User:Mendaliv

If your viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to
substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts.

If your viewpoint is held by a significant scientific minority, then
it should be easy to name prominent adherents, and the article should
certainly address the controversy without taking sides.

If your viewpoint is held by an extremely small minority, then
_whether it's true or not, whether you can prove it or not_, it
doesn't belong in Wikipedia, except perhaps in some ancilliary
article. Wikipedia is not the place for original research.

excerpts from Jimbo Wales
WikiEN-l e-mail 2003-09-29
quoted in WP:UNDUE

Mendaliv (English pronunciation: /ˈmɛndəlɪv/, men-DƏ-liv) is a male American Wikipedian on English Wikipedia.

Wikipedia involvement

Userboxen This user is not an administrator on the English Wikipedia. (verify) 23,000+ This user has made over 23,000 contributions to Wikipedia. This user has been on Wikipedia for 6 years, 1 month and 3 days. vn-38 This user page has been vandalized 38 times. ESU 100% for major edits and 100% for minor edits. – Last update: 19:22, 28 December 2011 (UTC). CN This user's alignment is Chaotic Neutral: the "Free Spirit."

Special involvement

• User:Mendaliv/TOV letter- a sample form letter that may be used when e-mailing authority figures to report threats of violence, under development. Comments and input welcome!
• User:Mendaliv/Dispute advice- a page of advice for editors seeking dispute assistance but having trouble, compiled from my experiences at WP:EAR and WP:ANI

Articles to come

• How's My Driving?- as in the little signs with a phone number and driver number you see on the back of trucks (at least in the US). These used to get made fun of all the time, and have been the subject of at least some writing. My preliminary researches showed there's enough for something bigger than a stub.
• E. James Tull- a shipbuilding company from Pocomoke City, Maryland. There is an article on them in the Nautical Research Journal, 53(2), page 67. They are known to have built the USS Joseph F. Bellows and the USS Peter C. Struven. Note that this is also the name of the company's founder, who is also considered to have been a leading citizen in Pocomoke City.
• Surplus line insurance- a type of insurance (at least in the U.S.) offered by an insurer which is unlicensed in the state where the insured is. This permits the insurer to accept risk that licensed insurers are either unwilling or unable to accept. Apparently most surplus line insurers operate on an unlicensed basis by choice. This website offers a good explanation, but would need wikification and expansion before it could become an article. Apparently this is also known as "Excess line" insurance.
• Kitchen & Wade- a defunct machine tool company known for its "Universal Machine Tool"
• Jiffy Lube- See User talk:Mendaliv/Jiffy Lube for sources
• Fireblocking- a technique in carpentry used to prevent the spread of fire from one section of a building or residence to another

Articles created

Listed in order of creation:

• Evens & Howard Fire Brick Co.
• Joliet Iron and Steel Works
• Watneys Red Barrel (merged to another article)
• Jueju
• SR-22 (insurance)
• USS Peter C. Struven (SP-332)
• Meat slicer
• Aerial Gunner
• Behind the Rising Sun (film)
• Grain filler
• Richard Rompala
• Budayeen Nights
• U.S. HealthWorks

Articles improved

• Theodore Rex
• Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority
• Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space
• Critical Path (video game)

Recognition

Barnstars

		The RickK Anti-Vandalism Barnstar
		This is for all of your hard work reverting vandalism with the help of huggle! Keep it up!!! ·Add§hore· Talk/Cont 17:29, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

		The RickK Anti-Vandalism Barnstar
		You had two recent changes entries in a row. Both were reverting vandalism! That was fast! Keep it up, keep it up! Call me Bubba (talk) 02:41, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

		The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
		For defending Wikipedia from someone who wished to use the site for advertising ;-) Patton123 16:53, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

DYK

• ... that a Jueju, a type of Chinese poem, is a quatrain with either five or seven characters per line? (1 July 2008, archived)
• ... that overseas revenues rose tenfold during the decade that Richard Rompala helped to lead the paint and coatings manufacturer Valspar? (15 November 2008, archived)
• ... that after serving as a volunteer during the Mexican-American War, James W. McMillan returned to private life but still became a General during the American Civil War? (22 November 2008, archived)

Useful stuff

This section is a sort of quick list of things I like to have at hand and things I like to link to frequently.

Resource pages

• Wikipedia:Public domain image resources
• Wikipedia:Free or semi-free non-Public-Domain information resources
• User:AlexNewArtBot/GoodSearchResult
• Special:AbuseFilter

Stuff to remember

General advice

• DefendEachOther - You don't have to fight personal attacks yourself, and in fact it may not be the best choice
• Skills of a catalyst - A list of useful advice for helping disarm disputes and move arguments to a beneficial conclusion

Good stuff

• List of legal Latin terms
• List of medical abbreviations

Article writing

• WP:SPS - Articles and posts on Wikipedia may not be used as sources
• Giano's "A fool's guide to writing a featured article" - Good general guide to writing a FA
• WikiProject Biography's 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article

For RfAs

• Wikipedia:What adminship is not - Especially, Adminship is not a trophy, Adminship is neither compulsory nor necessary to aid Wikipedia, Adminship is not a game
• Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines - Namely, Both need to be approached with common sense: adhere to the spirit rather than the letter of the rules, and be prepared to ignore the rules on the rare occasions when they conflict with the goal of improving the encyclopedia.

For AfDs

• Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions, especially:
  • WP:NOHARM/WP:NOGOOD; "the potential readership or subjective usefulness of each item does not have to be justified if the material is notable"
  • WP:ITSFUNNY; "Articles cannot be kept for their humor value alone, nor can they be kept because they are on a topic an editor finds humorous"
  • WP:NOTCLEANUP; "an article which may currently be poorly written[...] can be improved and rewritten to fix its current flaws"
  • WP:GHITS; "the quality of the search engine results matters more than the raw number" (see WP:SET)
  • WP:THISNUMBERISHUGE; "Notability isn't determined by something's quantity of members, but rather by the quality of the subject's verifiable, reliable sources"
  • WP:IKNOWIT/WP:IDONTKNOWIT; "Everything in Wikipedia needs to be verifiable information published in reliable sources", "This argument is not sufficient on its own to be persuasive in deletion discussions"
  • WP:NOTINHERITED; "notability of a parent entity or topic does not always imply the notability of the subordinate entities"
  • WP:OTHERSTUFF (see WP:OSE and WP:INN); "Plenty of articles exist that probably should not"
  • WP:ALLORNOTHING; "The status of articles on other similar topics has no bearing on a particular article"
  • WP:EVERYTHING; "Wikipedia is specifically not an indiscriminate collection of information, which means there are standards for what constitutes information that should be in Wikipedia"
  • WP:NOTAGAIN
• Wikipedia:Deletion process
• Wikipedia:Non-admin closure

For images

Refer to the logic at Category:Rescaled fairuse files more than 7 days old#Instructions, which state that raster images should generally be no more than 0.1 megapixel with the largest dimension no greater than 300-400 px (note this second point doesn't quite jive with what MOS:FILM#Instructions says), though in general one should use one's judgment.

More specific rationales:

• [[MOS:FILM#Instructions]]; only one dimension of a fair use film image should be greater than 300 px
• [[WP:VG/GL#Screenshots and cover art]]; fair use cover art and screenshots should be less than 0.1megapixel overall resolution
• [[Category:Rescaled fairuse files more than 7 days old#Instructions]]; raster images should generally be around 0.1 megapixels.

Useful templates

Inline maintenance templates

• {{Dead link|date=February 2012}}
• {{Verify credibility}}
• {{Verify source|date=February 2012}}
• {{Full}}

Formatting and conversion

• "This is equivalent to (currency symbol){{formatprice|{{Inflation|country-code|value|startyear}}}} in present-day terms.{{inflation-fn|country-code}}"
• {{convert|val_in|unit_in|unit_out}}
  • {{convert|range_start|seperator|range_end|unit_in|unit_out}}
• {{birth date and age|year|month|day}}
• {{death date and age|dyear|dmonth|dday|byear|bmonth|bday}}
• {{age|startyear|startmonth|startday}}
• {{city-state|city|state}} (deleted in Oct. 2010 via TfD)

Infoboxes

• {{Infobox Company}} (see documentation)
• {{Infobox Person}} (see documentation)

Fair use rationale

• {{subst:game rationale|1=Article_name|2=URL_source|3=copyright_owner|4=platform}}
• {{subst:film poster rationale|1=Article_name|2=URL_source|3=copyright_owner}}
• {{subst:DVD rationale|1=Article_name|2=URL_source|3=copyright_owner}}
• {{subst:logo rationale|1=Article_name|2=URL_source|3=copyright_owner}}

Image maintenance

• {{Non-free school logo}}
• {{Vector version available|filename (without namespace)}}
• {{Brands of the World SVG|BotW_ID|original_filetype}}
• {{SVG-Logo}}
• {{ShouldBeSVG|(category)}}
• {{subst:furd}} (for downsizing images per FUR)
• {{trademark}}{{PD-textlogo}} (for text logos)
• {{rename media}} or {{rename media|new.name|reason}}

Other

• {{talkarchivehist}} (very useful for copy-paste archives)
• {{sockpuppet category|username}} - turn those redlink sockpuppet/suspected sockpuppet categories into bluelinks

Fun

• {{facepalm}}