User:Bovlb

Bio
I am a Bear of Very Little Brain.

Status
Personal and business commitments leave me little time to contribute, but I try my best. Bovlb 08:28, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

WIki Philosphy
If you want to understand my Wiki Philosphy, a lot of it is on display here (comments welcome). In essence, I think we're too quick to delete content and bite the newcomer, but we do need to hold fast to our core principles.

Personal Attack Pages
I've been watching some of the cases on RfC and RfAr (and, to a lesser extent, VfD). The thing that leaps out at me is that these pages seem to be taken as general exceptions (and possibly reversals) of the usual rules of no personal attacks and assume good faith. People suddenly feel free to provide negative characterizations of each others' behaviour. I can see the argument that this is necessary for these pages to operate, and I guess I can see the argument that people need some outlet for this sort of thing, but I'm left with a sense of disquiet.

Typically, the bad feelings, flipping the bozo bit, and slanging matches will gradually escalate on article talk pages, and boil over into RfC's and RfAr's. However, unless they end up with one party disappearing (say by being banned), then the disfunctional editor relationships remain, possibly worse than before.

No, I don't have a magic answer.

Experts
Wikipedia is unwelcoming to experts who say "I am an expert and therefore you must accept what I say at face value." Wikipedia loves experts who say "I am an expert, which is why I know what the best reliable sources are to support what I say, and here they are." &hellip; If you're not willing to (1) Write to a popular audience and (2) Support your writing with citations from reliable sources, it really doesn't matter if you're an expert or not, because you're of no real use to us, go write an academic paper.

Authoritah
Disobeying authoritah should never be the reason, in itself, for any actions here - we should always be considering the underlying reasons behind any sanctions that might have been imposed, and trying to work out what would be the best overall result for Wikipedia when deciding how to deal with sanctions-busting.

Fields I am interested in

 * computer-aided design
 * memory management, garbage collection
 * artificial intelligence watchlist
 * Scotland, Glasgow, Bearsden
 * Cambridge, University of Cambridge, Trinity College
 * Chicago, Illinois
 * Austin, Texas
 * Revision control, Perforce, Monotone, CVS, BitKeeper, Subversion, RCS, SCCS
 * Encinitas, California, Carlsbad, California, San Diego
 * Search engine

Pages I created
I have stopped updating this list, but am leaving it for historical interest.
 * Vulcan Ventures
 * Kelvinside Academy
 * Alys, Countess of the Vexin
 * Ashley Revell
 * Interlochen Center for the Arts, Interlochen Arts Academy, Interlochen Arts Camp
 * Sun Hudson, Spiro Nikolouzos, Texas Futile Care Law (now Advance Directives Act)
 * Copley Press, Copley Newspapers
 * sua sponte, arguendo, de mortuis nil nisi bonum
 * Botticelli (game)
 * Memory Pool System, MPS
 * Clint Curtis, Raymond C. Lemme
 * Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, CREW
 * Thalamic stimulator
 * Meetup/Austin
 * John Joy Bell
 * Hugh Fraser, Baronet of Allander, Hugh Fraser, 1st Baron Fraser of Allander, Sir Hugh Fraser, 2nd Baronet
 * San Dieguito Academy, San Dieguito High School
 * Glasgow Botanic Gardens, Royal Botanic Institution of Glasgow, Kibble Palace
 * Oscar Brown, Oscar Brown, Jr.
 * Subject Matter Expert (replacing copyvio)
 * Kat Candler
 * price ending
 * bit field

Fair use images

 * Image:copleyhead.gif


 * Image:San_dieguito_academy.jpg

Useful links

 * Wikipedia: Copyright tags, Copyright FAQ, Browse, Template messages, Spam, Stub types
 * Logs: protect, delete, block, upload, move
 * Meta: DynamicPageList, Help:Magic words
 * Kids: simple:, Wikijunior
 * SCH
 * User:Willscrlt/UBX/categories
 * 2nd chance
 * bigtimepeace: ,
 * User:Balloonman/How_to_pass_an_RfA
 * Remove pages from Google, report


 * Notability and Fictional Subjects
 * User:Nihiltres/nothingthree
 * Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in San Diego County, California
 * Category:San Diego County, California articles missing geocoordinate data
 * Wikipedia articles in North County with no image
 * GeoLocator
 * CatWatch
 * Reference Generator
 * Edit tests found
 * Intersect Contributions
 * Copyright check requests
 * WikiBlame

Dashboard

 * Category:Wikipedians looking for help from administrators &mdash;