User:gracefool
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In real life I live in Wellington, New Zealand. On Wikipedia, I was born on March 5th, 2004 (3 years after Wikipedia began).
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[edit] Contributions
I have made many[!] contributions; here are some incomplete subsets:
- Initially I did a fair bit of Maintenance (cleanup, captions, categorization) and greeting
- Articles I've created (including major merges)
- I've also worked on templates, including creating the new citation templates, such as {{cite book}} which replaced {{book reference}} (see User:Gracefool/cite book for the earliest development). So I tend to do a lot of citation cleanup (using the citation templates usually means adding information to the citation).
- I create redirects wherever I go, using redirect templates, to make it easier for people to find articles, and so that new article creators are aware of the article space they share.
[edit] Policy
Earlier in my time as a Wikipedia editor I had a role in developing policy, because I saw how well-defined policies help prevent a lot of arguments and wasted time. Over my seven years of experience I've seen how policy has gradually changed - mostly, for the worse:
[edit] Categories
My spiel "What is a category?" pointed out why categories should be sets rather than hierarchies, and this is now policy. A simple and obvious change for the better.
[edit] Criteria for article inclusion
I also worked on the creation of the policy on notability / importance: I believe in the founding principle of Wiki is not paper, and I was tired of many deletionists acting as if such a policy existed, giving them reason to delete articles - despite decent references. So I decided to see if they really did have a consensus view. Fortunately for us inclusionists the community still backs the status quo so the current page basically just points to the other older policies - ie. article notability is still determined by verifiability and What Wikipedia is not.
Unfortunately the idea that notability is based on something else is still very common, and arguments about it are more numerous than ever. In my experience, whether with files or articles, some people prefer to delete things instead of fixing them - this is the fundamental problem with deletionism. Often articles are successfully reintroduced (and never again voted for deletion) by someone who does a better job of it (there's also now the crazy workaround that is the Article Incubator). The effect is to create a high entry barrier for new articles - stubs are much less common now, because they're more likely to be deleted than improved.
It's a huge, time wasting problem that is probably the biggest discouragement to Wikipedia contributions, and is often the reason people leave Wikipedia. There are also crazy effects like how now pornstars are more notable than scientists. See deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia for more arguments.
[edit] Voting / polls
Another related - and sadly now established - trend, is that of voting. The over-reliance on voting is against the spirit of Wikipedia - Wikipedia is about creating consensus, not taking sides. Despite it being against accepted policy, voting has become the norm. People add their votes even when they don't have anything to add to the discussion. This is usually worse than a waste of time. See Polls are evil and Voting is not evil for more.
[edit] Conclusion
For more reasons behind my thinking on inclusion and voting, see Who Writes Wikipedia? (Aaron Swartz, 2006).
As Wikipedia gains more acceptance in academia, these issues are only becoming more important. We are not only discouraging new editors from contributing, we are preventing acceptance from world experts and academic organisations who could make massive contributions to Wikipedia, both in terms of content and finance. These issues could probably be solved by a resolution from the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, but there is a long tradition of non-involvement, starting with Jimmy Wales's refusal to set any policies in stone, and originating in the technoutopian anarchist philosophies that are widespread amongst geeks - while in reality, policy is determined by an unorganised but very active tiny minority group of self-appointed content police.
[edit] Useful stuff
| Current Wikipedia events | Help | Interesting pages | Tools |
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[edit] Articles of the moment
This is a rolling list of random articles I find interesting (most recent at the top). For other interesting articles, see Wikipedia:Unusual articles.
- List of common misconceptions (common knowledge)
- Sybil attack (reputation systems)
- Countersteering (physics) - did you know to steer left on a bike you have to momentarily steer or lean right?
- Doomsday rule (maths) - look like a mathematical genius using this to calculate the day of the week for any date
- Raining animals (meteorology)
- Proof by intimidation (logic)
- LOLCODE (programming / Internet humour)
- Rule 110 (maths)
- Bridge jumping (Sport) — (now the unfortunate victim of deletionism) - see also List of bridges in Cambridge
- 9814072356 (maths)
- Unfulfilled religious predictions (humour)
| Picture of the day | |
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Non-uniform rational B-spline is a mathematical model commonly used in computer graphics for generating and representing curves and surfaces for both analytic (described by mathematical formulas) and modeled shapes. Control points (shown as small spheres) influence the directions the surface takes. The square at the bottom sets the maximum width and length of the surface. Image: Greg L |
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This is not an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user to whom this page belongs may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia itself. The original page is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gracefool. |
