User:Alan Liefting/Diary


 * This is a diary of my Wikipedia related activity. I decided to start it in 2013 and hope to use it as a means of tracking work done, of work to be done, and for miscellaneous notes that cannot be filed elsewhere. Please use the talk page or my main talk page for comments. Note that this is not a blog.

February

 * Decided to reinstall and use huggle. Very dispiriting seeing persistent vandals and persistent vandalism. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 07:08, 21 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Had a look at occurrences of "Notes and references" via Google to see how they were used (based on this discussion) As expected all permutations and combinations are used, including incorrect descriptors. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 07:08, 21 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Am pleased with my Help:Categories page even if I do say so myself. Over 100,000 hits in the last 30 days! They would have previously gone to Help:Category which has a level of technical detail that is of no interest to readers. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 22:11, 21 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Category:Politics of Australia is yet another category with templates scattered through it. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 22:40, 21 February 2013 (UTC)


 * {clade} might be useful for Help:Categories but it gives a display in some browsers that will make it confusing for readers. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 22:47, 23 February 2013 (UTC)


 * The Dab solver tool is cool! I used it on the Treachery dab page. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 20:12, 24 February 2013 (UTC)


 * So much to do:
 * WikiProject Environment importance assessment
 * Articles for the Environment by year project
 * Assess what article are missing in the Category:Regions of New Zealand subcats
 * Assess what article are missing in Category:Environment by country
 * Go through the "XXXX in New Zealand" pages and check for omissions and check for consistency
 * Sigh... Overworked and unpaid... -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 00:17, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

March

 * Well it is March here in New Zealand! I don't care what the server clock tells me.


 * I have started quite the discussion at Templates for discussion/Log/2013 February 26. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 19:07, 28 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Why do we put up with such loose account creation criteria so that we end up with thousands of sockpuppets? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 00:59, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

April

 * Decided to come back after my month long block. Every time I use Wikipedia to look something up I realise that there is soooo much that needs doing! During my break block I did discover that there is a whole world outside of Wikipedia. It was amazing! -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 20:07, 5 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Fear all change - an essay that sums things up nicely! -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 05:58, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
 * And this is good:
 * Adler's Laws of Wikipedia:

"#Wikipedia values all contributors equally (especially those with special needs such as a complete lack of judgement or writing abilities).
 * 1) Elitism is against the core principles of Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anyone can edit; consequently those who abuse their abilities by writing substantially more than their fair share of featured articles must be made to understand that they are suffered, not supported, by the community.
 * 2) Anyone who uses humour in Wikipedia (and especially in project space) exhibits a severe lack of respect for those of their fellow editors who have no sense for it.
 * 3) Prolific writing of content that cannot be improved is a dangerous, systemic, problem because it will eventually lead to the death of this project. We are here to build an encyclopedia, not to finish it."

- ''Statement by User:Hans Adler from one of Giano's many Arbitration Committee hearings.


 * From User:Malleus Fatuorum. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 23:46, 12 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Sigh... More work. Lists for the content of Category:Protected areas by year of establishment. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 22:55, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

August

 * Dear Diary,


 * I have decided to return to Wikipedia editing after being blocked for three months because I consider the project to be of an exceedingly high importance. I won't be driven off by the irrational behaviour of certain editors. Any difficulties encountered are to be tolerated or addressed in some way.
 * -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 07:16, 1 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Am heartened by some of the support that I am getting now that I have returned. Maybe I will stick around. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 02:57, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
 * There is now 11,429 articles in Category:Articles with missing files! It seems futile doing any more work on that particular backlog. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:21, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

August

 * Dear Diary


 * I has been a year since I last edited Wikipedia. I was in part prompted to come back after receiving an email yesterday from an editor with whom I collaborated with on the Help namespace pages. He wanted to know why I retired and what prompted the message that I left indicating an angry departure.  What was the final straw was this comment on my talk page from User:Fram:


 * "No, a ban is not meant to be "you are allowed to do this as long as you do it correctly", the ban is meant to be "you are not allowed this at all, no matter if you do it right or wrong". The ban follows too many problems and discussions with earlier edits in the topic areas; this doesn't mean that all or even the majority of his edits wrt categories were problematic, but too many were. The ban is not "let him edit cats until he makes an error", the ban is "let's prevent him making any more errors", eliminating the correct cat-related edits at the same time. Fram (talk) 06:49, 6 August 2013 (UTC)"


 * This shows that User:Fram seems to be more interested in something other than furthering the goals of Wikipedia. Anyway, as I have said before Wikipedia is far too important to let overzealous admins prevent the work from getting done.


 * -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:45, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

September

 * So I got back into editing and in the flurry of fixing the many mistakes on Wikipedia pages I entirely forgot about my topic ban and inadvertently did some category page edits. I also did one that I caught myself doing after remembering the topic ban but I hit the save button anyway.  None of them would be contentious yet User:Fram pulled me up on them.  He/she also said that I could not even discuss categories at the Village Pump!  I am not even sure if that is part of my topic ban and if it is the admins really are into punitive measure rather than building an encyclopaedia. It is absolutely pathetic that I am hamstrung in trying to help Wikipedia yet vandals get away with all sorts of vandalism. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 21:11, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

May
Hello Diary. Did you miss me? Yes, it has been about seven months since I was last here but I am not sure if I will stick around.

What prompted me to come back was wanting to comment on Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Global agenda. User:Wavelength, an editor who I have had interactions with in the past, created the Global agenda page. Like a number of other pages created by Wavelength it is completely outside of the scope of WP.

It is a real shame that the collective of WP editors, responsible for a very powerful resource, are not heading WP in the direction towards building an accurate, NPOV encyclopedia that is easy to use for readers.


 * -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 22:07, 29 May 2015 (UTC)