User:RadicalBender: Difference between revisions
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"And you men and half of Terminus as well are just as bad. We sit here, considering the Encyclopedia the all-in-all. We consider the greatest end of science is the classification of past data. It is important, but is there no further work to be done? We're receding and forgetting, don't you see?"<br /><br />'''[[Salvor Hardin]]'''<br /><small>from ''[[Foundation (novel)|Foundation]]'' ("The Encyclopedists", Part 5) by [[Isaac Asimov]]</small> |
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I'm taking a little Wikibreak: too much political contention going on related to the [[Hurricane Katrina]] articles. (I mean, seriously people, most of the finger-pointing is wrong and misguided and ''ALL'' of it is unnecessary right now.) So, I'm going to stop for this long weekend ([[Labor Day]] in the U.S.) and try to find out if I can help volunteer at the [[Reunion Arena|local shelter for Katrina evacuees]] here in Dallas. If you can help with the victims in any way, I would encourage you to do so as well. |
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<span style="font-family:Optima,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Geneva,Sans-serif;font-size:16px;font-weight:bold;"> |
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[[User:RadicalBender/To-do|My To-Do List]]<br /> |
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[[User:RadicalBender/Articles|My List of Articles]]<br /> |
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[[User:RadicalBender/Sandbox|My Sandbox]]<br /> |
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[[User talk:RadicalBender|My Talk Page]]<br /> |
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[[User:RadicalBender/Unit 22|Unit 22]], My "[[Wikipedia:Bots|Bot]]"<br /> |
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<div style="font-family:Optima,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Geneva,Sans-serif;font-size:12px;"> |
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'''Wikipedian Since''': [[September 24]], [[2003]]<br /> |
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'''[[Wikipedia:Administrators|Administrator]] Since''': [[March 3]], [[2004]]<br /> |
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'''Today is''': [[{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}}]], [[{{CURRENTYEAR}}]]<br /> |
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{| cellspacing="0" style="width:238px;background:#c5fcdc;" |
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| style="width:45px;height:45px;background:#6ef7a7;text-align:center;font-size:14pt;" | '''USen''' |
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| style="font-size:8pt;padding:4pt;line-height:1.25em;" | This user is just your typical dumb, [[Monoglottism|monolingual]] [[United States|American]]. |
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Wikipedia is a lot like the United Nations. Everyone is given equal representation, including the morons, the trolls and the blatantly wrong. It's full of long-winded bureaucracy and processes that amount to nothing because the enforcement is toothless. Those who care about playing by the rules are slowly worn down by those who can easily circumvent them. |
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{| cellspacing="0" style="width:238px;background:#E8E8E8;" |
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| style="width:45px;height:45px;background:#123456;color:#FFF;text-align:center;font-family:Optima,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Geneva,Sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:bold;" | Article<br />Edits |
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| style="font-size:30px;padding:4px;line-height:1.25em;font-family:Optima,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Geneva,Sans-serif;font-weight:bold;" | 16,500+ |
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| style="width:45px;height:45px;background:#123456;color:#FFF;text-align:center;font-family:Optima,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Geneva,Sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:bold;border-top:solid #E8E8E8 1px;" | Total<br />Edits<small><sup>1</sup></small> |
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| style="font-size:30px;padding:4px;line-height:1.25em;font-family:Optima,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Geneva,Sans-serif;font-weight:bold;border-top:solid #123456 1px;" | 20,000+ |
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| style="width:45px;height:45px;background:#123456;color:#FFF;text-align:center;font-family:Optima,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Geneva,Sans-serif;font-size:14px;font-weight:bold;border-top:solid #E8E8E8 1px;" | Pages<br />Watched |
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| style="font-size:30px;padding:4px;line-height:1.25em;font-family:Optima,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Geneva,Sans-serif;font-weight:bold;border-top:solid #123456 1px;" | 1,300+ |
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That's the worst problem. There are plenty of others. |
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| valign="top" | [[Image:Bender.png|thumb|center|100px|Bite my shiny metal Manual of Style.]]<br>[[Image:Us flag large.png|50px|USA]] [[Image:Israel_flag_large.png|39px|Israel]] || valign="top" | [[Image:Achtung.png|thumb|none|100px|<small>I am one of English Wikipedia's [[Wikipedia:Administrators|administrators]]. If you think that my behavior is problematic or incompatible with this statute, leave a comment at [[Wikipedia talk:Administrators]].</small>]] |
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Like how 99% of the edits to Wikipedia are making articles worse, not better. People just have to have their grubby fingerprints all over articles, whether or not it actually makes sense to have templates featuring the history and demographics of New York City on the ''[[Law & Order: Special Victims Unit]]'' article. If people would stop and think seriously about whether or not they're actually improving articles or just padding their edit count, they would be appalled at how useless most of their edits actually are. Or perhaps not. And that's the problem. |
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[[Image:Wikipedia-ministry-of-truth.jpg|center|225px|Fight the Vandals!]] |
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So, I quit. |
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<div style="font-family:Optima,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Geneva,Sans-serif;font-size:25px;font-weight:bold;color:#123456;width:66%;border-bottom:2px solid #123456">RadicalBender</div> |
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<div style="font-family:Optima,'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Geneva,Sans-serif;font-size:12px;">'''Name:''' Bender; '''Age:''' 25; '''Location:''' [[Dallas, Texas|Dallas]], [[Texas]], [[United States|USA]]; '''Occupation:''' Web designer<br> |
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[http://www.radicalbender.com/ Personal Site] | [http://www.radicalbender.com/blog2/ Personal blog] | [http://www.tosonbt.com/ Work Site]<br> |
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'''Contact me through [[User talk:RadicalBender|my talk page]] or send an e-mail or [[Jabber]] to: My User Name -at- Gmail -dot- com'''<br><br> |
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Frankly, it's just not worth my time anymore. The arguing, the fighting, the nonstop reverting, the morons, the trolls, the vandals, the out-and-out begging of someone to do something, ''anything'', about the problems other than create another process for it. In the end, it just became another job. If I were being paid $50,000/year to put up with crap, I might fight through it. And in the end, Wikipedia contributors earn nothing but...what? Derision? User page vandalism? A farking barnstar? |
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[[Wikipedia:WikiGnome|I do mostly minor edits.]] I'm also something of an [[Italic type|italicizing]] [[Nazism|Nazi]]. (Remember, kids: television shows, movies, plays, books, album titles (but not songs or bands), video games, newspapers, magazines, ship names (but not [[Ship prefix|prefixes]] like "USS") are '''ALL''' italicized - not underlined or quoted.) Basically, I do this to avoid stress. If you have the bravery, patience, mental fortitude, etc. to deal with controversial articles, more power to you, but that's not me. I'd much rather toil in obscurity than be on the front lines of controversy and burn out. |
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Bleh. It's not worth it anymore. If someone were to actually address the underlying problems, maybe the [[Wikipedia:Missing Wikipedians|Missing Wikipedians list]] wouldn't be so long. But no one cares, so I'm out. |
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That said, let's go ahead and get the controversial opinions out of the way: |
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* [[Larry Sanger]] is [http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/12/30/142458/25 absolutely right] - we '''MUST''' stop accomodating and enabling trolls through process. Slash and burn might turn away a few contributors, but none of the ones we should want. '''ANYTHING is better than CONTINUING to lose some of [[User:Dori|our]] [[User:Hephaestos|best]] [[User:RickK|contributors]].<br><br>WE <span style="font-size:16px;text-decoration:underline;">''CANNOT''</span> CONTINUE TO OPERATE LIKE THIS UNDER <span style="font-size:16px;text-decoration:underline;">''ANY''</span> CIRCUMSTANCES.'''<br><br> |
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* [[Wikipedia:NPOV|NPOV]] is probably a waste of time and it definitely feeds the trolls. |
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* The majority of edits on large topics are decreasing the quality of those articles. This is because, for most people, the quality of the article as a whole is taking a back seat to the desire everyone seemingly has to have their imprint on articles. This is turning many articles into long lists of disparate trivia instead of naturally-flowing, high-quality encyclopedia articles. Efforts to stem this and make the encyclopedia more encyclopedic are criticized as counter to the spirit of "openness." |
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* [[Wikipedia:Barnstars on Wikipedia|Barnstars]] are stupid. |
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* [[Wikipedia:Vandalism|Vandals]] should be shot on sight and their heads should be placed on pikes as a warning to others. |
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* Most tables and infoboxes are created by people who have no business doing so. |
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* [[Wikipedia:Category|Categories]] are doing a lousy job of clustering information together. Nesting is either too deep and scatters articles out too far or is too shallow and clumps everything together too closely. Lists work markedly better in most cases. Automation for clustered articles is a good idea, but poorly implemented. |
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[http://www.radicalbender.com/ If you still want to keep up with me...] |
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In addition, I'm always working to make the way information on Wikipedia is presented better and more consistently so that more people will look to Wikipedia as a "first source" of information (as opposed to [[Amazon.com|Amazon]], [[Internet Movie Database|IMDb]], [[All Media Guide|AMG]] or even [[Google (search engine)|Google]]). I do a lot of work with usability and information presentation, so this is a natural extension of that. |
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[[Special:Blockip|Block User]] | |
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[[Wikipedia:Boilerplate request for permission|Boilerplate request for permission]] | |
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[[Wikipedia:Image copyright tags|Image copyright tags]] | |
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[[Special:Ipblocklist|IP Block List]] | |
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[[User:RadicalBender/Kana cheat sheet|Kana cheat sheet]] | |
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[[Special:Log|Logs]] | |
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[[Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits|List of Wikipedians by number of edits]] | |
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[[Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies)|MoS (biographies)]] | |
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[[Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles)|MoS (Japan-related)]] | |
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[[Wikipedia:Naming conventions (definite and indefinite articles at beginning of name)|Naming conventions (articles)]] | |
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[[Special:Newpages|New pages]] | |
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[[Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types|Stub templates]] | |
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[[Wikipedia:Wikipedia as a press source|Wikipedia as a press source]] | |
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---- |
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<small><sup>1</sup></small> This is just the number from [http://kohl.wikimedia.org/~kate/cgi-bin/count_edits?user=RadicalBender&dbname=enwiki Kate's editcount tool]. This doesn't include the thousands of edits like page deletions (for speedy deletion or copyvios), VFD/copyvio notifications on pages that are usually deleted and lots of interwiki links (because I don't bother to register at the other Wikipedia languages). |
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Latest revision as of 21:02, 9 May 2007
"And you men and half of Terminus as well are just as bad. We sit here, considering the Encyclopedia the all-in-all. We consider the greatest end of science is the classification of past data. It is important, but is there no further work to be done? We're receding and forgetting, don't you see?"
Salvor Hardin
from Foundation ("The Encyclopedists", Part 5) by Isaac Asimov
Wikipedia is a lot like the United Nations. Everyone is given equal representation, including the morons, the trolls and the blatantly wrong. It's full of long-winded bureaucracy and processes that amount to nothing because the enforcement is toothless. Those who care about playing by the rules are slowly worn down by those who can easily circumvent them.
That's the worst problem. There are plenty of others.
Like how 99% of the edits to Wikipedia are making articles worse, not better. People just have to have their grubby fingerprints all over articles, whether or not it actually makes sense to have templates featuring the history and demographics of New York City on the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit article. If people would stop and think seriously about whether or not they're actually improving articles or just padding their edit count, they would be appalled at how useless most of their edits actually are. Or perhaps not. And that's the problem.
So, I quit.
Frankly, it's just not worth my time anymore. The arguing, the fighting, the nonstop reverting, the morons, the trolls, the vandals, the out-and-out begging of someone to do something, anything, about the problems other than create another process for it. In the end, it just became another job. If I were being paid $50,000/year to put up with crap, I might fight through it. And in the end, Wikipedia contributors earn nothing but...what? Derision? User page vandalism? A farking barnstar?
Bleh. It's not worth it anymore. If someone were to actually address the underlying problems, maybe the Missing Wikipedians list wouldn't be so long. But no one cares, so I'm out.