Hello! I'm a fifty-something paralegal living in western Massachusetts, formerly editing under my real name, which probably ought not be splashed all over the Web as much as it was. My Wikiactivity centers around hockey -- I'm a longtime statistician and sometime SIHR member, hockey journalist and sportscaster -- but I'm interested in everything from military history to politics to roleplaying games (and no, not in the console games that marketing departments insist on calling "RPGs").
Hockey is a marvellous game.
There's a great joy in playing it ...
An enormous thrill in watching it ...
May those of us who love it
Bear witness to fifty more years of it.
- the closing lines of Brian McFarlane's 50 Years Of Hockey, 1969
The usual cavalcade of userboxes
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I value quality of articles over quantity, backing merger of related content and deletion where articles violate policy or guidelines. |
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This user is a proud alum of the NU Choral Society! |
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This user drinks tea. |
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This user is a lifelong, avid camper. Forests rule. |
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This user is a GURPS GM. |
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This user rides the FRTA. |
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This user sees nothing wrong with the human form and doesn't view it as something that needs to be hidden. |
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This user has published a book. |
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This user thinks that registration should be required to edit articles. |
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Yeah, I've a few.
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The Running Man Barnstar |
| For your tireless contributions to the Hockey WikiProject, please accept this barnstar. BoojiBoy 20:49, 4 August 2006 (UTC) |
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The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar |
| For your commentary on the Barbara Schwarz AfD in first half of March 2007, explaining the concept of WP:OR and WP:RS Dennisthe2 21:57, 12 March 2007 (UTC) |
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The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar |
| I am so sorry, and I want you to have this as an apologetic gift. JONJONBT talk•homemade userboxes 18:01, 26 July 2007 (UTC) |
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The Tireless Contributor Barnstar |
| I'm constantly stumbling across your edits, and they are, without fail, shrewd, constructive, and sorely needed. On behalf the internet users of the world, thanks for all your hard work! Fullobeans (talk) 18:56, 11 July 2008 (UTC) |
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The Special Barnstar |
| Thank you for everything you've done for me and for the WikiProject! Taste the rainbow! Vyrida 10:56, 15 February 2009 (UTC) |
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The Barnstar of Diligence |
| Re your efforts in resolving the issues relating to Vassallo5448's contributions. LessHeard vanU (talk) 13:40, 21 November 2009 (UTC) |
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The Civility Barnstar |
| For your rational demeanor during the ongoing diacritics struggle and at WP:HOCKEY in general. Cjmclark (Contact) 14:03, 26 January 2012 (UTC) |
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The Hockey Barnstar |
| For all your fine hockey work over the years ... you’re part of the original Hockey Barnstar class! --Mo Rock...Monstrous (leech44) 22:14, 9 March 2012 (UTC) |
My Rant of the Month (4/12)
For past rants, see my Rant Archive.
... Well, one problem that you have is a fundamental misunderstanding of what WP:COI means. It does not, as you seem to believe, refer to being a partisan of one side or another. No one claims - for instance - that I have a conflict of interest in editing the Boston Bruins article, even though I am a native Bostonian and a partisan of the team, and have nearly twice as many edits in the article as any other active Wikipedian. WP:COI's examples are narrowly construed: being a paid employee of an article's subject, being involved in a legal case concerning the subject, self-promotion, editing your own article, citing your own publications as a source.
So, what we have is your presumption that someone who merely feels strongly about certain aspects of a subject cannot avoid "bias" when editing an article. Does that not, then, apply to you? You've made it clear that there is a faction in this that you despise; you consider them unethical, immoral, and unfit to edit Wikipedia. Your talk page, and your postings, make it clear that you are strongly anti-circumcision. This is just as much of a bias, and a strong one. How can you then, by your own lights, fail to impart your prejudices and biases into related articles?
When all is said and done, I rather doubt that Wikipedia is any more full of idealists than any other walk of life. No one expects you, or me, or anyone to believe anything of other editors. All we are expected to do is act in good faith, and presume that others are doing so, absent concrete proof to the contrary. You are not required to love editors you feel are immoral; you are required to act with civility towards them.
- from a warning string on a problem user's page, following an ANI complaint
Pet Peeves
- I am not particularly interested in "putting myself over" Who really gives a damn how many contributions I've made, what articles I've started (somewhere over fifty, for what it's worth), what credentials I have with which to beat you over the head that I am so much cooler than you, or anything other than whether I know about what I'm talking? I'm proud of my work here, and tickled by seeing it recognized, but I'll never post a puffed up list of the articles I've helped bring to FA/GA status (a number, so far) or listing my DYKs (a half dozen, so far). I'm more into improving stubs than creating new articles. What Wikipedia needs more than sheer page count is improved quality of articles. Many editors seeking a catchphrase making for an easy slur call this "deletionist."
- I am extremely particular about grammar, spelling and the non-use of diacriticals. I see no reason why time-honored grammar usages are invalidated just because today's typists are lazy sods, and if you have a burning desire to put umlauts and diacriticals over proper names, go over to the foreign language Wikipedias where such usages are proper -- this is the English Wikipedia, last I checked. (And don't bullshit us; they don't use diacriticals on non-North American en-language websites any more than in Canada and the US.)
- I care strongly about documentation. If you assert it, you should be prepared to back it up, with a non-Wikipedia verifiable source. If you can't, you should retract it.
- That being said, computer verification isn't the be-all and end-all of everything. An AfD was filed sometime ago against an author who had jack for Amazon.com sales ranking and not many Google hits. No kidding, folks, he wrote several popular books in the Seventies and early Eighties, pretty much nothing since, and his stuff's gone out of print. Any number of prominent Victorian authors have Amazon rankings which aren't anything about which to write their descendants.
- Subjects that should be prima facie grounds for CSD: dorm buildings, bands or wannabe auteurs with Myspace pages for lead Google hits, game/fan/mediacruft that received less than ten minutes of screentime or ten pages of action, MMORPG gaming guilds, elementary schools, any portmanteau "X in popular culture" list ... gods, I could go on for a bit.
- Articles that should be blocked from CSD: Articles within six hours of their creation, unless they're blatant vandalism, hoaxes or attack pages. It drives me nuts to see articles CSDed or AfDed four minutes after their creation, and from watching Special:Newpages, many articles are CSDed seconds after creation. Folks, Wikipedia doesn't give prizes for the first ones to file a CSD. What is your freaking hurry? (Alright, now I realize that this is a hallmark of people shilling for admin. You're getting a firm Oppose from me.) Can we give these people some chance to improve their articles?
- People who pick over this user page for ammunition to use in AfDs and other discussions: If you think this means you, you may well be right. Needing to find some dirt to fling because you can't win on the merits of the argument is a sure sign that a collaborative encyclopedia is not the environment for you. Maybe Britannica is hiring.
- There should be a guideline with equal force to WP:BITE - that in their own turn, newcomers have a duty to act respectfully, courteously and with maturity, to make an effort to acquaint themselves with Wikipedia policies and guidelines, and to assume good faith on the part of existing editors who seek to apply them.
- "!vote" is politically correct weasel-wording - Yeah, yeah, I know we're not supposed to be "voting" on things, although no one's told the RfA process, and the screams of rage when admins at XfD make policy-over-consensus determinations are palpable. That being said, let's get a grip. The dreaded letters V-O-T-E don't vanish by virtue of putting extra punctuation in front of them, and doing so reminds me strongly of my bunny ducking her head underneath a towel and pretending no one can see her. Plainly we need a word that means "registering one's opinion in such a fashion that (usually) comes down on one side of an issue or another." "Vote" is a recognizable candidate for such a word. Chill, folks.
- To steal the wording from another editor, and in the same fashion as above ... "WP:AGF is not a suicide pact. If someone writes a post with blatant personal attacks, signs another user's name, then starts posting in multiple places calling for the banning of the innocent party, he is a troll. Calling him such is not a failure to AGF: it is a logical deduction." It's maddening how often the aggressor gets off scot-free in the ensuing chaos, because blame-the-victim is SOP. Then again I'm not shilling for adminship, and I've no particular stake in sitting on my butt while trolls, sockpuppets, meatpuppets and crapmongers spill their spew all over the Web.
- Finally, I care about research. This is an encyclopedia, and not only do we have an obligation to know about what we're talking, we have no right to vote or make edits in willful ignorance -- if you insist on being ignorant, go hang out in a blog instead. It drives me nuts to see AfDs filed on articles where the nom could -- and should -- have taken five minutes to follow up a few Google hits and realized the genuine notability of the subject. It drives me just as nuts to see "seems notable," "seems non-notable," "looks good" and their ilk as reasons to support or reject deletion. Translation = you don't really have a clue. You're really just guessing off of a five second glance at the article, swallowing any presumption whole and racking up a quick meaningless edit on AfD. News flash; no one will give a damn five years from now about your edit count. We are supposed to be building an encyclopedia here, not playing some geeky MMORPG and competing for Game High Score.
Postscript
"But the biggest worry is that the great benefit of the open-source approach is also its great undoing. Its advantage is that anyone can contribute; the drawback is that sometimes just about anyone does. This leaves projects open to abuse, either by well-meaning dilettantes or intentional disrupters. Constant self-policing is required to ensure its quality."
-- The Economist, 3/18/2006
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