Misplaced Pages

Misplaced Pages and Wikimedia UK press enquiries: Email me directly (wp at davidgerard dot co dot uk). You may care to ask Danny Wool at the Foundation first (he is at +1-727-231-0101), in case I can't do it and someone else on his list in the UK can.

Contacting me otherwise: Put it on the article talk page in the first instance, my talk page in the second. If you email me stuff that would normally go on a talk page, I'll likely ignore it. I've also erroneously deleted such mail as spam before. I'm DavidGerard on irc.freenode.net; I'm usually AFK but I do check my messages.

If you're inadvertently affected by a block I've made, do of course email. (Direct address: wp at davidgerard dot co dot uk.) Collateral damage is bad.

In Soviet Misplaced Pages, job finds YOU! These are as well as writing and editing articles. If you are accused of being in the Cabal, count how many Misplaced Pages jobs you have. If it's ten or more, you are.

• Administrator (mostly vandal and troll fighting; see WP:ANI)
• Ex-arbitrator (retired, thank goodness; still on list to advise)
• arbcom-l list admin (almost no work)
• wikien-l list admin (this is actually work)
• #wikipedia channel op (fun fun fun)
• #wikimedia-au channel op (pretty quiet as yet)
  • James F. says he's going to land me with others. Oh boy.
• CheckUser on en:
• checkuser-l list admin (almost no work)
• Communications committee (Press)
• UK-based press contact for the Wikimedia Foundation ("You're on Irish radio in 40 minutes" — Danny)
• Director for Wikimedia UK (spork!!)
• Media officer for Wikimedia UK
• Press contact for Wikimedia UK
• An OTRS login, just landed on me by Mindspillage. Uh?
• WikiProject Scientology participant (wrote lots of the project page)
• Calming ruffled feathers as needed
• Exacerbating ruffled feathers as needed
• At least three five Misplaced Pages cabals, probably more if I thought about it

"On Misplaced Pages, the reward for a job well done is another three jobs" — me. This is because when a new task comes up, people tend to look for someone that they know already has competence and a clue. This is probably a feature rather than a bug. I think. Whine about something long enough and you'll probably get the precise job you didn't want fixing it. "It may not be what your job or wife need, but you should have thought of that before you demonstrated sanity" — Snowspinner

Sockpuppetry and CheckUser: I have the 'l33t power of CheckUser, a sysadmin-level facility to match IPs to usernames on the English Misplaced Pages, so that the Arbitration Committee doesn't have to bug the devs. Ask on WP:RFCU.

I can only check en:. For a full list of checkers, see m:Stewards. If your Misplaced Pages has a problem, you need to find someone who knows lots about interpreting IPs and net abuse who your wiki trusts to check this stuff out, then ask the stewards to give you permission on this page. If you have Checkuser, you should join the mailing list. I'm very happy to help make sense of IP evidence if you can't work out what's up with something or whether an excuse seems plausible.

I also have a sock puppet of my very own: User:Querulous, my favourite example user.

Text recovery: If you need access to a Misplaced Pages article that has been deleted, ask me. If it's not a copyright violation, libel or similar, I will make the text available to you. Using the text to recreate the deleted content is speedyable, and using it to keep it hanging around in your userspace has gotten editors penalized before, but that's your problem.

Expertise and deletion: If you can verify for me that you are a subject expert in a subject considered notable enough to include on Misplaced Pages, I will, on your say-so, close any deletion debate as "keep" within your field of expertise, and will undelete any articles within your field that you say are notable.

A note on deletions: Almost all of what appears on AFD does in fact deserve as quick, painful and messy a death as can be achieved. If you think you're an inclusionist, do Special:Newpages patrol some time. Oh My Goodness. Also, if I'm on IRC these days, it's probably for a reason other than Deletion 101 discussions. Talk page, please. I also recommend WP:PROD, one of the best ideas I've seen for a Misplaced Pages deletion mechanism and now up and running very nicely.

Misplaced Pages meetups: It's amazing what a difference it makes to your view of Misplaced Pages to meet your fellow editors and have a drink with them. I attend the London ones where possible.

I'm from Australia and live in Walthamstow, London with my wife and girlfriend nearby. My wife foolishly directed me here and I became an instant addict. Like Barney Gumble having that first beer.

My life has been spent filling my head with unbelievable quantities of trivia and rubbish. Here's a chance to get some of it out. As a recovering editor, I can't see a grammatical or spelling error without my red-pencil hand twitching. Misplaced Pages provides tremendous opportunity in this field.

I must write more articles: And not hang around project pages so much. And so must you. Ideas from SuggestBot (requests). My scratchpad (for the terminally bored or work-avoidant). The Problem With Music.

Misplaced Pages 1.0: I can't tell you how envious I am of de:. Go to m:List of articles all languages should have and Misplaced Pages:List of articles all languages should have and help bring all listed articles to Featured Article status.

WikiProject Scientology: started by me, Xenu help me. (I'm apparently what passes for an expert.) NPOV is pretty much a new approach to Web-based writing about Scientology.

The "Fix Crappy Prose" Challenge: I'd like everyone reading this who thinks they're a pretty good writer to middle-click "Random article" twenty times and rewrite any crappy prose without sacrificing facts. Do this at least once a week. Detail and accuracy beat eloquence when the choice arises, but that does not justify crappy prose.

If you're feeling particularly strong and have a fresh pack of Gudangs and a bottle of whisky to hand, there's a Metric Shitload of stuff on Category:Articles that need to be wikified that can only be fixed by hard editorial slog.

My personal style guide: We're writing articles for someone who knows nothing about a topic but needs to get up to speed really quickly. You have ten seconds.

• Who, what, where, when, why?
• Summary lead, then inverted pyramid.
• Omit needless words.
• The Economist Style Guide: clarity with precision. ("I love The Economist. It's like a really rational guy on crack." — Erithromycin)
• HOWTO: write bad documentation that looks good. "Why" is almost more important than "what."
• Notes on brevity. "It's about viral payload density." — John Hawkes-Reed

I sometimes picture my reader as a very bright ten- to twelve-year-old. Someone with a good reading age, but who knows nothing yet. Did you used to devour encyclopaedias as a kid?

Feature brag: I've scored in two FA classifications (Computing and Religion and belief) ... I need one more.

• GNU/Linux naming controversy — featured July 1, 2004 — front page July 2, 2004
• Xenu — featured December 21, 2004 — front page February 19, 2005
• X Window System — featured February 4, 2005 — front page September 3, 2005
• Space opera in Scientology doctrine — featured July 16, 2005 — front page September 10, 2005

Hey kid, your first puff of Wikicrack's free:

• Arkady Rose
• Brother William
• Malkin
• Rgclegg

Reuse my stuff: All my article text is multilicensed under any cc-by-sa license. This only applies to my work in the main article space, not talk pages, Misplaced Pages: space pages or whatever. It does apply to images created by me and uploaded by me to Wikimedia.