User:Chris Rodgers

A US citizen with a bit of travel exposure, I worked at numerous items as 65.247.35.18 (can still happen with failure to log in) before I got off my lazy duff and created a username. Having benefited from this worthy resource, I've felt it at least appropriate to make contribution on others' behalf where I can.

I have wide interests in nearly any and everything, though with a special grounding in Christian Science. First came to know wikipedia through a friend, then made use of it in course of a research, then saw stuff in need of correction or amplification, then...you know the drill. Working on a return to normal bedtimes again, but think wikipedia is pretty cool.

An outstanding daytime triple-UFO sighting also gave me an active interest in both those and the argument they are best explained (consistent with corroborative accounts) as extraterrestrial visitation. I dream of the day of full contact and disclosure, mindful we may not necessarily collectively ready for it, though extraconstitutional entities appear more hindrance than help there. I've spent a bit of time on various occasions trying to bridge the gap between methodically sound scientific skepticism on the one hand and experiencers and believers on the other. When basic human juvenility is set aside by either camp, experiencers learn not all skeptics are blindly dogmatic ideologues and skeptics learn not all experiencers are naive crystal-waving twits; the two actually are ultimately reconcilable perspectives. I also have a longstanding interest in physics and the sciences as well as history, linguistics, and think I mentioned in just about everything.

Articles I've contributed to significantly or created to date have included Mary Baker Eddy, Christian Science and derivative entries, Betty Eadie, Dannion Brinkley, the life review, Gary Renard (initially as The Disappearance of the Universe), Phil Krapf, Bob Lazar, Billy Meier, Exotheology, Thomas Shepard, John Cotton, Livingston, Montana, Fair Harvard, the Church Universal and Triumphant, and fairy slippers; I even managed a few photos in use too.

An Ivy-League degree in history only reinforced my sometimes dogmatic and annoying-to-acquaintances conviction in dialog and the NPOV. I'm also a vehement inclusionist who's seen gross abuse of deletion by POV dogmatics who think any subject article they disagree with should be deleted in order to lend it discredit, irrespective of whether that violates guidelines or worse. It's absurd to pretend Wiki is merely an open-source Britannica sourcing nothing but academic journals, themselves frequently of dubious impartiality, since outside of the mere fact that openness lets it evolve faster, its diversity of subjects is arguably its single greatest strength. Without that, why bother, it's been done; why are we contributing, money and time both, and claiming it's so great?

2014 update: Exclusionism advances, to WP's loss (the assassination of the meticulous, and press-release-referenced, Arecibo Reply article is only one least f'rinstance.)  Looks like it's not just me. Pay attention, Jimbo and the rest of you: you're losing us :-/   http://gawker.com/5410917/wikipedia-gridlocked-by-wikipedia-nerds

2016 update: Only getting uglier with less hope of saving it, and I've discontinued my donations. WP and its policies are evolving away from a goal of truth and positively towards validation of narrative lines of the controlled power structures, their bots, and their minions, however provably false, with nothing more than (il)logical circularities like, "anything that questions the official line is fringe axiomatically and therefore can not be added for balance/NPOV, let alone cited." This observation regarding the wikipedia+ browser add-on, validated daily, only echoes what I and others have been saying for years:
 * "Wikipedia is in one sense a victim of its own success; it has effectively become a mainstream media source, and as such it shares a well-established bias. A wealthy few use their control of mainstream media to systematically exclude certain opinions. This lack of publication in what Wikipedia refers to as 'reliable sources' in turn provides justification for their exclusion from Wikipedia, nullifying its potential as an independent voice. Wikipedia+ allows you to avoid this censorship by choosing to supplement your Wikipedia experience with automatic cross-references to sites you judge to be of interest (e.g. Wikispooks)."