User:Balaenoptera musculus

This is a user page - the whale itself is here: Balaenoptera musculus

About Me
Well, I'm pretty large. I live in the Large Mammals Gallery of the Natural History Museum, London.

I stay really really still during the day, and then at night I creep to a computer and edit Wikipedia.

Really? Yup! On the Internet, nobody knows you're a Blue Whale.

Real Stuff

 * Quack medicine, fraud, pseudoscience and 'woo'
 * Topics relating to London, UK
 * English usage

Wiki Stuff

 * RfCs in scence and technology
 * In the news/Candidates
 * Fringe theories/Noticeboard

Related Bits and Pieces - bookmarks for my own use really

 * Nine Reasons Women Don’t Edit Wikipedia (in their own words)
 * WP:CLUBHOUSE
 * Free for all? Lifting the lid on a Wikipedia crisis (New Scientist)


 * Why Wikipedia cannot claim the earth is not flat
 * WP:COI, WP:MEDCOI


 * IPs are human too
 * Not every IP is a vandal
 * VisualEditor/Why
 * Why a cabal is perceived


 * Why Wikipedia is not so great



Not a Sockpuppet
I've been contributing to Wikipedia for many years (since really early in the project). I used to have an account but I forgot the username and the password rather a lot of years ago, and have not used the account since. Since then, over a period of many years, I've been contributing as an unregistered user - using an IP address - just as a regular user of the encyclopedia who adds or edits information occasionally - and I've finally come round to registering an account again (mostly because I've started making more edits again and I'm fed up with the false assumptions that many Wikipedians make about IP users).

So please don't be too surprised that although I'm a new account I seem to know an unexpected amount about Wikipedia policies, abbreviations etc. Before accusing me of being the sockpuppet of some other user, please remember to assume good faith. I'd be grateful if you'd read Newbies aren't always clueless and Don't be quick to assume that someone is a sockpuppet, which say things like this:

If a new account's first edits appear like those made by a veteran editor, showing good knowledge of how Wikipedia works, the user may be one who has prior experience with IP editing, has carefully read instructions, policies, and guidelines prior to editing, has worked a lot on other sister projects, or has been coached by another editor known to them. Or else the account may be a second account used legitimately or that of one who has abandoned an earlier account and started over.

(You might want to apply that knowledge to other IP users and newly registered users as well - I can tell you from experience that Wikipedia is quite hostile to IP users, you can help improve this by not failing to assume the good faith of IP users).