User:Prototime

About me

Biography enThis user is a native speaker of the English language. This user is a citizen of the United States of America. This user is a lawyer. JDThis user has a Juris Doctor degree. This user has a Psychology degree. This user has a minor in Sociology. This user has a minor in Political Science.

Wikipedia Experience ?This user joined Wikipedia at some point in the past. 6,000+This user has made more than 6,000 contributions to Wikipedia. This editor won the Million Award for bringing Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to Good Article status. This user is a participant in WikiProject Law. This user is a participant in WikiProject U.S. Supreme Court cases. This user is a member of WikiProject Freedom of speech. talk | recent changes | stubs This user is a member of WikiProject Countering systemic bias.

Wikipedia Views This user believes that a user's edit count does not necessarily reflect on the value of their contributions to Wikipedia. This user maintains a strict policy advising against all personal attacks. This user tries to do the right thing. If they make a mistake, please let them know. This user strives to maintain a policy of neutrality on controversial issues. Everyone has points of view with inherent cultural biases - recognition is the first step to achieving NPOV. Mind the GapThis editor wants to close Wikipedia's gender gap. person, humanityThis editor writes carefully to avoid gender neutrality issues completely. A, B, and A and BThis user uses the serial comma unless its inclusion is confusing. ,This user fixes comma-splices; they are annoying. This user welcomes new users with Twinkle!

Interests This user is interested in politics. This user is interested in law. This user is a committed advocate of democracy. This user is interested in environmentalism. This user enjoys philosophy. This user is interested in history. This user is interested in science. This user is interested in astronomy. This user enjoys the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. This user is interested in The Sith Order. If only you knew the power of the Dark Side. QThis user is an omnipotent member of the Q Continuum. Avatar This user watches Avatar: The Last Airbender religiously. This user has seen all of Carl Sagan's Cosmos. This user plays games on the Wii console.

I'm just a simple Wikipedian trying to make my way in the universe.

Current projects

See also: User:Prototime/Drafts and User:Prototime/Userboxes

• Bring Voting Rights Act of 1965 up to Good Article status (then perhaps Featured Article status)
• Bring Shelby County v. Holder up to Good Article status (then perhaps to Featured Article status)
• Create a navigation template for "Voting rights in the United States"  Done
• Add information on procedural due process to Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
• Create an article on Procedural due process (currently only a redirect to a small section of Due Process Clause)
• Create an article on Vote dilution

Wikipedia history

See also: Special:Contributions/Prototime

I started editing Wikipedia not long after I stumbled across it several years ago. During my early days of editing, I focused mostly on articles related to Avatar: The Last Airbender and Florida politics. After getting burned out, I substantially decreased by editing for a while and became a bit of a WikiGnome. During that time, I did not have a main topical focus on Wikipedia, but I involved myself in WikiProjects and kept tabs on several articles that interested me. Nowadays, my predominant focus in on improving articles related to voting rights in the United States, but I continue to have eclectic editing interests.

Major contributions

• Voting Rights Act of 1965
• Freedom of speech in the United States
• Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
• Shelby County v. Holder
• Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
• Psychology
• An Inconvenient Truth
• Business
• Triangular theory of love
• Shadow the Hedgehog (video game)
• Freethought
• University of Central Florida
• Deliberative assembly
• Deliberative democracy
• Democracy
• Template:Democracy
• Template:Forms of government
• Template:USConlaw
• Greenhouse and icehouse Earth
• The Legend of Korra
• Numerous Avatar: The Last Airbender articles
• Various Florida government and Florida education articles

Notable pages created

• Template:Voting rights in the United States
• List of jurisdictions subject to the special provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965
• Advisory Council of Faculty Senates
• Wii Browser
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Avatar: The Last Airbender
• The Library (Avatar: The Last Airbender episode)
• The Desert
• Secret of the Fire Nation, Part 1
• Secret of the Fire Nation, Part 2
• Florida Department of Community Affairs

Awards

		The Civility Barnstar
		For your consistently polite and constructive conduct Sb101 (talk|contribs) 20:03, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

		The Million Award
		For your contributions to bring Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (estimated annual readership: 2,160,000) to Good Article status, I hereby present you the Million Award. Congratulations on this rare accomplishment, and thanks for all you do for Wikipedia's readers. -- Khazar2 (talk) 01:51, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Views about Wikipedia

I may get around to turning these into essays sometime. Until then, if you want to discuss them, post on my talk page.

• In the News criteria: The way in which items make it into Wikipedia's In the News section on the Main Page is severely inconsistent, even absurdly inconsistent. Wikipedia will post news about a United States Supreme Court decision invalidating a federal law that prohibited same-sex couples from receiving federal marriage benefits, but it will not post news about the United Kingdom's Parliament and Queen fully legalizing same-sex marriage a few weeks later, and yet it will post news about the United Kingdom's Duchess of Cambridge birthing a son. How such a facially absurd inconsistency can exist is, I suspect, because there are only two basic ITN criteria: "the quality of the updated content and the significance of the developments described in the updated content". This vague and limited criteria basically allows the small, dominant group of editors who pay attention to the Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates page to pick stories based almost entirely on how they subjectively feel about each particular story as it comes up. This degree of subjectivity easily produces inconsistency because decisions are based almost entirely on a small group of editors' interests, experiences, knowledge, and prejudices. (Sometimes, this group of editors' feelings applied over the long term to a select type of news story will be used to create their own unwritten customs—but the customs still originate from the editors' subjective feelings, not necessarily anything rational, and certainly nothing apparently obvious to outsiders.) To prevent this subjectivity from invading the In the News, editors should develop objective criteria upon which to guide decisions about what is worthy of inclusion ITN—and something more substantive than the unexplained notions behind the automatic-inclusions-list at WP:ITNR. Ideally, different categories of news topics should have their own criteria; for example, criteria about when a celebrity story is sufficiently noteworthy, criteria about when a court case is sufficiently noteworthy, criteria about when a sporting event is sufficiently noteworthy, etc. Likewise, criteria should be established for when something is not sufficiently newsworthy. Obviously, the categorization of news topics would take some effort and require community consensus, and then developing the criteria would be quite a task as well, but the relevant WikiProjects could (and should) be consulted lated to their Project. Such criteria needn't be so demanding or precise that their application becomes simply a mechanical exercise, but by replacing the current system in which ITN inclusion is determined by the personal whims and fanee the community toward consensus for ITN inclusion in a fair manner.
• Social aspects: Wikipedia needs more social aspects, both related to the content of Wikipedia articles (substantive) and off-topic. More on this view coming soon...
• Inclusivity: Wikipedia needs to take more proactive action to close the gender gap among its editors and be an inclusive community. More on this view coming soon...

Things to know

Sources: Typically, the highest quality of source is:

• Reliable
• Secondary
• Third party
• Independent
  • For information on the differences between "secondary", "third party", and "independent", see Wikipedia:Party and person.
• Neutral, if cited to support a statement of fact. Biased sources may support statements of opinion so long as in-text attribution is given. Material from biased sources should always be treated as statements of opinion (unless corroborated by neutral sources). For more info on neutrality and bias, see:
  • Bias in sources (NPOV policy)
  • Biased or opinionated sources (IRS guideline)
  • Statements of opinion (IRS guideline)
  • Attributing and specifying biased statements (NPOV policy)
• If you need help finding a source, check out WP:WikiProject Resource Exchange.

Weight and notability:

• Notability is a threshold issue for a topic to be worthy of an article on Wikipedia. The concept of notability does not refer to the content of an article, only to whether the article should exist.
• Due and undue weight concern how much attention an article gives to a certain component of, or perspective on, the article's topic. For instance, consensus viewpoints should typically receive the vast majority of attention, while fringe viewpoints should receive little or not attention.
  • Undue weight can include:
    • Giving too much attention to a minority view, such as presenting a false balance between a minority view and majority view
    • Giving too much attention to recent events (see WP:RECENTISM
    • Giving too much attention to certain people, especially people who are not experts or who have a very small link to the topic
    • Giving too much attention to how the topic pertains to a certain geographic area, culture, sex, age, or other particular group
    • Giving too much attention

Citing:

• Per WP:INTEXT, you must provide an in-text attribution (in addition to the usual inline citation) if you:
  • Quote someone - see MOS:QUOTE#Attribution
  • Closely paraphrase something - see WP:CLOSEPARAPHRASE
  • Add statements of opinion - see WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV. Material from a biased reliable source, such as an opinion piece in a newspaper, is by definition more likely to constitute a statement of opinion, and thus it is more likely to require an in-text attribution - see WP:NPOV#Bias in sources, WP:RSOPINION, and WP:BIASED.

Original synthesis: WP:SYNTH

Article review processes:

• Articles for creation
• Copy edit request
• Peer review
• Good Article review
• A-Class assessment
• Featured Article review
• Articles for deletion

Dispute resolution:

• Third opinion - For disagreements between 2, and only 2 editors.

Problems: Noticeboards

Tools of debate

• Fallacies and cognitive biases: Learn them, avoid them, and point them out viciously in other people's arguments.
• Cherry picking: Always put forth and refute opposing views.
• Occam's razor: When various possible solutions have equal likelihood of being true, choose the simpler one to remove what is superfluous. This really helps to combat pseudoscience, the New Age, etc.
• Scientific method: The best way we know to discover the truths of reality, and the best standard against which to hold claims of new knowledge.

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.