User:Jim856796

I am Jim856796, and I am a member of several different discussion forums and websites, including [1], [2], and [3]. (A complete list may be coming soon.) I follow the progress on several future sports events, including the 2014, 2016, and 2018 Olympics.

I am the kind of user who lives the WikiLife, a lifestyle I also follow in real life.

Why did I choose the number "856796" for my username?

The number "856796" was the official population figure of St. Louis in the 1950 United States census. Starting with my later grade-school years, I was almost heavily fascinated with the decline of American Rust Belt cities. I guess I chose that number at random.

What I think about the 2016 Summer Olympics main stadium situation

The Opening and Closing Ceremonies for the 2016 Summer Olympics, to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is proposed to be held in Maracana Stadium, but I don't think the stadium (or any football-only stadium, regardless of shape or capacity) should even be hosting Olympic Ceremonies. The ceremonies have always taken place in the athletics stadium (except in 1900, when there were no official opening/closing ceremonies). So I think the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2016 Games need to be held at the Estadio Olimpico Joao Havelange instead of the Maracana, after all, it is the real Olympic Stadium.

Pages I like to read on Wikipedia

I like reading the following pages on Wikipedia:

Edit Warring

My Views on certain issues of Wikipedia

Edit Warring

Edit Warring (or Edit Warfare as I and some other users like to call it) is the confrontational, combative, non-productive process of editing and reverting to try to win, manipulate, and/or stall a discussion, or coerce a given stance on a page without regard to collaborative approaches. They repeatedly override each other's contributions, rather than resolve the dispute by discussion. An edit war its like a fistfight, or another kind of fight which either does or does not involve weapons. An edit war can turn any article into a violent battleground. Policy generally forbids edit wars, and editors may be blocked if they engage in edit warfare, whether or not they have breached the Three-Revert Rule.

Ownership of Articles

No user has the right to own any particular article on this site. If a user owns a particular article, then they might do everything they can to prevent other users from editing the page and the user that owns the page has to make all the contributions himself. Building the perfect article is a team effort, and everyone has the right to edit any article that they want to.

Vandalism

Vandalism is illegal in Wikipedia, and it will not be tolerated. If a user sees vandalism on a page, it should immediately be reverted on-sight. I, like most good WP editors, never commit vandalism on this site.

Sockpuppetry

Sockpuppetry is the use of multiple accounts to deceive other editors, disrupt discussions, distort consensus, avoid sanctions, or otherwise violate community standards. It is like when a person clones himself to commit illegal activities to avoid scrutiny. Meatpuppetry is like hypnotising and controlling another person to commit illegal activity. Sockpuppetry is also illegal.

The need to insert serial commas when necessary

The Manual of Style states that, "A serial comma (also known as an Oxford comma or a Harvard comma) is a comma used immediately before a conjunction in a list of three or more items.". The phrase "ham, chips, and eggs" includes a serial comma, while the variant "ham, chips and eggs" does not include a serial comma. I know, WP's MOS says editors can use either convention, but I prefer to always use the convention without the comma, and only use the convention with the comma if one of the items in the list contains the word "and". If I am writing a transcript for a film or television show's episode, the insertion of the serial comma would depend on the film/TV show character's prosody of his line.

Sometimes, if any of the rules in the manual of style is unintentionally or intentionally violated, the violation is usually corrected, but if the correction is reverted, a edit conflict or edit war can be started. It can sometimes be a pet peeve of mine unless a sentence like this (Around that time the city's metro system was under major expansion) is also missing a comma.

Hypocorisms in the lead sections of articles

It is only okay to omit a well-known hypocorism or diminuitive (short form of a longer name) from the lead section of an article if the hypocorism is a substring (short sequence of letters contained within a longer word) of the full birth name or given name, like "Phil" for "Phillip", "Chris" for "Christopher", or "Kim" for "Kimberly". If it's not a substring of the birth name or given name, it should not be omitted for the article's lead section, like "Dave" for "David", "Cindy" for "Cynthia", or "Patsy" for "Patricia". I think the non-substring hypocorisms are more vulnerable to edit wars, so I would just stay away from the articles whose subjects are known by such hypocorisms/diminuitives.

Other style guide mistakes

Quotation marks and punctuation: If the quotation is not a complete sentence, the punctuation mark (comma, period, or otherwise) should always be after the last quotation mark, not before it, and I have compared this situation to an unnecessary body piercing. If the quotation is a full sentence, punctuation stays before the last quotation mark.

The letter "S" excluded after the apostrophe in singular terms ending with "S": The exclusion of the letter "s" after the apostrophe in words ending with the letter "s", "x", or "z" is usually limited to plurals. If the "s" is excluded after the appostrophe in singular terms, then the singular term will look like a plural. If referring to an organization, a city, or a team whose name ends in "s", the extra "s" after the apostrophe is usually unneeded. If referring to one person or thing ending in "s", the "s" after the apostrophe will be added regardless of how it is pronounced.

Wrong-looking/sounding parentheticals: Some style manuals recommend that in the "month, day, year" format, the year be treated as a parenthetical, requiring a second comma after it. But the second comma looks cluttered, unnecessary, and will be disruptive to prosody (in linguistics), and because of this, I will refuse to make the year parenthetical, but if I were to make the year parenthetical, the year would be preceded by the word "in", "of", or "at".

Commas are used to separate parts of geographical references, such as city and state, or city and country; In geographical names, the same stylebooks recommend that in a geographical name the second be treated as a parenthetical, with a second comma after it: There are a few ways to circumvent this, however:

Instead of, "The plane landed in Kampala, Uganda, that evening.", the sentence can be rendered without the unnecessary and disruptive-looking second comma: "The plane landed in Kampala, Uganda that evening." I would precede the word being treated as a "parenthetical" by the words "in", "at", or "of"; for example: "The plane landed in Kampala, in Uganda, that evening."

Also, instead of "Greater Austin, Texas, area", it would be either arranged as "Greater Austin, Texas area"; "Greater Austin area, in Texas"; or "Greater Austin area in Texas".

These are one of the very reasons why I refuse to use certain style guides such as The Associated Press Stylebook.

Article Translation

Some articles on the English Wikipedia have more coverage and content on its foreign-language counterpart than on the English version. In these situations, I can put up a notice saying, "This article may need expansion with text translated from (language X) Wikipedia." on the top of the article. If I need somebody to have the said article translated, I can go to the List of Translators Available and consult an editor on the said list. I can accept either "Fluent" or "Native" foreign-language speakers for the article translation jobs.

Global accounts

Global accounts force you to automatically launch accounts on foreign language Wikipedias even though you don't want to because you simply don't have the time to contribute to those. For that reason, I wish EVERY ONE of those foreign-language profiles of mine can just be deleted without a trace right now. Are global accounts mandatory for Wikipedia users now?

Auto-archiving talk-page discissions before a solution is found

Auto-archiving a talk-page discussion that goes for literally months without a reply or a path towards a solution is bad because there'll be a notice saying "Do not edit the contents of this page". I think someone who started such a discussion about a particular problem with an article, template, etc. that is auto-archived before a solution to that problem is ever found/agreed to will remove that discussion from the archives and place it on the current talk page in hopes of working towards a solution anyway.