User talk:Luftenberg

May 2014[edit]

Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia, as you did at 2014 Isla Vista massacre. Your edits appear to constitute vandalism and have been reverted or removed. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Administrators have the ability to block users from editing if they repeatedly engage in vandalism. Thank you. —MelbourneStar☆^talk 08:49, 25 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Strictly speaking, your edit wasn't vandalism, but it didn't belong to Wikipedia either. Wikipedia is not a soapbox; your personal statements of political opinion do not belong in articles. And that's coming from somebody who supports gun control. - Mike Rosoft (talk) 08:54, 25 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Who appointed you as censor for WikiPedia? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Luftenberg (talk • contribs)

It's not the matter of censorship. It's the matter of the scope of Wikipedia; Wikipedia is meant to be an encyclopedia, not a blog for your political opinions. Wikipedia articles need to be written in a neutral and objective manner; just because you believe that the availability of guns in the United States has the effect of increasing violent crime, it doesn't mean that you can add it to random articles about gun attacks. Do you think that you could find a statement like the one you added to 2014 Isla Vista massacre in a printed encyclopedia? If not, why do you think Wikipedia would accept it? - Mike Rosoft (talk) 09:36, 25 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Two points:

1) This isn't a printed encyclopedia, what part of "Wiki" do you not quite comprehend?

2) This is the age of the Internet, if you can't handle diversity of opinion perhaps you should take up another hobby - maybe one not involving computers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Luftenberg (talk • contribs)

You seem to be fundamentally mistaken about the purpose of Wikipedia. You seem to believe that you can write whatever you want and expect that nobody will remove your edit; this is emphatically not the case. The main difference between Wikipedia and a printed encyclopedia is that Wikipedia allows outside editors to edit it, with a working assumption that the change is aimed at improving the article. But that doesn't mean that material blatantly inappropriate for a printed encyclopedia would be acceptable on Wikipedia.
Wikipedia has its policies and guidelines, established by the wiki community and the Wikimedia Foundation; you can find the core policies here: Five pillars of Wikipedia. The bottom line is: Wikipedia is not a printed encyclopedia, but still, it is an encyclopedia. It is not a personal website or a blog, and Wikipedia articles are not opinion pieces. (Your complaint about me being unable to handle the diversity of opinion misses the point entirely.) - Mike Rosoft (talk) 14:26, 25 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]