Talk:Belfast and Moosehead Lake Railroad (2009)

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With this edit I removed the "WW&F's proposed crossing" from the route diagram. The northern extent of the original

Hi, Centpacrr. What information was lost? Again, I'd ask that you correct what you believe needs correcting without wholesale reversion. 01:35, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

When I add completely new material as with this section it is a process that takes place over time, not a finished product the first time I write something. This is not a process, however, the lends itself to two people doing it at the same time so it would be helpful if you would refrain from making changes to something I am still developing. Centpacrr (talk) 01:54, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I can appreciate that. However, you can appreciate that it's impossible for other editors to know when you feel you have delivered a finished product. Perhaps you'd care to use one of the various sandbox pages while working up your finished product? In the meantime, I will reiterate my request that you not revert wholesale, but to change only what you feel needs changing. PRRfan (talk) 02:10, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The way for you do that is to wait until there are no further changes made for a few days to an article or section being developed to make suggestions for changes. This is not a major article with thousands of readers and so there is certainly no rush, and what is happening with the City of Belfast, the BMLRY, the BPS, and the CPC Museum and its owner is in fact in a rather constant state of flux as the BPS has an agreement to purchase the Museum property which includes a variety of complicated provisos with both the seller and the city. Also the City's application for the railbanking has not yet been approved by the Federal Government, there are some additional legal issues with both the USDOT and MDOT about how much of the grade the City can get declared abandoned, and a variety of other ongoing budget issues regarding the funding of the proposed running trail and whether the $500,000 or more it is anticipated to cost will be approved (and how it will be raised) by the City Council and/or the voters. The fate of this railroad and its 143-year old grade is something I have been writing about for almost 30 years and so you can expect that there are going to be continued changes and "wholesale revisions" in the future. Centpacrr (talk) 03:37, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I certainly do invite the addition of more material, and it sounds like interesting things are afoot. That said, none of that flux has much to do with using Wikipedia as a personal scratch pad. If you commit an edit to a Wikipedia article, you can expect it to be edited. PRRfan (talk) 07:36, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I really don't know PRRfan what you intend to imply by claiming that I use Wikipedia as a "scratch pad", but everybody has their own way of writing/editing and especially so in the process of article development and fine tuning as things change. I have been engaged in non-fiction and historical writing and editing professionally for forty five years and am not a novice at this. Included in my output are seven published books four of which are on North American railroad history. (These include a 445-page book exclusively about the Transcontinental Railroad entitled "Riding the Transcontinental Rails: Overland Travel on the Pacific Railroad 1865-1881" (2005) and a three volume series on the history of Eastern US, Western US, and Canadian railroads totaling over 850 pages.) I am also a major contributor to our family owned and operated 10,000+ page, 15-year old website on that same subject, as well as the creator and owner of BMLRR.com, the on-line history of the original Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad (1867-2006).

As I pointed out above, article development is not a process the lends itself to two (or more) people doing tit-for-tat at the same time as this often (as in this case) ends up with them working at cross purposes especially if one of them doesn't really know anything about the particular subject (as you indicate above that you don't) and the other one does. (As I said above I have been writing about and photographing this railroad for thirty years.) So again it would be helpful if you would have the courtesy to refrain from making changes (wholesale and otherwise) that alter the meaning and/or delete material to this article while I am in the process of developing it further. If you want to make suggestions after I am finished this particular round of doing so you are perfectly welcome to, but if they introduce errors, change intended meaning, or delete relevant material they will, of course, be reverted. Centpacrr (talk) 15:01, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

By "scratch pad," I was referring to your apparent belief that you can make edits to an article that leave the text in a bit of disarray and yet not suffer them to be edited. Right now, for example, there's a mysteriously hyphenated "30-miles," a miscapitalized "Fall of 2012," a missing "to" in "...for permission railbank...", references to previously unmentioned activities ("While BPS continues to offer seasonal weekend excursions, special events, and group charters..."), odd verb usage ("...canceled the lease with the BPS to operate..."), etc., etc. Given your decades of writing and editing experience, you no doubt plan to fix these errors. But you can see why their presence invites immediate correction. In the meantime, I will refrain from editing to allow you to knock the piece into shape as you wish. Then I'll come back and fix anything that still needs fixing. PRRfan (talk) 15:43, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As I said article development is a process. I am not the original author of this article and many of the issues you mention existed before I started editing and developing it. So just be patient and let me develop it, add new material, rearrange text to make more sense, fix typos and other issues as I come upon them, add references, etc. Also writing styles differ so what you find to be "errors" are merely differences in style, usage, capitalization, etc. There are always going to be more than one acceptable way to express things and just because it is not the way you would have written it does not make the way I or any other editor writes something "wrong", it is just different. Centpacrr (talk) 16:08, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Of course there are always different ways to express things: clearer or less clear, for example, or active vs. passive voice. But on many points, there are also well-hashed-out rules of style on WP, codified in the Wikipedia:Manual of Style. For example, seasons, like fall, are not capitalized unless they are part of a larger proper noun. And "30-miles" is a typo in anyone's book. Cheers and happy editing. PRRfan (talk) 17:01, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes "30-miles" was clearly a typo and has been corrected. I think it had earlier been "30-mile" section of track but the language around it was changed and I apparently did not remove the hyphen when I added the "s" although I have not gone back to check is that was the case. I always take breaks of a few hours or overnight between editing sessions when these errors then become obvious and are much more easily spotted by the active writer. Matters as to being "clear or "less" clear" or when to use active vs passive, however, are generally purely subjective aspects of writing. Today I am currently adding details and references as well as tweaking structure and word choice and will probably continue this process for a few more days. Centpacrr (talk) 18:04, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sure that in your decades as a professional editor you've made many sentences and paragraphs rather objectively clearer, even when the original writer thought they were perfectly clear, haven't you? Looking forward to reading your work. PRRfan (talk) 19:12, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As I said this area of editing is subjective and the danger of trying to make things "clear" or "simplified" based on false assumptions is that it can whitewash or muddy the complexity of facts and their relationships and thus by such editing renders the text misleading or ambiguous. You are, of course, welcome to make suggestions, but if I find the intent and/or meaning is altered I reserve the right to either restore or further revise the text. An important element of good editing is knowing when to give deference to the original writer who usually knows more about the subject than the editor, and also please remember that there is no such thing as an "Editor in Chief" on Wilkipedia. Centpacrr (talk) 19:58, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I believe I will generally be making edits, rather than suggestions, but certainly will welcome correction if and when I go awry. In return, I will once again make the request that touched off this lengthy discussion: that you not needlessly revert many changes in pursuit of a single offending change. PRRfan (talk) 20:08, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

And please also remember the value of giving due deference to those who have taken the time and effort to compile, research, and source the information being added or updated, especially when such writers have long experience and familiarity in the particular subject and you know little or nothing about it at all. In many instances in editing in such circumstances the old saw of "less is more" is the best approach.

One of the problems I have with your style of editing is that you tend to make dozens of small edits (a comma here, a single word there, adding or removing a Wikilink, changing a single letter from upper to lower case, etc) which makes it very difficult to keep track of what you are doing because one has to go back through dozens of such edits one by one to try to make sense of it. This is both time consuming and confusing. As I have pointed out before this is also all the more difficult to deal with when you are doing so while at the same time that another editor in engaged in a ongoing process of expanding and/or upgrading an article as you may be making changes that he or she does not notice thus causing the article to no longer make sense because things that original editor has added to it may have been removed or altered without him or her realizing it thus leading to a mishmash style and other problems. Centpacrr (talk) 20:54, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Deference is indeed due to clearly expressed thoughts, and indeed, it is often the measure of such clarity that a reader unfamiliar with the material can accurately understand its meaning. It is when the thought is not expressed clearly that I try to improve the text, and if I go astray, it's often because it wasn't clear to begin with. Such edits are certainly not meant as affronts to the original writer, but indeed to help readers better understand his or her work. Will you kindly not take offense when I come upon something that is unclear and strive to improve it? As for dozens of small edits, that's actually not how I generally work; it is a reaction to wholesale reversion that destroys productive edits along with ones you specifically object to. I make small edits to help you undo only as necessary. But we're starting to repeat ourselves here. I have said I will stand aside while you edit and, like any good Wikipedia editor, look forward to give-and-take over specific edits; I would like to hear from you that you will revert only what you deem incorrect, and not productive edits. PRRfan (talk) 21:50, 7 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

PRRfan, please do not keep making changes to very specific language and construction that materially change the intended meaning. Centpacrr (talk) 22:29, 12 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Centpacrr, I wish you would revert only that part of the edit with which you disagree. I have broken down the edits into one- and two-word changes, and yet you insist on bulk reversion to your original wording. I think at this point I will retire from editing this article; I have done what I can to correct elementary mistakes of punctuation and grammar, and that is apparently all I can do without arguing over each individual edit. It is a pity, because, as we had done with the original B&MLRR article, I think we could have worked together to turn this one into a clearer, cleaner, and stronger article. But if you are going to bulk-revert, I'll leave you to it. Cheers. PRRfan (talk) 22:43, 12 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I reverted the entire compound edit because I disagreed with all the elements of the entire compound edit. I have not altered your various style changes as they don't change the overall meaning, but the compound edits you made to the paragraph relating to acquisition of assets from Unity did materially change its meaning. When the BPS was formed, the only asset that they knew they could get was the stationhouse, but not the rolling stock which was their conditional hope but there was no guarantee that that any of that equipment would be sold to the BPS. The remaining assets may have instead gone in bulk to another excursion railroad, or in pieces to other buyers such as eventually proved to be the case with BML#54, the Swedish cars and steam locomotive, the turntables at Belfast and Unity, the Unity station, the Southern cars, and a variety of other B&ML assets.

Your material changes eliminated that understanding from the paragraph on assets. As I mentioned to you once before what has happened to this railroad over the last thirty years in general, and the last five years in particular has been a complicated, ongoing process with many players and competing interests involved such as the B&MLRPS, UPM, BPS, Belfast City Council, the Town of Brooks, Waldo County, Penobscot McCrum and other abutting property owners, the City Point Central Railroad Museum, the Coastal Mountains Land Trust, MDOT, USDOT, Federal Railroad Administration, US Dept of Interior, and a variety of others. Please, therefore, leave those details in the article to me as I have been following them closely since the early 1980s. As for the original B&MLRR (1871-2007) article there are still many problems and inaccuracies in it which I intend to eventually fix and rewrite sometime after I return to Pennsylvania from Belfast where I am still summering as I do every year. Centpacrr (talk) 23:21, 12 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I would argue that my edits preserved the expressed meaning while eliminating 21 words from a very long sentence. But no matter. I wish you the best of luck in your continuing effort to turn your experience and research into clean and unambiguous prose. PRRfan (talk) 01:36, 13 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have rewritten the paragraph to hopefully make the conditional nature of the acquisition of 50 & 53 clearer. Centpacrr (talk) 02:13, 13 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Spring ans summer is used here to denote the period in 2016 when the work was able to be done owing to weather and funding. It is clear that this is happening in a very specific place -- Belfast, ME -- so there is no reason for there to be any "confusion" to a global audience when this is. The use of BF in this entry is used only for the proper names of railroad companies, organizations that own the named railroads, and the reporting mark and numbers of two locomotives which is neither excessive nor random. WP:SEASON and MOS:BOLD are also just guidelines, not policies and thus not "hard and fast" rules. Centpacrr (talk) 18:00, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The Manual of Style is there to make our article look better, more consistent, and more understandable. I know you have claimed to be a professional writer, so you must presumably be familiar with the concept. There is no good reason for this article to diverge from the MoS and, in spite of your (rather nauseating) discussion above with

own this article. Please stop wholesale reverting edits which improve this article's readability. --John (talk) 18:15, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply

]

You are certainly entitled to your views on "style and readability" as, of course, am I. The problem with many of your edits to "improve this article's readability" is that they also materially change the meaning of the entry and thus introduce inaccuracies. For instance you changed "spring and summer" (which in Mid Coast Maine is May to September) to "the first half of the year" which would be "January to June" and is not the same thing at all as no work could be done during winter months prior to May owing to the severe weather at that time of year. I have been photographing, videoing, writing about, and riding on this railroad for more than 30 years and am the creator, owner and author of the BML's on line history site at BMLRR.com. That being the case, I think I am in a far better position to know and understand how to accurately relate the fairly complicated history of this line than you, PRRfan, or any other WP editor as none would have any personal background or knowledge about the BML at all.Centpacrr (talk) 19:16, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. During what exact period was the work done? We cannot use "spring and summer" because, as you point out, this means different things in different parts of the world. It is not reasonable to expect our readers in Tanzania, India or Australia to know exactly when seasons fall in a particular location in the United States, hence the existence of the guideline. --John (talk) 19:46, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Owing to now having been overtly threatened in my talk page, I am electing to acquiesce in this particular instance although I still stand by my views on this issue for the reasons I have stated both above and elsewhere in the past. Centpacrr (talk) 20:04, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If you are unhappy with this project-wide consensus, the place to challenge it would be Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers. If by threat you mean the 3rr warning, it is a fact that you cannot just revert out any edit you do not like without discussion. Again, that is a project-wide consensus which you may challenge, but not here. As regards this particular issue, can we compromise on "mid-2016" if the exact date range is unknown? --John (talk) 20:22, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Actually as I read and understand the project's MOS "guidelines" they state at the outset that "editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. While I believe that I had good cause apply a "common sense exception" here, I am not going to press it further at this time. With respect, however, let me also ask you to be a bit more careful in how you interact with your fellow volunteer WP editors and avoid using language such as I felt that you somewhat gratuitously cast in my direction or myself and others, to wit: 1) abjectly referring to the First Transcontinental Railroad article as being "excruciatingly badly written" without offering any explanation or justification for making such a dismissive and demeaning remark about the contributions that the many hundreds of editors who had worked on this quite well sourced, stable and mature article over the period of 15 years it has been on the project, and; 2) you gratuitous "question" to me on my talk page, "When you wrote your two books, was your work subject to editing for readability?" Frankly, sir, I found both of these to constitute snide eldering putdowns, were unnecessarily lacking in collegiality, and were indicative of a failure to assume good faith on my part without justification or explanation.

Had you not chosen to take such an approach with me, I will guarantee you that things would have gone much more smoothly, and with respect they certainly can with me in the future if you are willing to avoid such sarcasm. That being said, however, I am willing to do a "reset" and ask you do so as well. After all, we are all volunteers in here with the objective of trying to make Wikipedia the best possible resource for all of us by sharing our expertise and personal passions for knowledge in here for the mutual educational benefit of all of use. Centpacrr (talk) 21:39, 30 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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