Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 02:36, 17 June 2006

About wikipedia

Writing for an encyclopedia is not the same as writing for an academic paper. It's more like writing the bibliography for an academic paper. We aren't trying to decide what is "true" and what isn't, because that's not what an encyclopedia is. An encyclopedia is a balanced collation of multiple perspectives and views. Theres few decisions to make, few opinions to form, other than to observe which views seem to be more or less relevant views of note, and to understand each (and its sources) well enough to document.

We care that we document each view fully and with understanding. That is the "truth" we work to here. That, and that alone. Our truth is the truth of the bibliography, and the measure is, have we represented collectively in summary the multiple verifiable sources of note. Drawing editorial conclusions from all of them is the end-use of an encyclopedia, not the work of encyclopedists.

What I do on Misplaced Pages

My interests are in three main areas.

• I have a penchant for cleanup of controversial and messy articles, especially those where it would be interesting, if it was better sourced, balanced and sorted out. I particularly like cleanup of intro's and "overviews" and I've done that on many articles. I also enjoy subjects which it's hard to see a balanced view, because it usually isn't that difficult, and it's good to reduce others' stress levels :)

In this context I've worked heavily on a wide range of Wiki-policy pages (WP:ABOUT, WP:SOCK, WP:SPA, WP:DBF, WP:NPOV, WP:RfM, WP:RFC, Template:VfD_header, WP:RES, and WP:WTA), and of articles and templates that have caught my attention at some time or other.

• I also have some favorite subject areas: Biographies, sexuality (including fringe/paraphiliac sexuality), animal sciences, psychology and cognition, religion and spirituality, science and technology, law, and politics (especially major current political controversies).

In this context I've written, cleaned or expanded much of BDSM and Zoophilia and their related articles, various articles related to neuro-linguistic programming, a range of Judeo-Christian articles including cultural and historical background of Jesus, and several key law cases, as well as the original fully cited "as it happened" 2004 election controversy article.

• Last, as part of the community, I've stopped off to help on the reference desk, the 1.0 editorial team, some peer review and RFC's, and a variety of informal mediations, as well as taken two persistent virulent "POV warrior" vandals and sockpuppet masters through dispute resolution, to editor consensus, through to Arbcom when needed (one ultimately indef blocked from subject area, the other indef blocked from Misplaced Pages).

Articles I've worked on

Special memories

Major edits

Biographical

• Written from scratch:

Bodil Joensen ... Hani Miletski ... Kenneth Pinyan ... Mabel Stark ... Nancy Friday ... Stephen Gilligan ... Yitzhak Rabin assassination conspiracy theories

• Major expansion, rewrite or cleanup:

Charles Manson ... Margaret Thatcher ... Vern Bullough ... Srinivasa Ramanujan

• Significant input:

Death of Diana, Princess of Wales ... Michael Crawford ... Milton H. Erickson ... Jiddu Krishnamurti ... Torvill and Dean ... Ken Wilber

Articles I've worked on 2

Looking back, many of the articles Ive written on seem to be things like sociology/psychology (including fringe sexuality), spirituality/religion, and politics/conflict. I also enjoy subjects which it's hard to see a balanced view, or where cleanup's needed.

Main articles

• Self relations wrote
• List of war crimes wrote
• Transactional analysis wrote most
• Pyometra wrote article on this often-fatal illness
• Modeling (NLP) wrote from stub
• Pursuit of Nazi collaborators rewrote most
• 2004 U.S. Election controversies and irregularities wrote and researched
• Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict rewrote most

Substantial contributions

• Erotic sexual denial long-term clinical effects etc
• Neuro-linguistic programming large chunks rewritten
• Disk image rewrote several chunks
• Zoophilia research/write of NPOV clinical and sociological profile
• Worldwide perception of Osama bin Laden rewrote (ongoing)
• WP:RfM, WP:RFC and WP:VFD intro rewrites

Talk and mediation

• Talk:Sexual intercourse the circumcision debate
• Talk:Paraphilia outline and information for NPOV rewrite
• Talk:Zoophilia clinical information, currently steering through request for mediation (ongoing)
• Talk:Cultural and historical background of Jesus RFC, mediation between contributors, adding background for discussion
• Template related work to help articles be less likely to get gridlocked

Small stuff

Anything less than "major chunks of an article" aren't important, everyone does those :P

FT2 Quotes

Fav' quotes

"If people only realised that the only choice they EVER have is how to react in this instant to what’s already happening....."

"More people die from not being able to talk about what’s happened to them, than ever die from the event itself"

"Nobody will ever walk your path with you. Some will walk an inch along with you...some cross at right angles, coming and going in the same instant, some will walk a distance...but nobody will walk the whole way with you. But that doesn’t matter, because in every instant, there will always be people round you to walk this instant with you.......if you can learn to see them"

'Not quite, but fairly close' definition: "Love is seeing reality and recognising that you and 'other' are one."

Not "love is a mushy feeling" or "love is about wanting to be symbiotic to someone".

Love is recognising, simple and free from illusion, that you and 'other' (whatever 'other' may be), are in truth, one.

Life in the hot seat!

• "FT2, you're always there to bring us back to the business at hand ;)"

This was when I added a comment to the effect that it's lucky we don't have to talk about these speculative matters to actually sort out an article. And it's mutual, Talk:2004 U.S. Election controversies and irregularities is an article I'm quite enjoying watching grow :)

• "I consider FT2 to be a better more neutral person to guide the discussion, and choose the quetions to answer first than either you or I since we are parties to the edit war that brought this page protection."

Ahhh, that nice warm feeling. Talk:Cultural and historical background of Jesus

Yes, you are doing some good work there.Pedant

• "Bet you have sex with your pets, huh?"
  

On spending 3/4 hr explaining wiki NPOV to a vandal and making clear that no matter what he or I may personally think of Talk:Zoophilia, it deserves and will get, neutral and balanced reporting, and sourced information.

Please don't forget to thank this person for lightening up my life. I can just see him going round, splitting the world into people who are ignorant fanatics, and people who obviously have a guilty secret *grins* Actually I think I'd probably prefer that, than to lack social skills to that degree... :)

This user is a member of the Misplaced Pages 1.0 Editorial Team.

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