User:Chris Chittleborough

Why I'm Here
For some strange reason, I'm interested in the impact of blogs (and New Media in general) on the 'real' (ie., off-internet) world, in particular on newspapers and (to a lesser extent) TV news programs. (But I'm not that interested in the internet organization that is really hurting newspapers.) So I tend to edit articles about blogs, mostly conservative political blogs, and related topics. (My other main topics are computing (my profession), SF/F authors and books and computer games.) I'm here to further the aims of the project, but I also browse Arbcom cases, ANI, etc out of interest in how a bunch of smart people try to create new internet-only forms of governance while dealing with old problem that all large volunteer-run organizations face.

I also came here to improve my prose style through practice; you can see by the last sentence of the preceding paragraph that I still have plenty of room for improvement.

Personal Notes
My full name is Christopher William Chittleborough, which takes a while to say or type. I sometimes use "Chris[topher] Chittleborough" as a signature on Internet forums, etc.

My current Wikipedia signature is "CWC". From 17-Apr-2006 to 19-Mar-2007, it was "CWC (talk) ". Before that, it was simply "User:Chris Chittleborough", resulting in some awkward page layouts.

Wikipedia activities
The articles I edit are mostly about computing, games and "New Media" (blogs etc). Recently, I've been trying to help out at WP:BLPN.

Quotes from Wiser Editors

 * User:Lar:
 * [Wikipedia] is the place to lay out the information and let people draw their own conclusions.
 * [T]he desired outcome here is that we get constructive edits from peacable users ...


 * User:Xoloz:
 * [B]eware heavy reliance on IAR, for that is the path to the dark side (specifically, the dark side of WP:DICK.) ;)


 * User:WilliamThweatt and User:Lar:
 * I have found that that is the goal of most users who practice such disruption--to bait you into "betraying your frustration". 172 gave some good advice when he said "Don't abuse yourself by responding" to pure disruption. Just relax, count to 10 and keep your discussion on topic and he'll move on or be dealt with by an admin.
 * [W]hat is great about that advice, WilliamThweatt, is that it doesn't violate the assumption of good faith, it works just as well whether someone is, or isn't, disrupting on purpose. So I sure do endorse it!


 * User:WAS 4.250:
 * Policies and guidelines are not a substitute for thinking. There is no substitute for actual understanding.


 * User:Dman727:
 * [I offer] a piece of advice that I tell my kids and I have to tell myself occasionally: "You can't control other people ... you only control how you react to them".


 * User:Junglecat:
 * [P]eople have said that Wikipedia is not in the truth business. Well guess what? We are not in the lie business either. Attempting to use this respectable encyclopedia to promote deceptions against true knowledge shouldn’t be tolerated. In fact, the removal of POV violations that were in direct conflict with our policies & guidelines is something that should be rewarded. I am in support of anyone who will refuse to allow this project to be used as a platform or soapbox to spread propaganda lies.

A Damn Good Article: ASCII
This article is excellent. When I looked into the origins of ASCII a few years ago, it took me days of Googling (or was it AltaVista-ing?) to get this information, and even then I didn't get it all. In fact, I originally joined Wikipedia solely to remove some vandalism from the article.

Notes to Self

 * I prefer Template:Welcome2 and Template:Welcome-anon.
 * Other useful templates: db-author.
 * Subpages: /ContraEnthusiasts, /FootnotesWikipediaEtc, /Text-based, /CSS-notes, /Sandbox, /monobook.css, /monobook.js, /Temp, /Blair background.
 * There's a good essay on inclusionism/deletionism/mergism here.
 * In Image specs, "|frame|" always uses the original image size. To get a border and a caption on a scaled image, you have to use "|thumb|Npx|" — the "|thumb|" specifies scaling with a caption and a border, and the "|Npx|" specifies the size, overriding the thumbnail size from the user's preferences. See Extended image syntax for more details.
 * WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/WikiBreak Enforcer

Linking Year Numbers
I have been putting double square brackets around every year number in articles (eg., 1955 &rarr; 1955), following the example of previous editors of articles I looked at. This turns out to be a well-known newbie mistake. However, the correct policy is not obvious. It was only by chance that I discovered this (from Village_pump_(policy)), and it took a bit of searching to find a clear statement in Make_only_links_relevant_to_the_context.
 * See also Requests for arbitration/Date delinking. Wow.

"US" → "U.S."
Manual of Style says that "U.S." is preferred to "US" (except in certain circumstances) so I'll edit accordingly. Thanks to User:Cleared as filed for pointing me to this page (which I had already read … Do-oh).

Things to do
(http://kithbridge.com/about.htm)
 * Create Wheat Belt as an article
 * As of 08:57, 24 March 2006 (UTC), Wheat Belt just redirects to Wheatbelt region of Western Australia. Someone should write a proper article on this important part of Australia's geography and economy.


 * Create Titlecase as an article
 * Need someone who knows about Cyrillic→Latin translation.
 * See Capitalization


 * Work on Executable and Linkable Format
 * Should explain: 2 subformats, dynamic loading (PLT, GOT, symbol tables, what the DL does, lazy symbol resolution, etc).


 * Watch for vandalism
 * — Vandalised 4 templates 28Sep2006: POV, Controversial, Controversy1 at 05:48 UTC, Att userpage at 05:51
 * — Last edit on 8 March 2006, to Paula Jones
 * — Last edit on 1 April 2006, to User:Thepangelinanpost

Some articles I have started
OpinionJournal.com, Doors (computing), Glitz (software) (stub), Color gradient (stub)