User talk:Boatguy1

This user is busy in real life and may not respond swiftly to queries.
Please remember to be civil, don't make threats (legal or otherwise), and no personal attacks. Always assume good faith. If you violate any of these conditions, you will be reported to the administrators' noticeboard or reported to AIV, if your edits constitute vandalism

A few things to keep in mind.
1.Don't forget to sign the end of your message using the four tildes.
2.If you are here to vandalize my talk page, just know that, if I'm online at the time, I will be notified immediately once you click "Save Page", and I'll be around to revert your edit shortly after you make it, and depending on the severity of it, I will issue a warning; if you persist, you will be blocked from editing.
3.If you are here to give me an award, please leave it on this page. I will copy the award and place it on a new awards and recognitions subpage. The original will remain here and eventually find its way to my talk page archives.
4.If you feel I made an edit that shouldn't have been made, please let me know in a constructive fashion. Please remember Wikipedia's policy on no personal attacks. If your message is inappropriate, I may decide to remove it. If you notice I did this it means I read your message, but decided not to reply. It does not mean you're free to undo my removal of your message. If you undo any edits on my talk page it will be treated as disruptive editing.

Hidden Mickey references

Thank you for your message on my talk page. What you wrote does look reasonable, but unfortunately I have to go offline now, and don't have time to check the references to see whether you are right. I hope that I will be able to do so within the next 12 hours or so, and I will get back to you as soon as I have done so.

(By the way, it is usual to put new talk page sections at the bottom of the page. If you put one at the top, there is a risk that it may not be seen by the person it's meant for, because they won't be looking for it there. This is especially so on a talk page which gets used very frequently, where your post may be one of a number of new posts.) JamesBWatson (talk) 20:46, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks for the heads up on where to post on a talk page. I now know why several were never answered. Thanks too for not automatically assuming I was trying to retaliate, I would never do that. I realize Wikipedia needs to be portrayed as an unbiased encyclopedic reference, without showing favoritism of any sort. This is why when I noted your edit on Sept 30, removing what you felt was book promotion, I looked at all the references and outside links and deleted the ones that were similar to what you deleted. It seemed odd to me, however, that several other editors prior to your Sept 30 edit thought the book references were proper to verify the hidden mickey phonomonon, they even created it as a sub-title, yet you deleted it all. On another note, I read your talk page about your name and realized it may be wise for me to do something similar, so I changed my signature as you will see here, but how can I change my user name to match? Is this something you can help me with? User:Boatguy1 (talk) 22:53, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Sorry that I accused you of disruptive editing in retaliation for removal of your content. I now accept that I was mistaken about that. Unfortunately, your editing looked very similar to editing that some people in a similar situation do in a negative spirit, but I have both read your comments about it, and also looked at your edits to the article in more detail than I did before, and it does seem that you were acting completely in good faith.

The content that you removed from the article fell into several categories, and some of it I agree did not belong in the article, so I have removed it again, while some of it I have left in. I will try to describe some of the relevant facts that led to different decisions for different parts of it.

• First of all, it is important to be clear about the distinction between references and other external links. Both of them are likely to be links to other websites, but while a simple external link does nothing but link to a site, so that a reader of the Wikipedia article can find more information there, a reference should link to a source which confirms or supports one or more statements made in the article. If it does so, its inclusion may be justifiable for that purpose, even if the link would not be considered suitable otherwise. For example, the sentence The most common Hidden Mickey is a formation of three circles that may be perceived as the silhouette of the head and ears of Mickey Mouse, often referred to by Disney aficionados as a "Classic Mickey" was followed by a reference to findingmickey.squarespace.com. Looking at the linked page, I see that it says, amongst other things, The most common Hidden Mickeys are three connected or intersecting circles (always correctly proportioned), placed to form the outline of Mickey's head and ears. These are known as the Classic Mickey. This means that the page does support the content the reference is attached to, so it is a valid reference. Whether the page would be suitable as an external link if it didn't serve as a reference is another question. On the other hand, further down the article there was the statement However, various websites and books list locations of Hidden Mickeys, and usually allow Disney fans to add, dispute, and/or prove the existence of such sightings, with a "reference" to hiddenmickeyguy.com. However, that page does not tell us anything at all about sites listing locations of Hidden Mickeys, or about allowing fans to add sightings etc, so it is not a valid reference, and I have removed it. If the page linked to had any worthwhile relevant content, it might have been worth keeping as an entry in the "External Links" section, rather than as a reference, but it didn't.
• One of the references that you removed was a dead link to a web page that no longer exists. Sometimes there is nothing to be done about such a dead link, but very often a little searching reveals that there is an archived copy of the page somewhere, and a link to that archived copy can be used in place of the original, and with in this case I found such an archived copy at http://web.archive.org/web.
• There is a guideline at Wikipedia:External links (commonly abbreviated to WP:EL). It is only a guideline, not a scientific definition of exactly what is acceptable, and there are sometimes differences of opinion as to how to interpret it, but it does give the general principles. My own opinion is that a lot of it is too vague and loosely defined to be much use, but the section Links normally to be avoided (commonly abbreviated to WP:ELNO) is better. Two of the important principles are that links which seem to exist mainly to attract people to a web site and links to pages which exist mainly for advertising are both likely to be unsuitable. However, the mere existence of a small amount of advertising on a page which is not mainly promotional does not automatically invalidate a link, if the linked page does contain a significant amount of useful and relevant content.
• Content of an article should essentially be about the subject of the article itself, rather than about other things which are related to the subject of the article. Where to draw the line is a matter of judgement, but, for example, the article Barack Obama does not contain a section which is just about what other people have written about Barack Obama in books. Such content as that would only be justifiable in the case of a book that was exceptionally notable. Likewise, in the Hidden Mickeys article, the section about books about Hidden Mickeys, while not completely off-topic, was not directly about Hidden Mickeys, and did not belong there, unless the books were especially notable.
• It is perfectly natural for a new editor to look at what others have done to see what sort of thing is acceptable on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, though, it is not a totally reliable guide, because there are many things that are done by editors who are not following accepted practice, perhaps most commonly because they are themselves inexperienced and don't know what is considered OK, but sometimes for other reasons, such as that they are basically here to promote their own web site, and don't care about cooperating or accepting guidelines and policies. By all means do look at what other editors have done, but don't expect it to always be a good guide. If you stay and edit Wikipedia for a significant amount of time, do look at discussions on talk pages, guidelines, policies, etc, and you will gradually build up a knowledge of Wikipedia's accepted standards.
• I see that, while I have been writing this, another editor has removed two more external links. I actually thought they were doubtful, but gave them the benefit of that doubt, and i am not going to quarrel with a user who decided they were unacceptable. JamesBWatson (talk) 10:38, 2 October 2013 (UTC)