Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Editor Retention/Retention and return team

Mystified and a tad disgruntled...

It seems that I have been assessed and it has been determined that my innate talents place me in this section of the plan that will work to save Wikipedia if all goes well. Actually I do not know any of these people and I am wondering how this decision came about? Gandydancer (talk) 00:20, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

I think the breaking down of individuals who had already joined the main project was done by someone else on the basis of discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Editor Retention, and, possibly, the comments of the individual editors involved. You, or anyone else, are, of course, free to pull your name from this section, or add it to one or more other sections, or withdraw completely, or anything else you like. I don't think anyone would hold it against you. But speaking personally I would welcome all the input I can get around here. John Carter (talk) 00:56, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

Actually I didn't take part in the discussion. I have grown so weary of endless discussion that even though I have tried to force my brain and hands to think and write stuff they just won't do it. My first impulse when I saw I had been placed in a group was to roll my eyes, etc. But as time went on I began to think, "what the heck--why not try something different?". So here I am--happy to be part of this group. Do you think we should start by introducing ourselves? Gandydancer (talk) 12:39, 12 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't know what has happened here. It seems that I have said something that has been misunderstood. I've been with WP for quite a few years now and considering all of the frustration that one experiences here, the fact that we are still here suggests that we care about this place and want to work to make it better. I'm going to withdraw my name from this group and hopefully find one that suits me better. Gandydancer (talk) 12:02, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I think the lack of response is more due to my being actively engaged elsewhere, regarding an ArbCom and the first named individual on this page, who announced his retirement a few days ago. My apologies. FWIW, I actually don't know how to "introduce" myself. I call myself John Carter around here, after the ERB character who had such a disastrous movie earlier this year. I am an admin, and I've been basically primarily involved in non-article type material, including WikiProject development, assessment, missing encyclopedic articles, that sort of thing. I am rather active in religious content, more that than anything else, and that primarily because of the controversial nature of a lot of it. I have a bit of a track record in trying to help out a few editors who have been valuable in a sense but whose conduct questions have tended to more often than not get themselves banned anyway. I'm not particularly forthcoming about personal identifiers, although I live in the Saint Louis Missouri area, basically because I don't see that knowing my real name would actually be of benefit to anyone, myself included. That's about it, actually. John Carter (talk) 14:17, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

John, no need to feel a need for apologies. Actually I was expecting other team members to join in. When they didn't, I figured that things were off to a bad start whether it be me, you, or the team concept. I note that another "team member" has dropped out as well, though I forget the reasoning. For me, I really do like the team concept and it's important to me to put a face, so as to speak, to the people in my group--but I would have no interest in "real" names either.

Hopefully we can all just flounder around for awhile and brainstorm on the best ways to move forward. If we all keep an open mind there will be room for something to develop. Gandydancer (talk) 21:10, 14 July 2012 (UTC)

"Calling Gandydancer!!!"

Im not sure if either of you are still involved but I'll give it a shot. I started the morning by doing some editing on the main WER Project page. Bounced around, here and there, finally decided to reach out to User:Petrarchan47 who had retired recently. I became involved in safe-guarding the BP article against Corporate Input because of her. I left her a message, asking her to Renew her Enthusiam and that WP misses her "voice". Then I remembered having seen this page earlier in the day, so I came to leave a message. The funny thing is that Gandydancer is a close associate of Petrachan47. They were the lone vigil against the corporate team of editors. What a wonderful coincidence. Maybe we can put our heads together and re-start this Retention and Return Team. Its worth a shot! Maybe Petrachan47 can involve herself with this project instead of BP. Ill leave a message on both your pages. ```Buster Seven Talk 20:20, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

I have considered cutting way back on my work here. I am retired and I have seen Wikipedia as a great retirement work in the same way that some people work in a soup kitchen (which I have done as well) and other kinds of volunteer work. Seeing what is happening to the BP articles I see no reason to continue to put work into the sort of articles that I have worked on such as the pesticide articles when it can be destroyed in a day or two. The writing is on the wall and I can see very well that they will be sanitized as well to twist information to satisfy the corporate fairytale rather than an honest presentation of the facts. Just look at how the new addition to the spill article has been spun into the gov't/BPs version. And nobody is doing a goddamn thing to stop it. I complained on the BP page when the spill section was sanitized and not one person has put up any fight. The work of dozens of editors and more recently at the BP article Bink, Petrar and I can be reverced in a few minutes. That takes all the wind out of my sails and all the joy out of my work here. Buster, my love of Wikipedia has really soured and I am beginning to lose interest in making this encyclopedia something I can trust and tell my grandchildren to read or work on. I can't see myself hanging out a "Retired" sign but I'm just not having any fun anymore and doubt I'll be editing much. Gandydancer (talk) 13:27, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply Gandy. It saddens me but as a fellow grandfather (13) I understand completely. I am going to post Petrarchan47's response below for the record. Sometimes we can rekindle our love for the wiki by doing other things and leaving the strife behind us. I know that sounds like giving up but consider this sentence from the BP article....In 2009 BP spent nearly $16 million lobbying the US Congress.] In 2011, BP spent a total of $8,430,000 on lobbying and hired 47 lobbyists. How much do you think is the hidden expense, the hiddeen amount of money, to make sure that the WP BP article is scrutinized, sanitized and spun. I wont venture a guess but Im sure it is more than the salary of one Corporate Advocate or even more than one Corporate Advocate TEam. I hope at least, that you might watch over the article with your unique observational capacity. Give me a visit if you see something blatant. This R and R Team was a good idea and a good way to implement the power of a Project to create change. I am also retired and I love Wikipedia. Maybe one day you and I can add another "R" to the Rand R Team....R for Retired. Take care. ```Buster Seven Talk 07:40, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Un-retire?

Retrieved from User Petrarchan47's Talk page – In an effort to re-juvenate the WER/R and R team I contacted her

I am a WP Wanderer. I am involved with the BP article because I saw you conversation w/ Slim Virgin regarding the Paid editor situation. I am also one of the original members of the WER project and its sub-project Editor of the Week. Your plight and the fact that it caused you to retire has been on my mind since. When an editor like you retires, WP and the community lose so much. Not just the work you do is missed but your attitude, your way of being, the congenial way you work with fellow editors. I'm not sure but I think you got involved with a 'ruff crowd' a bit too early in your WP career. The same thing happened to me. I was a rookie and I was doing battle with veterans at the Sara Palin page during the 2008 Election period. We were lucky. There was a group of editors that, while they obviously supported Palin, at least could be fair and relatively impartial. Looks like your experience at BP was different. It was just you and Gandydancer.

I wonder if you might consider renewing you enthusiasm for Wikipedia editing. It doesnt have to be at articles like BP or Chevron. That would be nice and you are more than welcome. A restructuring is taking place that you might find very intertesting. But, it can be in any one of a thousand ways. Your voice needs to be heard. Others will try to drown it out with their chatter and their divisiveness but your voice needs to be heard. I hope I am not to presumptuous in this request. As I said, your forced retirement bothered me. I support whatever you decide. ```Buster Seven Talk 20:02, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, Buster7, for the heart you put into this project as well as the kind words of support for me. Briefly, I am willing to help with the BP page on one condition: that we can also give the BP oil spill page the same treatment. FYI, BP is this very week in court defending itself against possible charges of gross negligence. BP has in the past used this Wiki article in trial! (Link to this is at top of the article's talk page) Recently scrubbed from the article are two Al Jazeera refs which talk about human health effects from the spill. Beagle and Martin Hogbin (who has never worked on the article previously) removed the mention of people dying as well as perfectly good, supportive RS. This is just one example of what is happening at that article and its spin-off articles. When I try to remedy what has been scrubbed, the result is that more (pro-BP) editors come in and together will delete other stuff for dubious reasons. It's a very immature game and those seeking information about the largest environmental disaster in US history are the ones loosing out. I am no longer effective as an editor there as Beagle has declared war against me, as is evidenced by her edits, comments and arguments. I don't call other editors for help in arguing my (guideline-supported) points because I don't know any. But the team on the 'other side' has a seemingly endless supply of folks to argue and fight for the pro-BP, pro-Big Oil, and pro-Official Government versions.

After seeing the reaction of the Wiki community and the Jimbo talk page to the news that BP's article contained words straight from BP's PR dept, I can tell you that I no longer have faith in this project overall. And that breaks my heart to say to you. Until I witnessed the reaction from the Higher Ups, I was under the impression that Wikipedia, regardless of who founded it, did not belong to and was not swayed by any particular Ego. I thought it belonged to me, and to you and to millions of individuals who want unadulterated information, sans commercials, not normally found in corporate-funded mainstream media.

I thought that surely if there was someone, or a group of someones, in charge of making sure Wiki was running as intended, they would immediately act on behalf of NPOV, Truth, Science if shown that these things are being hurt by (in this case) corporate influence. I further thought that 'nobody' editors like me would be supported by this same group. But what I witnessed was ridiculous, over-the-top displays of adoration and support for all-things-BP. I saw broken promises to "analyze" the added content for spin, missing info, etc., as well as the editors who approved of and submitted content. In one case we have Silver Seren - the sole 'reviewer' and submitter of the last BP PR draft. Was his editing behaviour appropriate? I think an analysis remains in order. I would look at the fact that Silver never showed any interest in the article itself prior to this addition and has not been seen at the BP talk page since the initial frenzy.

Wiki rules allow for this type of activity, and the High Ups apparently see nothing wrong with this, but rather with those who call attention to it. The only follow-up to the promised analysis was to badmouth one of the whistle-blowers as "sufficiently biased" whose work doesn't deserve a second look. IMO, this reaction has the emotional maturity level of a dysfunctional 9 year-old. Unless and until Wikipedia is truly handed over to 'us', the little people, I'm afraid I just don't see how it can be free of the ingrained and deeply-rooted corruption I am witnessing. I mentioned in my SlimVirgin response that it felt as if Wikipedia didn't have my back when I was pointing out corporate spin. I was told in no uncertain terms, by the aforementioned talk page activity, that I was exactly right (unless I'm BP).

So yes, I'm willing to point out things on both the BP and BP oil spill pages in the same way a COI editor is encouraged to do: show inaccuracies, spin, and supply supportive refs, and missing facts. Hopefully I would have some fraction of the support and love from the community for my efforts that is shown to a BP employee, but I sure don't expect it. As for returning to help Wikipedia as an enthusiastic editor, no. Not until things have changed. Wikipedia is most absolutely and massively slanted towards special interests. Spin is allowed in their favor, but not the other direction (and shouldn't be allowed at all). So this means all our hard work is wasted time, as Gandy recently noted - we can spend hundreds of hours on an article and it can be scrubbed/changed/spun in an instant. That fact that this behaviour was given a very public thumbs-up recently has only compounded the problem (at least at the BP oil spill page).

Picture this: the tar sands ("Canadian oil sands") section written by a Greenpeace PR team, presented at the BP talk page and approved/added word-for-word to the BP article. Imagine if their first reference is to a 12-page brochure on the Greenpeace website about tar sands. Imagine this brochure quotes science that has the greenhouse gas emissions (tar sands' biggest problem) estimated at 56% instead of the accepted science from Stanford of a 23%increase. Imagine if this was pointed out to the Higher Ups, posted to Jimbo's talk page and the result was an overwhelming "Oh well". This is conversely the exact thing that happened. Presently the tar sands section is straight from BP PR and uses as its first ref. a nice shiny PDF from BP's website about tar sands which quotes a greenhouse gas emissions figure nearly 20% less than what is accepted by the scientific community. I showed this and that the BP version is indeed sanitized to the point of being useless and less informative than the previous (non-BP) version. If it's BP doing it, the community trips over itself defending the company and practices that allowed this. But what if it had been an environmental group instead? I can imagine the response would be dramatically different. Such a realization should stop us in our tracks and make us question: what is going on behind the scenes? Wikipedia purports to be interested in NPOV but when this claim is held up to the light, what emerges is a disturbing amount of personal attacks and obfuscation. Sometimes what used to feel like a community of exceedingly sharp minds (Wikipedia) feels more like MySpace. I just don't see how that can change until the High Ups who behave like this acknowledge their limitations & step down for the good of the Project. petrarchan47tc 02:49, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

I am, as I think? I said above, not as active as I could be in article development recently. I do however have very good access to several databanks which include several articles from newspapers, magazines, and, particularly with JSTOR, Highbeam Research, and ProQuest, academic journals. Honestly, not knowing the exact details of the exact words from BP included in the article, I can under some circumstances myself support using verbatim quotations from reliable sources, and I think we do have to include BP as being a clearly prejudiced source in this matter, but also that if the material is less than controversial also probably one of the better sources, and it is not infrequently the case that the phrasing used in press releases or similar official documents is perhaps the best, most concise, possible phrasing of something. But, like I said, I haven't seen the exact wording in this instance. Certainly, the NPOV noticeboard is more or less created for these purposes, but that board, like a lot of others, doesn't get as much attention as it probably could or should. Given that the articles are currently directly relevant to ongoing developments, it may well make sense to ask for some form of protection to prevent any form of POV pushing in that page, and possibly the Deepwater Horizon litigation page as well, considering that would be the logical place to put the material about the current court activitiy. Personally, I would myself, maybe, have some reservations about using Al Jazeera as a source, considering it not unreasonable that a media outlet closely tied to the Arab oil producing companies might not unreasonably have some basis for bias as well in this case, but I can check the academic journals and other databanks for material relating to this, at least somewhat because I tend to think that the Al Jazeera material might relate to something in them. But, personally, speaking strictly for myself here, I am not really aware of their being any editors who are "Higher Up"s around here, Jimbo and the WF staff notwithstanding. Yeah, I'm an admin, but that doesn't necessarily make me a "Higher Up". At this point, I do think making some request for at least temporary page protection on the relevant articles makes sense, given they are a form of "breaking news," and I can check the databanks and forward any content I find in them to anyone who asks them, provided they give me an e-mail address to send it to, possibly by mailing it to me. Unfortunately, wikipedia's internal e-mail system doesn't really permit me to use it to forward material from other databanks. John Carter (talk) 22:06, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Editor is planning to retire

I don't know if this is the right page to bring this up, but I just saw that User:Pavanjandhyala has decided to retire after completing a few tasks. This editor has written articles that I have copy-edited at Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests. See, in the Date requested column, 2017-01-01 at Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests/Archives/2017 and 2015-12-28, 2016-01-15, 2016-01-30, 2016-02-23, 2016-02-07, 2016-02-29, 2016-04-07, 2016-04-21, 2016-05-02, 2016-06-11, 2016-06-21, 2016-07-26, 2016-08-06, 2016-09-25, 2016-10-28, and 2016-12-31 for all the articles written by this editor that were copy-edited by GOCE copy-editors in 2016; see Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests/Archives/2016. See this edit and edit summary and what was removed in this edit. I don't know what happened during this past year. Perhaps it is worth looking into in order to retain this editor.  – Corinne (talk) 17:41, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

Corinne I don't think this page will be seen by too many editors. Im gonna move it to the WP:WERtalk page. I did leave a message of encouragement for Pavanjan ealier today. Buster Seven Talk 23:56, 12 March 2017 (UTC)