Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject. So you know you are getting the best possible information. —Michael Scott

Don’t listen to the editors who opine that “Wikipedia is an authoritative source, man…”Your teachers were right: anyone who would attempt to cite this open-source encyclopedia as an authoritative resource is a dope. Under the current rules and consensus, it is a mill for creating derivative substandard content.

If you are passionate about a subject, write about it elsewhere. Start your own website or micro-wiki over which you can exercise full control of the final product. Or do the research and write a scholarly article or book like adults used to do. Don’t waste your time on a passion project here. You will be disappointed as strangers with their own inscrutable agendas cannibalize and deride your work at will, and there will be no recourse for you.

Secondary sources, by themselves, are not noteworthy or authoritative when it comes down to making a persuasive historical argument: learn to mine the primary sources and weight them appropriately...

I will continue to edit occasionally as I see fit, mostly when something is wrong or simply irritates me and I feel motivated to change it. I will not argue with project editors or moderators, and don’t bother to message me with your project scope or rules. I don’t care.

Cheers

P.S. Wikipedia consensus is wrong—there should be a comma before a suffix such as “Jr.” For example, it is correct to say that the son of Major General Peter Conover Hains was Captain Peter Conover Hains, Jr.

In looking back at some older articles, I'm pleased to take note of the fact that the same issues which make Wikipedia a toxic dumpster fire today (heavy-handed project coordinators and overeager reversion editors, notability police, and the fascistic adherence to "secondary-source primacy") were the bane of well-intentioned editors at least a decade before I got here. I just popped back in to tweak a few things, and I saw a comment thread on an article from ten years past which could have been a discussion I, myself, had with the coordinators of the MilHist project.

In the meantime, my own little website is closing-in upon 1,000 biographical articles and 5 out of 7 regimental histories of the U.S. Artillery of the 19th century. And you can't edit a single Oxford comma, ", Jr.", or double space following a period. I have attached a fine collection of primary documents and even a few secondary sources. I am proud to say that I have created my very own authoritative secondary source, and I take even more pride knowing it will never pass muster on Wikipedia. If I ever see it listed in a source attribution, I will personally remove it myself. Because it's not ackchyually authoritative, you see...

Cheers! Radar488 (talk) 03:56, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Greetings! It has been a while, but I like to pop back in occasionally and read some of the article and user talk pages to see what is going on in the world of Wikipedia. Glad to see that this place is still a toxic dumpster fire. I stand by everything I've ever said about it. 100,000+ Wikipedia edits, to me, says "wasted time that could have been better spent doing almost anything else"–but that's just me. Radar488 (talk) 07:09, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

I am an independent (that is to say, as I do it in an unpaid manner, amateur) historian, with a fair amount of formal training and professional experience in my toolbox. I am interested chiefly in Federal artillery of the American Civil War, and I aspire to be a subject-matter authority some day. Usually, having undertaken and accomplished the research work is enough for me.

In my spare time, I maintain a central database of 19th-century American artillery. It currently consists of four regimental histories and 900 officer biographies. Initially, I had hoped to work within the scope of Wikipedia, but that soon became unfeasible and I lost all interest; I maintain my own website.

I have a strong preference and proclivity to gravitate to my native Chicago Manual of Style; Wikipedia's "secondary source" primacy policy is rather like nails on a chalkboard to me. I won't argue about it—but it's stupid.

I collect Civil War memorabilia within my means, particularly artillery-related items. I also have a small but utterly respectable collection of Federal officer cartes de visite.

Actively improving and creating articles regarding the Federal artillery branch of the American Civil War and the Peninsula Campaign of 1862, including:

• Alanson Merwin Randol
• Henry Benson (soldier)
• James Madison Robertson
• Edmund Kirby (army officer)
• William Neil Dennison
• Samuel Sherer Elder
• Tully McCrea

• Battery A, 2nd U.S. Artillery
• Horatio Gates Gibson

• 1st Battalion, New York Volunteer Light Artillery
• U.S. Horse Artillery Brigade

• Battle of Glendale
• Seven Days Union order of battle
• Peninsula campaign Union order of battle
• Fort Worden

I tried once more to "wikipedia" by placing my article Alanson Randol forward for Good Article review based on extensive modifications: it was only two sentences of a bio stub when I found it, and A.M. Randol is one of my specialties. I was disappointed but not at all surprised by the evaluation, when it took someone less than twenty minutes to fail it.

I think I was curious and wanted to see what would happen. Unfortunately, as suspected, I am clearly wasting my time on this site.

This isn’t a polemic: I've given this a lot of thought, and I think I finally understand the problem.

The root of the issue seems to be a basic incompatibility of mission—as of today, the article is essentially what I want it to be: hitting upon all the relevant highlights of his life, based on contemporary sources and primary documentation with context by generally reliable historical secondary references (Cullum's Register, William Haskin's History of the First Regiment of Artillery, etc.). But unfortunately, and expressly for that reason, it is not suitable for Wikipedia.

As earlier stated, when I first found the article it was incomplete— so, I generally finished it about a year ago (in a nutshell) with contemporary sources and references. At the time, I was advised to revisit the work utilizing secondary documents for appropriate weight. The rub: the necessary secondary documents did not exist, and as far as I know there is no one else working on it. So I created them. It took most of a year, and the work was peer-reviewed by a university-level academic editor and published online—albeit independently. But thoroughly researched and sourced, nonetheless.

Here is the Catch-22: the source is inadequate by definition because it is not published by "reliable sources." And as I am not a "professional historian," I can't see any way of creating a "reliable source."

And so the circular logic begins, because in order to create the article I had to find a secondary source; as the source did not exist, it had to first be created; but by the definition of "reliable sources," I am not able to create a "reliable source." Therefore, the article can't be properly sourced, because the "reliable source" does not exist and necessarily cannot exist.

So essentially, it cannot be done. At least not by this standard.

From this point forward, I will still make "wiki gnome" edits as I see fit. I can certainly offer the occasional fix that will be within the scope of what is needed/expected.

But as for trying to generate content to meet the standards for excellence defined by this website, I will not be wasting my time or effort.

I am a classically-trained historian with professional experience and publications. I thought Wikipedia might be a good place to bring interesting and obscure subjects into the light. But if it takes less than twenty minutes of review to fail an article based on weeks of work against this criteria, then in my opinion it is not work worth doing. For me, the opportunity cost of continuing down this path is too high, as I can easily create twice as much content on my own website in the same amount of time, and with the benefit of full editorial control.

Relying upon secondary sources is not in my wheelhouse, as I was specifically trained NOT to do it. It is and has always been my opinion that secondary sources are the things we ought to be creating, with primary sources. My academic editor used to refer me to strong secondary sources—for their bibliographies.

It was previously one of my goals to create articles for each of the companies of the 1st through 7th Regiments of U.S. Artillery in the 19th century, as most of them don't yet exist; I have added to several of those which do exist, as there have been many deficiencies. For example, some of the creators seem to have the understanding that the batteries of the Regular Army (not the 5th Regiment) were created during the Civil War. My own work is certainly not without error, but some of the information provided currently is simply wrong or incomplete.

But as stated above, the opportunity cost is too high. I can get SO much more accomplished elsewhere in the same time.

I will be continuing work on my comprehensive online artillery database from now on.

To those of you continuing on, the best of luck with whatever this is.

Radar488 (talk) 08:23, 9 January 2022 (UTC)