New section" on the top of that page and start a section with a title like "article error" and include the following wiki code: {{helpme}}
• You can contact Wikipedia by email, to get in touch with a system manned by volunteers who are experienced Wikipedians and well versed in our policies. Note, however, that they are only volunteers; Wikipedia has no editorial board. Please read that page carefully for guidance on what our volunteers will and will not do to help you.

Before you do either of the above, please note the following:

• You should restrict yourself to provable errors of fact. We can help you if you can state:
  • What is wrong
  • What it should say instead (briefly)
  • What reliable independent sources support your request.
• We cannot help you unless you can verify your request by reference to such sources.
• Legal threats are absolutely forbidden; any communications regarding legal action must be sent by registered mail to the Wikimedia Foundation at its postal address. Any form of legal threat may result in your being prevented from making comments on Wikipedia or your talk page.
• Please do not be tempted to grandstand. Wikipedia editors will be pleased to help with factual errors, but differences of opinion or interpretation, flame wars or expressions of general dissatisfaction with Wikipedia, its processes, editors, administrators and so on will be ignored and possibly removed. We are well aware of our faults but we believe that they are best fixed in an atmosphere of calm reflection.

Above all, please remember that this message is intended to help you. We know you are upset and may be angry, and we probably can't fix that right now, but please believe that we are sincerely committed to ensuring that we do not compound this by perpetuating inaccuracies in the article related to you.

NW (Talk) 04:30, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Inaccuracies

So the article has inaccuracies, I understand this can be very frustrating if you're not familiar with Wikipedia's common practices. I recommend you correct or rewrite content, rather than removing it. Only remove content if you have a very good reason to. Use edit summaries (the little box under the main text box in edit mode) to explain the edits. Post problems on the talk page. You can also list specific issues on my talk page and I'll personally help you as best as I can. However, we can't assist unless there are specific problems that need to be fixed. Regards, Swarm^Talk 04:47, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I think that the article talk page is the best place to deal with inaccuracies in it. I started a section at Talk:Joseph_Francis_Shea#JFShea's comments to give a place for the comments that you made in the article that were since removed. I also added Template:Unbalanced to the article to note the concerns you've raised about it. (Those templates are one of very few ways in which people sneak commentary into the article page; I usually don't approve of them, but since you're new and may take a while to gather agreement on article-related issues, it seems appropriate here)

I know that some of the sections that you initially deleted must be disturbing to you, but in order to make progress, you'll need to pick out specific facts that are wrong and rebut them with some sort of evidence. (You don't need to do that if the sources currently cited don't actually say those things in the first place, or present them only as speculation, but in theory an article of this type shouldn't have been written that carelessly)

Anyway, welcome to Wikipedia. I know that some of the procedures here take some time to learn, and the give and take between editors can be fairly rough, but if you cite verifiable sources and don't give in to frustration you should get your point across in time. Wnt (talk) 08:52, 31 October 2010 (UTC)