User:JohnnyB256

The seal of the great and glorious Empire State

This editor is a Grognard and is entitled to display this Wikipedia Little Red Book.

Fuck you bitch ass hoe i fucked your mom hard too

Special interest in business topics, stock market, politics, and the great and glorious Empire State.

This user has rollback rights on the English Wikipedia. (verify)

This user uses Huggle to combat vandalism.

This user has beaten ClueBot NG to reverting vandalism.

		The Anti-Vandalism Barnstar
		For beating me to reverts and beating me again. And again. And... you get the point.fetchcomms 21:15, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

		The Barnstar of Diligence
		Nice job with the Sam Yasgur article ShoesssS Talk 23:47, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

A fact from the article Taking Woodstock (book), which this user created or significantly contributed to, has been featured in the Did you know... section on the Main Page.

A thought to ponder

I was corresponding with the publicist for an author to see if I could get a publicity photo that would meet Wiki standards, to illustrate an article on his client. He asked me if I could prove that I was authorized to make such a request, and I pointed out that pretty much any editor could do so, and cited the "guide to requesting copyright permission" that discusses what rights to ask for and so on. I told him that I understood his reluctance to provide a form letter to a perfect stranger.

He responded with a comment that I thought was quite sage:

the growing democratization of information on this kind of massive scale is alternately thrilling and terrifying (although I tend more towards terror, especially since cyberfascistic totalitarian tendencies in the digital culture makes me feel that we're always just a stone's throw away from total anarchy across the worldwide stage - but I digress).

Actually I think he makes a point to ponder.

P.S., the photo is not pending. Wikipedia's arcane photo rules were just too much.

Another thought to ponder: Wikipedia's photo rules make no sense

I guess there's no reason not to mention his name. The person I contacted in the section above was a publicist for Elliot Tiber, author of the Woodstock memoir that recently became an Ang Lee movie. The publicist was willing to get me a photo from a professional photographer who was willing to give Wikipedia permission to use it. But nooooooooo! That doesn't satisfy Wikipedia. To allow a photo in Wikipedia, it has to have a "Creative Commons" license allowing anyone to use it. But what if I am a professional photographer who doesn't want any Tom, Dick and Harry to use his or her photos?

This makes no sense.

Any other website in the world would be only too happy to have permission to use a photo. At Wikipedia, because of an ideological commitment to "free for all" photos, it's not possible. Wikipedia suffers, and its pages lack good photos, because of this stupid policy.

The Tiber article eventually got a photo, taken at some event somewhere, and it just isn't nearly as good as the one Wikipedia was offered.

Victory

The Battle of Pattison has been won. I'm happy this article was not deleted, and I'm glad to have played a role in keeping it. The editors who wanted it deleted were well intentioned, and applied policy in good faith. But I think that we need to keep intangibles in mind when we decide to keep or exclude articles. We need to think about how Wikipedia looks to the outside world. We have so much content that is teen- and geek-oriented, with thorough coverage of minor aspects of culture that nobody will remember in five years. We need to remember the things and people of lasting significance, and bend over backwards to include them.

Projects affected, adversely and otherwise, by my presence

Template:Hudson valley userbox

This user is a member of WikiProject New York State.

This user is a member of WikiProject Food and drink.