Hello, I'm Joyous!. I wanted to let you know that one or more external links you added to Joseph (Genesis) have been removed because they seemed to be inappropriate for an encyclopedia. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page, or take a look at our guidelines about links. If you want to leave those links in the section called "external links" or "further reading," that would be a much better place for them. Wikipedia generally discourages external links within the body of an article. Joyous! Noise! 14:09, 28 January 2024 (UTC) reply

Ok thanks! I’m still learning the ropes here. I’m worried about getting reverted for the actual Römer quote, so I wanted to verify that he’s possibly the best source on Joseph in 2020s academic Hebrew Bible scholarship. I’ll delete the external link from the body of the article as well. IncandescentBliss ( talk) 14:14, 28 January 2024 (UTC) reply

Also, we have delightfully similar usernames! IncandescentBliss ( talk) 14:14, 28 January 2024 (UTC) reply

What’s the best way to reach out to the admins of WikiProject Bible? I’d love to collaborate with them. IncandescentBliss ( talk) 15:22, 28 January 2024 (UTC) reply

(Yes, love the username!) I'm not sure how active WikiProject Bible is, but you can reach the group by posting a message to the project's talk page, and someone will get back to you. Joyous! Noise! 15:46, 28 January 2024 (UTC) reply

Thank you! IncandescentBliss ( talk) 15:50, 28 January 2024 (UTC) reply

The historicity section of the Old Testament page is decent and I think should be added to the Hebrew Bible page. (Seems clearly just as relevant to both.) Is there an easy to add it? IncandescentBliss ( talk) 02:54, 29 January 2024 (UTC) reply

So you basically want to copy the material from one article to another? This section can help you deal with that. Basically, it's fine to copy material from one article to another, but we want to keep a "trail of breadcrumbs" that allows readers to find the original source of the material. The easiest way is to leave a link in your edit summary that points back to the "source page," and to add the "copied from" template {{ copied}} to the talk page of both articles. Joyous! Noise! 17:50, 29 January 2024 (UTC) reply

Hi IncandescentBliss! I noticed your contributions and wanted to welcome you to the Wikipedia community. I hope you like it here and decide to stay.

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Happy editing! CycloneYoris ^talk! 09:34, 29 January 2024 (UTC) reply

Thank you! I’m loving it so far. I have years (decades really) of experience with the Hebrew Bible particularly and am trying to bring my expertise to many of the more popular pages. Trying to be a positive contributor and summarize where things stand in the current literature! IncandescentBliss ( talk) 09:37, 29 January 2024 (UTC) reply

Good to know! It's always nice to see positive contributors joining the project. Welcome! CycloneYoris ^talk! 09:53, 29 January 2024 (UTC) reply

Thank you! IncandescentBliss ( talk) 09:54, 29 January 2024 (UTC) reply

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Cain and Abel, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Exodus. Such links are usually incorrect, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of unrelated topics with similar titles. (Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.)

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, -- DPL bot ( talk) 05:48, 30 January 2024 (UTC) reply

Hello IncandescentBliss, and welcome to Wikipedia! I'm always so happy, and genuinely thrilled, to see an academic expert joining the ranks of Wikipedia. However, please be aware that Wikipedia's policies around experts stink, and that as a consequence, Wikipedia has a very strong tendency to chase away experts. The essay Wikipedia:Expert editors has a lot of useful advise on the current state of things, so please read that carefully. Also, have a read of WP:GREENCHEESE, which is a situation that you will find yourself in one day. It's best to be mentally prepared.

The single best tip I can give you is this: try to focus as much as you can on writing new article content, and try to avoid as much as you can any kind of discussion about any type of content (existing or new). It's so easy –and this is not an exaggeration– to spend ten times as much time and energy on discussing a single sentence or paragraph than it would take to write a whole new article, and still end up with content that is utterly misleading. This happens most in articles on controversial subjects, but any subject that is sufficiently popular is guaranteed to create such situations (the uncontroversial here becomes controversial). Therefore, the more obscure the subject you're editing, the better. New pages about stuff no one knows the first thing about are the gold standard (see, e.g., this article I created: no other editor has even touched that article content-wise, yet it's a notable subject and Wikipedia is certainly better off for having that article).

Generally, when your stuff gets reverted, by all means do open up a talk page discussion (this is often very beneficial), but from the moment you sense that the other editor is just not getting it (which will be most of the time), withdraw from the discussion and go edit some other article. You won't be able to convince them, much less educate them. You might think 'but I put a lot of time into this', but in the great majority of cases that will be a sunk cost fallacy, since you will only lose much, much more time with it if you continue the discussion, time that you could have spent productively elsewhere. You might also think 'but I am right here', but that really counts for nothing: it's not important who's right, only who can convince (or hector) whom based on (flawed interpretations of) sources and (instrumentalization of) WP policy. Write articles. Write new article sections. Have fun. But be prepared to see your excellent content being removed, being tinkered with, or being skewed by the hardheaded, the ignorant, the opinionated. Don't engage them; just move on.

One day academic experts will outnumber the type of editors I just described, and everything will become so much easier here. But until then, this is not a place where academic experts can have erudite or even simply informed conversations: this is the domain of quibbling amateurs and battle-scarred content-warriors, people who generally have no respect for scholarship, much less for scholars. Scholars can still have much fun editing here, and just as importantly, genuinely improve the world's single most used source of information. But in order for that to happen, it is imperative that they do not get all worked up and frustrated, up to the point that they burn out and leave, forever. This happens all the time here. Please don't let it happen to you. Sincerely, ☿  Apaugasma ( talk  ☉) 23:02, 31 January 2024 (UTC) reply

Thank you so much! This is great. Is there a way to get experts to the front on pages like Ten Commandments and Josiah and temple menorah. I’m providing views that are the academic consensus and they’re being quickly reverted by people who are not experts. Is there someone who “runs” the WikiProject Bible or WikiProject Israel pages that I could request help from or collaborate with. Some of the most-visited Bible pages need significant help (it seems like the ones just slightly below the views of the super controversial ones are the ones in most need of attention). There’s one specific editor who reverts half of my work. He’s restricted on Israel-Palestine conflict pages, but doing mass-reversions on *ancient* Israel pages. It seems like he’s migrated his extremism views to pages he’s not restricted on. What can I do? IncandescentBliss ( talk) 23:12, 31 January 2024 (UTC) reply

It frankly seems like this editor has almost total leeway on medium-level controversial pages—-all the whole being restricted on others. It’s very frustrating. IncandescentBliss ( talk) 23:20, 31 January 2024 (UTC) reply

Re What can I do? As I tried to explain above, nothing. Let it go. Do something else. No experts will come to help you, because there aren't any on here (or very few at least, and they don't have time for content disputes, which are no fun anyway; there's a very strong ewww factor).

But more generally, please wp:assume good faith. This is extremely important: there are a lot of reasons why people may revert your stuff, but the chances that they are not also trying to make Wikipedia better are actually very slim. They may be anonymous, annoying, ignorant internet users, but they are human beings. Talk to them. Discuss the content for a while, but do not make it personal. Never make it personal. If you're not getting anywhere, disengage.

Every editor has the right to disagree with you, however wrong they are, whatever their restrictions elsewhere (also note that this is a standard warning, not in any way a restriction). This is the nature of this project: if there are more editors who are wrong than editors who are right, Wikipedia will be wrong. You must learn to live with that if you want to stay on here. If you feel you're getting a bit worked up, please take some time off from Wikipedia. Wikipedia:No angry mastodons. Also, Wikipedia:Tips for the angry new user; Wikipedia:Staying cool when the editing gets hot.

Calm and friendly discussion is mandatory. Keep it concise. If it doesn't work, step away. Soon. Never accuse anyone of anything, unless the case is so obvious that other editors instinctively agree with you. When you don't see that happening, again, step away. Go edit another article.

If half of your work is reverted, then the other half is not reverted, right? Wikipedia has been improved. This is the mindset you need to survive here, especially early on. Read the policy pages, especially WP:OR and WP:NPOV. Do not think you understand them. Read them (most people don't). If you've read them thoroughly, and you've been regularly editing here for a few months (or a few years in case you only edit sporadically), you may come to understand how the policies actually work in practice. At such a time you may also get into a position where your arguments on article talk pages will have some more force, or where you're able to identify a truly disruptive editor and successfully report them. But really, avoid that stuff. It's hellish even if you are the most experienced Wikipedia editor out there. Write articles. Write article sections. Avoid frustrating discussions. Have fun. ☿  Apaugasma ( talk  ☉) 00:27, 1 February 2024 (UTC) reply

Thank you! IncandescentBliss ( talk) 00:31, 1 February 2024 (UTC) reply

An automated process has detected that you recently added links to disambiguation pages.

Book of Hosea

added a link pointing to Yehud

Torah

added a link pointing to Ashur

( Opt-out instructions.) -- DPL bot ( talk) 05:47, 6 February 2024 (UTC) reply

I think I'm supposed to be your mentor, so just wanted to ask how everything is going. Please let me know if you need advice or if you feel you're ready to venture forth on your own :) Alaexis _¿question? 21:17, 24 April 2024 (UTC) reply