User:SMcCandlish

Self-convenience: /Sandbox – /Sandbox2 – /Sandbox3 – /Sandbox4 – /Sandbox5 – /Sandbox6 – /Sandbox7 – User:SMcCandlish/Status

Committed identity: a6d331de87bb595541d03acf814f68f05abde44b5c3c79e078a3b79ceabf093696dcb01a3570d6eceedb21c6e8c33f4d41649bf9c05864a474974fcc4eec54be

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As of 2012-02-11 , SMcCandlish is Active.
I'll reply to your message within 24 hours if possible.

WikiStress level

Hi!

I am Stanton McCandlish, a Web developer, nonfiction author, and nonprofit executive (among other things), as well as an avid Wikipedian.

Unified login: SMcCandlish is the unique login of this user for all public Wikimedia projects.

@ This user can be reached by email.	This user is male.
This user lives in the United States of America.	This user is from the U.S. State of New Mexico.
UTC-7 This user's time zone is UTC-7.

My current local time is 07:40 AM ().

Wikitivities

Stats

This user has rollback rights on the English Wikipedia. (verify)	This user has autopatrolled rights on the English Wikipedia. (verify)	This user has reviewer rights on the English Wikipedia. (verify)
This user has file mover rights on the English Wikipedia. (verify)

• SMcCandlish (talk • message • contribs • global contribs • deleted contribs  • page moves  • user creation • block user  • block log • count • total • logs • summary • email | lu •  rfas  • rfb  • arb  • rfc  • lta  • checkuser  • spi  • socks | rfar • rfc • rfcu • ssp | current rights • rights log (local) • rights log (global/meta) | rights • renames • bots • blocks • protects • deletions • rollback • admin • logs | UHx • UtHx • UtE)
• My Wikipedia log (uploads/moves) — for uploads, my Commons log is far more informative.
• MediaWiki Bugzilla bugs I've filed or been involved with

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This user is one of the 400 most active Wikipedians.	70,000+ This user has made over 70,000 contributions to Wikipedia.	26,000+ This user has made over 26,000 contributions to Wikipedia articles.
ESU 100% for major edits and 100% for minor edits. – Last update: 16:50, 1 February 2012 (UTC).	This user has been helping the Internet not suck since August 11, 2005.	This user has been on Wikipedia for 6 years and 6 months .
This user is one in 16,243,626.	vn-12 This editor's user page, talk page and/or subpages have been vandalized 12 times.	4 This user has 4 centijimbos.
This user scored 51617 on the Wikipediholic test.	This user has alternative accounts named McCandlish, Smccandlish, SMcClandish, SMcCandish, SMcClandlish.

What I'm working on now...

...when time permits:

This user is currently working on Manx (cat).

This user is currently working on WikiProject Cue sports.

Articles

• William Hoskins (inventor) (draft, parts still in outline form)
• Ground billiards (near-complete draft)
• American snooker (draft)
• Lots of cue sports articles; see WikiProject Cue sports for an overview.

Wikipedia-namespace pages

• Wikipedia:Manual of Style (glossaries) (nascent proposal)
• Sports naming conventions and manual of style (draft)

Stuff I've been largely responsible for or heavily involved in

Projects

• WikiProject Cue sports — For coordinating the creation and maintenance of articles on cue sports, including pool, snooker, carom billiards, and obscure billiards-related games such as bagatelle and bumper pool.
• WikiProject Inline Templates — For coordinating the creation and maintenance of inline citation, dispute and cleanup templates, such as {{ref label}}, {{fact}} and {{fixPOV}}.

Articles

• Three-ball — Article about the poorly-documented modern pocket billiards folk game, about 95% my material. Sourcing help wanted!
• Five-pins — Article about the carom billiards game popular in Italy and parts of South America. I wrote it from scratch after someone posted a (terrible) machine-translation of the (good) Italian article; mine is now more extensive than the original Italian one, though may yet suffer from translation problems. Help wanted from someone fluent in Italian.
• William A. Spinks — created from scratch; every single thing in it is reliably sourced.
• Sandbox (software development) — A coding safety process. Created this article. I crack up when someone mistakes it for the Wikipedia:Sandbox.
• Albinism — Was already a not-bad article when I got there, but I worked on it a lot, especially sourcing the science, and defending it from constant vandalism.

• Albinism in popular culture — Was a narrow AfD survivor in the form of Albino bias and an AfD failure as Evil albino stereotype when I got to them; it's quite solid now, after a lot of mergin'-'n'-purgin', reliable sourcing, and frequent shepherding and cleanup.

• Pleonasm — Article on redundant expressions in language. About 70% or so of that text is mine.

• Relatedly, I also shepherded various other language articles like Logorrhoea, Redundancy (language) and Calque, until they became stable.

• Blackball (pool) — Mostly my work, building on skeletal, unsourced material originally interpolated into Eight-ball. Help wanted!
• Folgerphone — an experimental musical instrument. Created this short article (a stub, but sourced). Someone's disputed a major fact, on the Talk page. Help wanted from anyone who knows anything at all about Folgerphones.

Wikipedia policies, guidelines and essays

• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Icons – WP:MOS sub-guideline – originator and a principal author
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Cue sports – WP:AT/WP:MOS sub-guideline – the principal author
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Glossaries – WP:AT/WP:MOS sub-guideline draft – the principal author
• Wikipedia:Naming conventions (sportspeople) – WP:AT sub-guideline – the principal author
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Cue sports/Notability – WP:N sub-guideline draft – the principal author
• Wikipedia:Use modern language – essay – the principal author
• Wikipedia:Specialist straw man – essay – the principal author
• Wikipedia:How to mine a source – how-to – the principal author
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Naming guidelines – WP:AT sub-guideline; – Much of the prose is and most of the structure is my work, though none of the major ideas are; I simply took a palimpsestuous mess and made a parseable document out of it.
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style, Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers), etc. – guidelines – Along with Tony1, Noetica and several other "regulars", I have spent a lot of time shepherding the MoS; I've mostly moved on to other stuff at this point, but weigh in periodically. For a long time, MOSwatching was my #1 "Wikipedia:"-namespace activity.
• Wikipedia:Notability – policy – I was deeply involved in the debate over the future and form of this when it was a proposed guideline, especially from Nov. 2006 through Feb. 2007, until it stabilized.

Major templates

• {{Rp}}
• {{CompactTOC8}}
• {{Whisperback}} a.k.a. {{wb}}
• {{gloss}}, {{glossend}}, {{term}}, {{defn}}
• {{div}}, {{span}}, {{em}}, {{strong}}, {{var}}, {{kbd}}, {{samp}}, {{dfn}} and most of the rest of Category:Semantic markup templates
• {{Shoutbox sidebar}}
• {{Date series header}}
• {{' "}}, {{" '}}, {{" ' "}}, {{-'}}, {{'-}}, {{-"}} and {{"-}}
• {{Germanic name}}, {{Romance name}}, {{Slavic name}}, {{Turkic name}}, etc.
• {{Cue sports nav}}
• {{WikiProject Cue sports}}, {{WikiProject New Mexico}}, and several others

Gallery of contributed images

Some of the images I've contributed under GFDL/CC (and sometimes PD) are displayed as thumbnails in my Gallery Page.

To-do list

Wikawards

Barnometer™
	noob	involved	been around	veteran	seen it all	older than the Cabal itself

Gratuitous
The Running Man Barnstar	The Working Man's Barnstar	The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar	The E=mc2 Barnstar	Excellent User Page Award
For your many, many fine cue sport related edits. --Fuhghettaboutit 23:30, 9 February 2007 (UTC)	For all the arduous work on Cue sport 68.239.240.144 23:46, 20 February 2007 (UTC)	Awarded to SMcCandlish for sleuthing out sockpuppets being used to subvert RfA. —dgiestc 20:05, 11 April 2007 (UTC)	Awarded for your tireless work on articles relating to the field of pigmentation. Rockpocket 09:23, 17 April 2007 (UTC)	[...] ask Mr. McCandlish if programmers are users too. Peace and love. -SusanLesch (talk) 03:31, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
Barnstar Eaten by a Bear	The Working Wikipedian's Barnstar	Some Falafel and One Canadian Beer	The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar	The Heroic Barnstar
I regret to inform you that the barnstar that I was going to give you for this bit of hilariousness was eaten by a bear. Happy editing! Hamtechperson 04:46, 24 December 2009 (UTC)	For general template taming goodness. Ludwigs2 03:36, 31 December 2009 (UTC)	For being here and to work on the women sport project. --Cordialement féministe ♀ Cordially feminist Geneviève (talk) 20:34, 20 January 2012 (UTC)	For behaving in a genteel fashion, as if nothing were the matter, and for gallantry. --Djathinkimacowboy 03:27, 2 February 2012 (UTC)	For your recent work at WP:MOS: A model of unflagging effort, precise analysis, institutionally broad and historically deep vision, clear articulation, and civil expression under great pressure. Unforgettable. DocKino (talk) 06:14, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
Auto-assigned
Illustrious Looshpah of the Encyclopedia	Good Article	Good Article	"Did You Know?" Article	"Did You Know?" Article
This editor is entitled to display this Master Editor Badge (6+ years & 42K+ edits)	This user helped promote the article CornerShot to Good status (July 24, 2006)	This user helped promote the article Jasmin Ouschan to Good status (September 12, 2009)	On March 2, 2007, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article William A. Spinks, which you created and substantially expanded.	On June 2, 2010, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Golden Cue, which you created and substantially expanded.
"In the News" Article	"In the News" Article	The Original Barnstar
On 5 May 2009, In the news was updated with a news item that involved the article Shaun Murphy (snooker player), which you substantially updated.	On 5 May 2009, In the news was updated with a news item that involved the article John Higgins (snooker player), which you substantially updated.	This barnstar is awarded to everyone who - whatever their opinion - contributed to the discussion about Wikipedia and SOPA. Thank you for being a part of the discussion. Presented by the Wikimedia Foundation. 20:37, 21 January 2012‎.
Reciprocal
The Angry Tarsier of Appreciation!	A Barnstar Point	A Barnstar Point
For awarding me a barnstar, I hereby giveth unto you one angry tarsier of appreciation. Thanks! --Fuhghettaboutit 21:29, 12 December 2006 (UTC)	This barnstar point is awarded to SMcCandlish for giving me a barnstar point! GracenotesT § 01:12, 27 February 2007 (UTC)	I, Λυδαcιτγ, award Stanton McCandlish the Minor Barnstar Point for the creation of said Barnstar.
Hostile
"Anti-awards" like this are a great example of what not to do on Wikipedia just because you disagree with someone:
Consider yourself duly admonished
I hereby award this barnstar for your disruptive MFD nomination. —freak(talk) 13:00, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
Incidentally, the Wikipedia:Fromowner "placeholder image" junk has been deprecated by the community just as I suggested and predicted. I wasn't disruptive, just a little before my time. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:12, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

What I'm up to in general on Wikipedia

On Wikipedia, I mostly do the following in lieu of large-scale article authorship (though I do have some major ones planned and three under my belt):

1. Setting up a WikiProject and making it work
2. Making substantial contributions to existing articles (and sometimes creating new ones) on topics I know a lot about
3. Shepherding the growth and health of some particular articles that need it (and, in some but not all cases, about which I care a lot)
4. Correcting typos, grammar errors and readability problems
5. Weeding out unverifiable, or incredible and unsourced, claims
6. Adding missing salient information
7. Moving articles that violate the WP article naming conventions
8. Correcting outright factual errors
9. Improving cross-references, categorization, etc.
10. Improving consistency of formatting
11. Removing redundant wikilinks
12. Removing pointless (Wikipedia is not a dictionary!) wikilinks — everyone already knows what "eye" and "the sun" mean, in most contexts in which they appear
13. Removing minor, childish quasi-vandalism (smart-aleck remarks in articles, etc.) — I like to document these in the Talk pages, since they often are actually funny
14. Reverting and repairing intentionally destructive vandalism, especially that by religious or other zealots, slanderers, the foul-mouthed, and the discriminatory
15. Tagging outright vandals' talk pages with countdown-to-blocking warnings
16. Repairing semi-vandalism edits in the form of deletions of long-standing passages without explanation, or the inexplicable addition of large chunks of questionably relevant or unsourced alleged facts, especially attacks against living article subjects, fanwanking and crackpotism.
17. Copyediting, encyclopedizing and formalizing any juvenile, colloquial, non-neutral or poorly thought out language in articles
18. Fixing miscellaneous "bad stuff" - vanity/marketing language, crystalballing, etc.
19. Proposing (and sometimes performing) merges of redundant articles
20. Adding obvious missing redirects and making sure they go to useful places
21. Educating misinformed arguments (per logic or Wikipedia policy) on Talk pages
22. Trying to resolve circular disputes on Talk pages
23. Defending articles from AfD when the reasoning for the deletion is specious, especially "NN per nom" me-tooism.
24. Nominating truly atrocious crap for AfD (or for SD, or just prod'ing them)
25. Learning a lot concerning things I didn't know about, on all sorts of topics!
26. Having a good time!

Wikitivities userboxes

This user is a member of the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team.	This user is a member of WikiProject Stub Sorting.	This user is a member of WikiProject Spam.
{{inline}} This user is a member of WikiProject Inline Templates	This user participates in the Article Creation and Improvement Drive.	Cat This user is part of WikiProject Categories, which aims to improve article categorization on Wikipedia.
This user repairs links to disambiguation pages.	This user is a donor to Wikipedia. You can be one too.	This user is a member of the Counter-Vandalism Unit.
This user is a recent changes patroller.	This user is a new page patroller.	This user is a member of the Guild of Copy Editors.
This user is a participant in WikiProject Linkification .	This user is a member of the Good Article WikiProject. talk | Changes log | GAN report	linkspam This user despises linkspam, and will terminate it on sight, as well as any other spam by the contributor.
This user integrates Wikipedia.	<ref> This user recognizes the importance of citing sources.	<ref> This user would like to see everyone using inline citations. Please...
This editor participates in the WikiProject Council.	This user fixes double redirects.	WCW This user checks Wikipedia.
This user is a participant in WikiProject Usability.	This user is a member of WikiProject Accessibility	This user is a member of WikiProject Abandoned Articles.
This user is a WikiChef.	This user is a WikiJanitor.	This user is a WikiKnight valiantly protecting the Five Pillars of Wikipedia.
5 This user is a WikiAdult.

Topical WikiProjects userboxes

This user is a participant in WikiProject Cue sports	This user is a member of WikiProject Snooker	This user is a participant in WikiProject New Mexico
This user is a member of the Internet culture WikiProject.	firefly This user is a member of the Firefly WikiProject.

WikiFauna userboxes

I am a chimera, frequently shapeshifting.

This editor is a WikiGnome.	This user is a WikiOgre.	This user is a WikiDragon: making massive, bold edits everywhere.
This user is a Creator Elf.	This user is a WikiFairy.

Critics who think I frequently make valuable contributions but have exhibited problematic behaviors would probably have to classify me as a cross between a WikiPlatypus and a WikiPuma.

Wikilosophy

On the non-"political" side, I am largely an exopedianist with little interest in the socializing aspects - I get that from other aspects of my life. I'm largely a WikiGnome but shapeshift into other forms of WP:WikiFauna at will, sometimes for long stretches. I have taken part in some quite extensive policy debates, spent a lot of time on visual improvement of articles, wallowed in sourcing troublesome articles, buried my nose in copyediting, become a template master, and obsessed over the perfection of certain articles, as well as gotten into pointless arguments, while also created barnstars. I'm really just not pigeonholeable.

Wikilosophy userboxes

This user thinks that registration should be required to edit articles.	This user is a member of Wikipedians against censorship.	meta This editor is a metapedian.
dar This editor is a darwikinist.	This user is a member of the Association of Structurist Wikipedians.	This user is a member of the Association of Mergist Wikipedians.
imm This editor is an immediatist.	exo This editor is an exopedian.	This user believes that common sense trumps all other arguments.
This user is not a Wikipedia administrator, but would like to be one someday.	Flexible This user deals with edits, deletion, and creation of pages individually instead of unilaterally and encourages others to do so.	Non nobis solum.
admin- This user feels that criteria for adminship are generally too low	AfD-3 This user has had  3 pages put up for deletion. Most of the time, they were deleted.	This user believes that process is important on Wikipedia and is opposed to its circumvention.
This user is bold, but not reckless, in updating pages.	This user tries to do the right thing. If they make a mistake, please let them know.	ZT This user supports a strict zero tolerance policy on vandalism.
AWW DMBJ AWGC AWAI FDSP BATD MTAD This user is a member of the Association of Wikipedians Who Dislike Making Broad Judgments About the Worthiness of a General Category of Article, and Who Are in Favor of the Deletion of Some Particularly Bad Articles, but That Doesn't Mean They Are Deletionists.

Note: SMcCandlish's comments on Wikipedia are a work in progress subject to the Thread-mode Disclaimer.

Licensing rights granted to Wikimedia Foundation I grant non-exclusive permission for the Wikimedia Foundation Inc. to relicense my text and media contributions, including any images, audio clips, or video clips, under any copyleft license that it chooses, provided it maintains the free and open spirit of the GFDL. This permission acknowledges that future licensing needs of the Wikimedia projects may need adapting in unforeseen fashions to facilitate other uses, formats, and locations. It is given for as long as this banner remains.

Where I am in Wikispace

• To see contributions in all Wikimedia projects, click here or here

• SMcCandlish at the MediaWiki Bugzilla server

Potential conflicts of interest

Just as a matter of full disclosure, there are certain articles I should not heavily edit (i.e., other than to revert vandalism, provide sources, or otherwise adjust in an entirely neutral manner), because of unintentional potential for conflict of interest or non-neutral point of view. Other editors may wish to examine carefully any edits I ever make to any of the following articles:

• Stanton McCandlish (me; while I would easily pass WP:GNG and WP:BIO, I have no article, have never had one, and don't want one - that would be a bit creepy to me, and friends with articles say they just cause trouble for them (personal attacks, misinformation, etc.)
• Protecting Yourself Online (I co-authored the book by this title, ISBN 9780062515124; it has no article and is surely not notable enough to have one)
• CryptoRights Foundation (I am their volunteer CCO/Communications Director, since 2003; it bugged me somethin' fierce that it did not have an article until recently, but it seemed grossly inappropriate to even start a "just the facts" stub on it)
• Wilcox–McCandlish law (something amusing that a colleague and I came up with in the '90s; someone else created an article about it here, before I even became a WP editor; it was subsequently deleted on notability grounds, and should probably stay that way)

Things I could conceivably have a conflict of interest on, due to past connections

• Integrity Incorporated (former employer, 2005–2006)
• Electronic Frontier Foundation [EFF] (held various job titles there, including Program Director, and was editor of their EFFector newsletter and the webmaster of eff.org, 1993–2002)
• Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign (this was largely my brainchild, as a part of my professional life at EFF; it was an EFF project not a personal one)
• University of New Mexico [UNM] (alma mater, 1991–1993 and 2007–2010; former employer, 1992–3)
• Double Rainbow (former employer, 1991)
• Wal-Mart (former employer, late 1980s)
• Cannon Air Force Base, United States Air Force (former employer, late 1980s; I was a civilian worker, not military personnel)

Things and stuff

Funniest things I've seen on Wikipedia

[emphasis added when salient]

• Hairy ball theorem

Perhaps the funniest real article name on Wikipedia. (It's a real math/physics theorem, and not intrinsically funny, though a bit amusing.)

• Unbelievably selective evidence

Someone concerned about overlinking in articles actually used the Professional wrestling article as alleged smoking-gun "proof" of rampant overlinking across Wikpedia, requiring (naturally) much more stringent anti-linking wording in WP:LINKING. Of course that article in particular would have overlinking, along with just about every other noob error, except when periodically cleaned up by experienced, neutral editors who don't believe in fairytales. The article is clearly indicative of nothing but the nature of that topic's fanbase (and thus its most frequent editorial pool).

• "Hotel Wikipedia"

A song parody by various Wikimedians (to the tune of The Eagles' "Hotel California"). I hate filk, with a passion, yet I somehow loved this.

• Possibly the worst ever of my own typos. (See edit summary used.)

I think I was channeling Ancient Finnish or something.

• "...Karl Marx, founder of modern Marxism..."

in Animal Farm, as of 13 January 2010 version (we all know that ancient Marxism was of course founded by Marxus Aurelius, right?)

• From the "unclear on the concept" department

Rather remarkable definition of "watch your language".

• "Presumably we're talking about Life on Mars (TV series) here? John Carter 20:56, 13 April 2007 (UTC)"

A comment posted at WP:COUNCIL/P, on a proposal for a "WikiProject Life on Mars"; if you don't get why this is hysterically funny, just move on - it's an old-school sci-fi geek thing. (Hint: "John Carter" + "Mars".)

• Very strange font activism vandalism of my sig at a talk page

Did you know?... That there are not just regular vandals but ones with really, really weird agendas lurking in Wikipedia?

• 11:07, 26 March 2007 83.253.36.136 (Talk) (→Performance of FAT 32 - moved spam down)

An edit summary from Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). Needless to say, the next editor's summary read "deleted spam".

• A diff that must be seen to be believed

Someone upset about grammar flames that were wasting people's time and being a distraction posts a distracting time-waste in the form of a longwinded and meticulously-researched grammar flame about it (plus a second shorter one!), all in support of the grammar flaming of the starter of the grammar flame; in the process, re-opening debate to yet more grammar flaming in the pointless sub-thread being complained about (dormant for over a day), and to which the poster was not even a party to begin with. I couldn't make this stuff up!

• 05:46, 21 February 2007 Gracenotes (Talk | contribs) (→Template:Barnstars - *stabs kittens*)

An edit summary in response to "no, don't delete the barnstars!" panic replies to a TfD on a useless template simply relating to barnstars. I awarded Gracenotes a Barnstar Point for that one.

• http://www.well.com/~mech/WP/FunnyWikipediaCaptcha.jpg

I'm not sure Wikipedia's account-creation CAPTCHA database should include every word... >;-)

Smartest things I've seen on Wikipedia

Just a few particularly pithy phrases. They aren't necessarily mindblowing or anything, just insightful and well-put.

• "If rules make you nervous and depressed, and not desirous of participating in the wiki, then ignore them entirely and go about your business."

— Koyaanis Qatsi (talk · contribs), at 04:00, 18 September 2001 (UTC); it is the original formulation of WP:Ignore all rules

• "Any pile of bullshit decomposes naturally."

— Wikipedia:Ignore all dramas (as of this version} on ignoring instead of responding to wikistupidity; later versions have it as the far less pithy "Even the largest pile of bullshit will decompose on its own." The original addition was "The most copiously deposited bullshit decomposes on its own." I reverted it to the concise version on 10 August 2011‎ and it seems to have stuck.

• "Removed older logo. One logo is sufficient. Logos are copyrighted and Wikipedia should not serve as a gallery for logos."

— Farine (talk · contribs) 05:59, 6 May 2008 (UTC) (edit summary at Data East)

• "Anyone who adds material to an article, but cannot be bothered to cite any sources, is being discourteous to the other editors who later have to try to find reliable sources."

— Dalbury (talk · contribs) 11:42, 24 January 2007 (UTC) (Wikipedia talk:Speedy deletion criterion for unsourced articles#Userfy is a good option, accessed January 31, 2007)

• "Of course, the point of style is to give coherence and consistency, deviations from which can detract from the publication's voice (in this case, an encyclopedic voice)."

— Ninly (talk · contribs) 06:38, 8 May 2009 (UTC) (Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style, accessed June 2, 2009), on the real purpose and value of the Wikipedia Manual of Style.

• "Show the door to trolls, vandals, and wiki-anarchists, who, if permitted, would waste your time and create a poisonous atmosphere here."

— WP co-founder Larry Sanger, on Wikipedia:Etiquette

• "...no need for bullet points - detail here is no more important than others"

— SilkTork (talk · contribs) 10:19, 27 June 2011 (UTC) (edit summary at Wikipedia:Article size); too many editors create bulletized lists from normal prose all over the place, as if Wikipedia were a giant PowerPoint presentation.

• "While the title should be recognized as a reference to the article topic by someone familiar with the topic, for the uninitiated, it is the purpose of the article lead, not the article title, to identify the topic of the article."

— Born2cycle (talk · contribs) 17:25, 26 January 2012 (UTC), Wikipedia talk:Article titles thread "Common names"

• "The reason Wikipedia has policy pages at all is to store up assertions on which we agree, and which generally convince people when we make them in talk, so we don't have to write them out again and again. This is why policy pages aren't "enforced", but quoted; if people aren't convinced by what policy pages say, they should usually say something else. The major exception to this stability is when some small group, either in good faith or in an effort to become the Secret Masters of Wikipedia, mistakes its own opinions for What Everybody Thinks. This happens, and the clique often writes its own opinions up as policy and guideline pages."

— JCScaliger (talk · contribs), sockpuppet of Pmanderson (talk · contribs), 03:57, 3 February 2012 (UTC), Wikipedia talk:Article titles thread "Request for edit, Poll". While Anderson made this point in a WP:POINTy way, sockpuppeting in a discussion he was trying to control (and arguing against me on the details of the issue) he's precisely right, and this was well articulated.

• "If a high-profile [Wikipedian] poll is conducted that brings in widespread participation from editors who had previously stayed away from [the] venue, and the holdouts who had been stonewalling and preventing progress merely slouch, stuff their hands in their pockets, and walk away, then that proves that they knew full well that their arguments were not sufficiently persuasive, or didn’t have sufficient numbers, or both. ... Trying to now torpedo the current consensus by stating that certain people somehow didn’t have an opportunity to participate is nothing but sour grapes ... On Wikipedia it’s called ‘wililawyering’ which is disruptive and mustn’t be rewarded."

— Greg L (talk · contribs), 00:49, 10 February 2012 (UTC) Wikipedia talk:Article titles thread "Why no action on implementing community consensus"

Allegedly clever things I've thought up here

• "If one grinds an axe long and hard enough, there is no axe any longer, just a useless old stick."

(A quasi-Taoist response to cranky complaints that relate to incidents so long ago no one should care any more; concise version: "Grind axe too long: no axe.")

• "Two words: tea pot. ~~~~"

(A response to angry accusations of wrong-doing that self-evidently apply at least equally and usually much more accurately to the ranter. More recently, I've used it as a mantra for myself, when I feel wikistressed.)

Bonus: Nifty Wikipedia tools

Kind of hard to find unless you already know about them:

Editing tools

	This user cites sources using refToolbar

• Wikipedia:RefToolbar 2.0
• Magnus's Reference Generator — auto-format several kinds of source citations

User stats

• Soxred93's thorough edit counter
• Mathbot's Tool — how often a user uses "Edit summary"

Page/Category stats

• Aka's Page History Stats Tool — edit-related stats on any article or other page
• TDS's Article Contribution Counter — get stats (with some accuracy lag, usually a few weeks) on who the top editors of an article are
• Interiot's StubSense - what stubs are being used in a category
• Interiot's Related Changes Watchlist — makes "Special:Recentchangeslinked" pages behave like watchlists

External utilities

• CheNuevara's Wikipedia NavBar — for Mozilla Firefox

Thanks for visiting!

— SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ  Contribs.

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Last updated: 2012-02-11

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