User:ACEOREVIVED

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A little information about this editor:

My history of being a Wikipedian
I expect I have been reading Wikipedia articles ever since they had a high Google search - which, as of 2011, is quite a long time now. My earliest edits, before I had learnt to set up a user page, were under the pseudonym "Cardamom" and were largely either on the articles on Carl Jung or the articles on psychology of religion. These date back to around July 2005, after I had completed and passed my Ph.D.. I later made some edits under the name "ACarl". Both "ACArl" and "Cardamom" still appear in the history of some Wikipedia articles, such as Psychology of religion, but in red letters, because these were edits I made before I had become au fait with userpage establishment and maintenance.

I first set up the username "ACEO" in March 2006. My former username "ACEO", due to some technical problems has now been discontinued; hence the "revived" bit of my name. I am sorry if any one had any hypotheses about it being a name from science fiction, although it would make quite a good name there, n'est-ce pas?

I had a period of inactivity, but got back online again in September 2007, after purchasing a new laptop computer, and have been actively editing since then (except for a period when I need a new router).

Areas of interest and expertise include:
Psychology, especially relating to personality, social psychology, transpersonal psychology, psychology of religion, counselling;

This would be my main area of interest, as I teach this subject, so most of my edits would be likely to be on topics connected with psychology or the allied disciplines. Or rather, I did teach this subject - sadly, I lost my job quite recently (I know that quite a lot of staff at the university where I did teach were made redundant in recent times (2011 to 2012) at the time of typing).

Religion and theology (I created the article on Kosuke Koyama);

Days of the year;

Some literature topics.

I may occasionally contribute by making edits to an article on more "popular media culture" topics, such as television or radio programmes. I have interests in philosophy, too, and also in medicine - but  I had better say that I am not a qualified medical doctor (my ability to use the title "Dr" comes from a Ph.D., not an M.D.) so I shall be more likely to contribute to talk pages on medical articles than to change the articles themselves.

Examples of my contributions to Wikipedia
I have made rather a lot of edits to the article on locus of control.

I created the article on cross-cultural psychology, and the article on Daniel Batson; also created an article on the Swedish psychologist Hjalmar Sunden (there was an article on Sunden in the Swedish Wikipedia before I made one for the English Wikipedia); I have also created the page on the Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama. I have created several articles on fields germane to transpersonal psychology, such as that on transpersonal ecology.

=My requests to Wikipedia editors:==

Before editing an article, ask:

Am I helping to make the article more up-to-date? Am I able to reference my sources, using books and journals, not just other internet sites? Does my edit help to give the article a better context? Am I able to establish wiki-links to other articles in Wikipedia? Do I have credentials in that particular field?

Am I able to structure an article better? Are my edits likely to help other Wikipedia users?

About my biasses:
Please be aware that the word bias, which derives from bowls, just means a systematic tendency, it does not imply prejudice, so I merely mean this by this term:

Exopedian or Metapedian? I would definitely say I am quite strongly exopedian. However, I am not against leaving messages on userpages, so my commitment to expopedianism, while strong, is less than 100%.

Deletionist or inclusionist? I come down on the side of inclusionists - I do not like to suggest deletion of categories or articles, after others may have worked hard on them. This is not a licence to say that in Wikipedia, anything goes, however -  I would object to use of foul language in Wikipedia, for example. I am also against a category of user language Level 0, which has always seemed rather pointlesss to me. I did call for a deletion of a former article on Turinah, an Indonesian lady who made the far-fetched claim of being 157! I do remember that the Wikipedian who was responsible for that article was no longer linked with Wikipedia, so I did not think that that Wikipedian would miss the article too much.

Religious biasses. As you can see, I have categorised myself as a Christian, but am also a relatively liberal one, who has no problems in being both a Christian and a believer in evolution, at least of sorts -  I tend to have sympathy with the Gaia hypothesis.

Biasses in current affairs and information
My news is likely to come from the BBC, especially, Radio Four or the BBC Two programme, Newsnight. I tend to read local rather than national newspapers, and would say that the internet search engine which I use most often is Google. I frequently listen to the Radio Four programme "Today". You may wonder about my political biasses - well, I do not belong to any political party. There are probably wise views and foolish views which all of the main political parties have espoused at some stage in their history.

As for views on a European union, I would object to Europe becoming some sort of superstate, but I would prefer to see myself as an anti-federalist, rather than an anti-European (which I am certainly not) - I may be Euro-skeptic, but I am definitely not a Euro-phobic (there is a difference).

Academic background. My academic field is psychology, so I shall edit mostly articles relating to this field.

So, what are my biasses in psychology?
Believe it or not, I am interested in both transpersonal psychology and social cognition, and have sympathy with both of these approaches in psychology. I consider the following great among our living psychologists:

Martin Seligman Robert Sternberg Robert Zajonc

I have also long had interests in the work of Daniel Batson, and created his article in Wikipedia.The following were, in my view, two of the most over-rated psychologists of the twentieth century:

B.F. Skinner John B. Watson

So, you can see, I am not sympathetic with behaviourism. I do admire both Carl Jung and Alfred Adler; as for Sigmund Freud, I find that there was both sense and nonsense in his many writings. I have contributed to the article on psychoticism, and would agree that this is rather too motley a trait. Finally, a big vote of thanks to all three of the "greats" of humanistic psychology, that is, Abraham Maslow, Carl R. Rogers and Rollo May, all of whom, in my view, made important and significant contributions to psychology.

Biasses with views on psychotherapy
Although I do not possess qualifications as a counselling psychologist, I have taught this subject at my local university. I have some sympathy with most, but not all, of the forms of cognitive therapy, but I somewhat skeptical about the Rational Emotive Therapy of Albert Ellis. I have rather more time for Cognitive Analytic Therapy. Please note that these opinions are based on reading, not on personal experience.

About my editcount
Do not believe my editcount given at List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits - this says my editcount is 6,500, but last time I checked my editcount, it was 3,632.

What this user likes about Wikipedia
A main reason why this user likes Wikipedia is that it is surely the most up-to-date encyclopadia in the world - just check out articles on subjects in the news, or articles on people who have recently died (one can often find out that a public figure has died through Wikipedia sooner than one can through the BBC news). I also like the breadth and comprehensiveness of coverage of topics in Wikipedia, which rather makes me an inclusionist - deletionism has long seemed a misguided philosophy to me, as deleted articles may get recycled elsewhere on the world wide web. I should also say that I like the fact that Wikipedia does not involve learning anything too complex about technology - one does not have to be au fait with PDF files to use it, which, in my book, is certainly a good thing! I also like the fact that there is Help desk  - an extremely valuable resource. Finally, one thing I admire how kind and helpful other Wikipedians typically are, this is certainly a project characterised by collaboration and co-operation. I still think that Wikipedia is my favourite website - what is remarkable is that although there might be some people who vandalise it, about 96% of people who write for Wikipedia work extremely hard making very sensible edits to it.

What this user dislikes about Wikipedia
Well, here are some of my major groans about Wikipedia. Sorry to be predictable, but I am rather inclined to repeat the common criticism that it does, at times, tend to be about popular media culture, rather than more academic subjects. I have also noticed how it tends to be rather culturally biassed - it is an excellent resource for those who wish to learn about North America or selected parts of Western Europe, but may say less about Africa or Asia (consider, for example, how few Japanese theologians have an entry in Wikipedia, or how little there is on the African philosopher John Mbiti).(OK, last time I looked at the article on John Mbiti, there was there - good to see that people have edited it). Finally, I have to echo another common criticism - the English in Wikipedia is not always brilliant, although to be fair to Wikipedia, some of the grammatical, vocabulary and punctuation errors that occur in it are rather common ones (I do wish people would leaves apostrophes out of decades, and know that the correct way to write "1960s" is "1960s" and not "1960's").

WikiProject membership
This user is currently in several WikiProjects, including that for psychology and that for disability. I am sure that I could be in a lot more - so many things are interesting to me - education, theology, philosophy, religion, spirituality, paranormal, to name just a few - it is a shame that there are only 24 hours in the day!

My hopes for the future of Wikipedia
I hope that the future of Wikipedia will be characterised by a greater stress on academic articles, written in an in-depth but still accessible way, as would be appropriate for a reference work. I would also like to see consistency in styles of referencing (I am used to the American Psychological Association referencing style myself). Finally, it would be good to think that one day, Wikipedia might - just might - break free from its cultural biasses, and become a truly comprehensive compendium of knowledge about all parts of the world.

Awards
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Fred Goodwin
Hello. I see you have previously contributed to the Talk page on the Fred Goodwin article. May I ask for your views on a piece I have added relating to his role in the BCCI liquidation. Thanks Lord Mauleverer (talk) 14:14, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

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