User:Mr. IP

Hi. After nearly 6 years at Wikipedia under various accounts and names, with many thousands of edits, I have found that I prefer to edit under my IP address (currently: 65.190.89.154). However, there are many things which an IP-only user can't do, and there are many people who will not listen to anything an IP-only user says. I will now be using this account to deal with all such issues, and to agitate for the sake of IP-only users throughout the encyclopedia.

Lately, I stick to small-time stuff, including a few consistent interests, such as identifying and sourcing the setting of films. I also look for gaps in the concept-coverage of the encyclopedia, such as the long absence of any kind of article on human footspeed. You've got sprinting (about the sport), you've got running (ditto, plus some information on jogging and the like), you've got speed (about the concept in physics), but no article on the importance, variability, and basis of human footspeed. That's the sort of conceptual gap I'm talking about.

I've been banned several times for being a pain, which is fair, but I do always edit in good faith, and I have contributed a decent amount over the years. The general assumption is that an IP-only user is a vandal, criminal, serial killer, or freelance sociopath, but, really, most of us just like to edit.

The Wales claim to the effect that 99.99999999% of all work on Wikipedia is done by .0000000001% of all users (or whatever line he spouts) - who should therefore, by implication, be treated by rights as a special class of unquestionable gods and vaunted scholars - has been shown by deeper research to be nonsense: a small number of users amass huge numbers of edits through caretaker business and busybodyism, but the bulk of actual new content is introduced by anonymous users. This article discusses the subject. IP-only users should be treated with more respect and less mistrust, but of course the trend runs in the opposite direction.