User:Cpiral

My Wikipedia contributions are largely rewrites and copyedits to technical, scientific, philosophic, and sociological and psychological articles. (See my /porfolio for highlights.) These are challenging exercises.

"Discussion" or "talk" pages are easily more challenging because social, encyclopedia-building efforts attempt to determine objective knowledge. Just what is objective knowledge can be hotly debated for many reasons. Collaboration is the merging and purging of a subjective reality into and from a consensus reality often by sincerely accepting the outcome of a negotiation as a reformed or evolved subjective reality. Debating against a team can lead to a better all around understanding: of one's own nature, of the breadth of knowledge, and of human nature in general. So Wikipedia talk pages are the webbed bastion of an evolutionary side-effect of evolving an encyclopedia.

I choose to home this user page of mine as my Wikipedia project workbook, a notebook of lists and essays. Like any evolving entity, a human being is a human becoming, a language is a socially collaborated tool for social collaboration, and so Wikipedia is a social collaborative encyclopedia becoming, and is not by any former understanding of the word, now, an encyclopedia per se. The featured articles are emerging like any surface of any living being, but deep inside is a mystery we can only respect.

There is a similarity between the state of the internals of an evolving entity, and its environment, because evolving is about adapting. There is also an analogy between these internal behavioral forces, largely emotional and subconscious, and the behavioral rulers of that particular entities rational Brains can be drained by f

For today, talk page Oh, I stirs! are for building persevering editors into pearls, and the articular, and categorical information of Wikipedia is just the primitive building material for today's true nest egg of talk pages. But tomorrow I predict Wikipedia, as an eternal side effect, will present informational pearls of information, eggs that one day will far out-fly any other, human-possible conception of structured information, and far outlive the talk page beings. So out of Wikipedia, gentle, organic giants shall rise-up on behalf of Earth.

Meanwhile, as I love Wikipedia as it seems to the readers, I tread lightly through the dark valleys of talk pages, when I must, of necessity, burden them. I persevere for the article-topic's sake, and gently for my, and for their sake.

Talk pages. These hair-raising hells, a Wikipedia accelerator, are the true workout provided concerning mentality. Nothing could be more really revealing of reality to me, than the yelling, raucous, painfully uncivil, irrational, low-down, and insinuative nature of the English culture today, than the Wikipedia discussion pages. These places kill editors, slaying the intellectuals in droves. The new information-savy, tidal-wave of pseudo-intellectual forces stinks as the environment of our poor planet. There is no better place to understand the planet than in the improper discourse on practically every discussion. Lord save us from the true Parents wrath, and not the pseudo parents that vomit out the trash that tries to pass for "discussion" or "talk". No. In my opinion, Wikipedia's main function on the planet is to develop its editors into human beings.

Advanced scientific math, or any of the highly abstract are a piece of cake compared to the social aspect of talk pages. Yet I bravely persevere in them and partake as often as necessary in the debates on articles that I would prefer to call the informational, evolved future.

Wikipedia are mostly neither talk nor discussion. Talk pages are one of the most revealing features of reality I have ever come across. You can't top the energy of a balanced, rational objectivity in the face of pure, unadulterated slather that comes from 90% of Wikipedia regulars. The ownership of articles, the cabals, all this is terribly real in todays primitive world, and I am proud to struggle to make minor headway working on myself to learn both knowledge and manners in the face of great strife and stress.

How I love Wikipedia
The reason I like Wikipedia so much is that by participating here, I can do several things at once: "Thar's gold in them thar learning curves" of MediaWiki or other collaborative software. Similarly, because of the "top of the mountain in sight" illusory effects of mountaineering, Wikipedia is addictive to those who wish to accomplish what they started out to accomplish, and that is to pay homage to knowledge.
 * read and learn by hyperlinks
 * improve and share objective knowledge about the world and the planet
 * write at the same time what I'm learning

There is a secret formula to achieve the love I have for Wikipedia.


 * Form the following in some mental space, and digest:
 * Life is information.
 * Communication is a connection.
 * Trust is receptivity.
 * Sincerity is a transmitting, in fidelity and in trust.
 * Information then&mdash;sincerity, then trust, then connection, then communication&mdash;is love.
 * And indeed life feels like love when connected to truth is the way things are,
 * where "truth" is


 * anything in your environment. (Obviously space accepted it.)
 * I have found myself where I am. (You are here says it all.  And it all says.)
 * I have time to process everything I do process. (All in due process, time.)
 * These are objective datum, planetary in human nature.
 * Finally when ' "information is love" ' there is a circulation of the logic from 4 to 1.


 * The answer to life comes streaming out under our noses in our words.


 * Wiki is a World Quicky.
 * WikiLove is the the pleasant side effect of a subjective connection ya get exchanging planetary objective knowledge.

It was difficult to slow my thoughts down to the speed of this writing. It might take effort to get them back up to speed.

The nature of Wikipedia
Because collaborative software, markup language / predictive text, and the grammar of linking are new technologies , Wikipedia editors will require "On the Job Training" (OJT), for the information that mostly interests the generation in power. Life also requires irrational trepidation to "learn by experience" that it can do whatever it can. (RTFM notwithstanding.)

Wikipedia, because it is an encyclopedia written by non-experts, and because it is voluntary work, it is more natural activity like
 * walking (not expert-exerciser's exerciser devise)
 * self-employment (not employed for the expert at "employing people").
 * a peaceful anarchy (neither armed or civil service)

The natural process of lifelike Wikipedia is But before we know it, we need to study the instituted guidelines, we need reliability and the scientists disinterestedness, we need to have a satisfying, unburdened discussion , and we need to understand the power of a politics and diplomacy. What a walk. No treadmill there. It's a mountain path.
 * 1) We are drawn to a topic of interest. Wikipedia is like a community garden on acreage sea-sized, salted with islands.
 * 2) We see obvious imperfections.
 * 3) We know the judgement/edit can be executed.
 * 4) We are often drawn to discuss the judgement with explanatory power.

Because it all naturally falls into place from the simple desire to edit apple pie, and because the lingua franca Wikipedia is a "global reference to knowledge", then Wikipedia is the closest thing the planet has to a brain, learning and recording in an unlimited, logically organized memory space. I expect the simple statements of facts in all articles to be worded in such a way as to re-enchant the world, by stating the obvious, the mundane, the usual, in a way that only polished clarity can speak, as representive, of the world, with a look and feel truly up-in-lights&mdash;published&mdash; with the subtlest, well in line with the semantics of allowable anthropomorphic, English tone. You know that answer to that question that is new, (somewhat) malleable, non-judgmental, and true, yet yet is very old, seems authoritative, yet a mirror, a true mirror of your unspeakable truth written in such a way as to be simple and obvious, yet is the sacred itself, buried alive in the dynamic ground of all things mundane, the clothing of ordinary statements by some un-aforementioned reality we have as yet overlooked, the full facts of which when stated lucidly somehow synergize? Cliche is both the death-by-drowning in a sea of ignorance, and the island savior paradise. Cliche must be used because Wikpedia must be like a mountain walk, whose paths go where they must.

I can now say that all artifactual content (not just the content of a document made by consensus) is based on reliance. It should be structural. And that efficient action is based on specifics, because specifics are more objective. A neutral opinion is more reliable because of cognitive bias. Neutrality's wording is made specific and reasoned in manner by editing-out the general and the personal. The neutral tone usually takes proofreading then copyediting to transmit the neutralized sound of an Original_intent. "Entropy dissipation" is the secret that gives more time to creations. The right editors dissipate entropy.

Wikipedia, like life, is "rock soup". The topic pages are the stones. The discussion pages are the vegetables, and the policy and guidelines are the meat. I view the idea that its only purpose is to be an encyclopedia as a Nupedia hangover. It is my honor to learn to apply and to teach by my example during the practice of discussion the core policies of notability and verifiability in my own wording. Policy is not neutral, articles are not always notable, and ultimately nothing is absolutely verifiable, but their is a common attribute: the broth is objectivity.

Talk page one
Objecivity in discussion is wholly persistent in Wikipedia, a healthy-discipline, an eco-excursion from our subjective personal worlds with ourself perhaps, to here, where information is common, shared, open, equal and free. For example, non-noteworthy articles are deleted after objective discussions which restrain subjective remarks. Policy articulates Wikipedian objectives, and the receiving of any kind of alarm for the violation ofthe rules is not to be taken subjectively (personally), but objectively instead. Talk page guidelines stress No personal views. and Stay objective. Wikipedia aims to be an encyclopedia. I would submit that in objective reality, the encyclopedia building reality, that every conceivable motivation (to teach objective consciousness?), conscious or not, all summed up, then inform any act, including the acts that build Wikipedia. I don't care what "Wikipedia" denies as their motivation for existence.

Non-objectivity (personal expression, personality bias, and persona shining), are here on Wikipedia, unnecessary and dangerous forays into the creation of an unreliable "excuse" reality, a "reality explained", a "reality justified", an over-education, that we are patiently asked over and over again not to make. Wikipedia is like the philosopher of philosophy, Wittgenstein, who said that philosophy only describes; it does not explain or justify any reality.

The reason we have user "names" is not so that they can then have personalities, or be mentioned in the 3rd person, but as a label used for citation of a source. From the linguistic patterns emitted, the reliability can be predicted, but that prediction is personal, and must be objectively stated. The noblest user names are had for characterization of some universal set of categories, not for personalizing some idiosyncratic reactionary abstractions to your unique experiences. This is learned. This is taught. This is Wikipedia's offering to you personally in return for your informational contributions to Wikipedia organizationally.

Wikipedia's future is uncertain for me, for its drama is a stress that addicts and sickens good editors, and the other encyclopedias' article's are probably the most sane thing in a world that Echart Tolle says is an insane world. But Wikipedia is more real, in many ways, and it is just like life. The "editorial we" heals unreal times in life. Wikipedia is a royal road to a cured future, but contributing to Wikipedia under the impression of an unstoppable illusion (of a cabal) is a global Prisoner's Dilemma of my human race.

Talk page two


Talk pages are more challenging than any one subject, just as an U.S. child's school-playground is more difficult than a Singaporean child's math-class. Success there is the acquisition of an all-encompassing, natural viewpoint ascertaining the general distribution of a wondrous intelligence in general, and concerning bullying in particular. Talk pages eat us (whether in play or by direction) until we digest the situation, encompass all with compassion, and obtain some a natural pattern or a diluted color of all relevant subjects.

I'm often accused of being unclear or not making sense. I have ideosyncratic language. I of course avoid my own neologisms, but don't avoid terseness. I have noticed bias in myself, which is disturbing; by definition, bias is difficult to detect in oneself, but so are the topics I tackle difficult, and so are the chaotic messes I try to understand and reorganize.

I have a tendency to talk at as reduced a level as possible, after having the advantage of studying a "situation" for a while, and this leads to a sort of myopic echololia. If not for the presumption of animosities, my worst writing is, at best decryptable, and my worst factual spotlight neutral.

Social, encyclopedia-building efforts attempt to determine objective knowledge. Just what is objective knowledge can be hotly debated for many reasons. Collaboration is the merging and purging of a subjective reality into and from a consensus reality often by sincerely accepting the outcome of a negotiation as a reformed or evolved subjective reality. Debating against a team can lead to a better all around understanding: of one's own nature, of the breadth of knowledge, and of human nature in general. So Wikipedia talk pages are the webbed bastion of an evolutionary side-effect of evolving an encyclopedia. User A. di M. demonstrates understanding of, and commitment to, his Wikipedia hobby

Like any evolving entity, a human being is a human becoming, a language is a socially collaborated tool for social collaboration, and so Wikipedia is a social collaborative encyclopedia becoming, and is not by any former understanding of the word, now, an encyclopedia per se. The featured articles are emerging like any surface of any living being, but deep inside is a mystery we can only respect.

There is a similarity between the state of the internals of an evolving entity, and its environment, because evolving is about adapting. There is also an analogy between these internal behavioral forces, largely emotional and subconscious, and the behavioral rulers of that particular entities rational environment. A brain dammed for a phase of respectful silence during training. After this major event a reservoir then builds up, the flow returns to its normal rate, and the flooded area adapts an ecosystem. (The days waking events are integrated during a good nights rest, and dreams run stress tests on the new circuits swam in the flooded area.) And all remains well with flow and dam maintenance. A major event is the unfortunate situation of a largish breech that reeks of squalid pools. A brain can be drained when the period of it's respectful silence is found within themselves to be a bad investment in an unfairness. Then editors are not retained. A brain can be drained onto a destructive path that exploits its old ways in new ways.

The talk pages of today, so out of 200N, are for building persevering editors into pearls, and the articular, and categorical information of Wikipedia is just the primitive building material for today's true nest egg of talk pages. But in the better tomorrow of wider public education—we must learn to understand what peace means and pass tests—I predict Wikipedia, as an eternal side effect, will present informational pearls of information, eggs that one day will far out-fly any other, human-possible conception of structured information, and far outlive the talk page beings. So out of Wikipedia, giants shall rise-up on behalf of Earth's social construction, in the form of automated theorem proving.

Until then I tread lightly through the dark valleys of talk pages, when I must, of necessity, burden them. I persevere for the article-topic's sake, and gently for my, and for their sake.

Talk pages. These hair-raising hells, a Wikipedia accelerator, are the true workout provided concerning mentality. Nothing could be more really revealing of reality to me, than the yelling, raucous, painfully uncivil, irrational, low-down, and insinuative nature of the English culture today, than the Wikipedia discussion pages. These places kill editors, slaying the intellectuals in droves. The new information-savy, tidal-wave of pseudo-intellectual forces stinks as the environment of our poor planet. There is no better place to understand the planet than in the improper discourse on practically every discussion. Lord save us from the true Parents wrath, and not the pseudo parents that vomit out the trash that tries to pass for "discussion" or "talk". No. In my opinion, Wikipedia's main function on the planet is to develop its editors into human beings.

Advanced scientific math, or any of the highly abstract are a piece of cake compared to the social aspect of talk pages. Yet I bravely persevere in them and partake as often as necessary in the debates on articles that I would prefer to call the informational, evolved future.

Wikipedia are mostly neither talk nor discussion. Talk pages are one of the most revealing features of reality I have ever come across. You can't top the energy of a balanced, rational objectivity in the face of pure, unadulterated slather that comes from 90% of Wikipedia regulars. The ownership of articles, the cabals, all this is terribly real in todays primitive world, and I am proud to struggle to make minor headway working on myself to learn both knowledge and manners in the face of great strife and stress.

MoS
(Where I say "this MOS" or "that MOS" I refer to obvious sections of the MOS.)

Officers
MOSoffers, The audience of WP is everyone, the styles are every notable one; the audience of an article is limited, if only to English readers; the style of an article is consistent. MoS facilitates the raising of an article quality, and the keeping of 'em raised. MoS crew are the brains who produce the no-brainers. MoS tries to think ahead so as to present finished debates so as to limit repeating the same debate at each article, but No article having edit-wars is allows to progress in any way per editors one and all. Civility comes before article quality. We never lose wisdom. Our page-watchers are among the highest awareness. Consistently someone is watching, referring to historical discussions. But article-editors are one level more real because less abstract. There, on more solid, more real ground, surprising, ad hoc, subtle truths are stranger than MoS fictions. There are no definite mandates. MoS'd rather lose face and take notes than to facilitate edit wars. We provide judgments that will dampen-out over-thinking. We have to mandate where we must, and remain cool on the rest. Wittgenstein said, "what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence."

But because WP is an institution, sui generis we like money for programmers and administrators, we have marketing and policies. We like vandal whackers, but we don't like biting the newbies. Discussions that reference the MoS have the effect of a sudden lurking-silence or pseudo-disappearance of debaters. We like that. But article-editors are like MoS customers: they are always right; we don't want them to really disappear. The content they might bring is the main purpose, their volunteering the main engine; and so volunteer experience is the main thing to keep in mind. May the best editor lose? Yes, unfortunately. MoS tries to prevent that. MoS is full of reasons, explanations, and creativity, which if grasped, is ever improving righteousness and ever brightening light, garnered from volunteers, forged throughout the annuls of history near and far.

Terminology policy
More generally, "science related" articles means those that work with a global terminology: one language of numbers and units describing one (scientific) method, which involves conferences, committees and bureaus. Editors have only the MOS, and the MOS has only ad hoc discussions that just happen to happen. So the scientific institutes may deprecate terms (e.g. kilobyte), whereas we should not. We should mention and mandate styles and terms, but not commend them. The "audience line" here between scholarly and popular, science-related or not science-related, etc., should be purposely undefined, because the definition of the line would have to be either very complicated, or simple enough to become ignored. Undefined lines are the best real-life "utterances": subtle when no longer confused.

Say the MOSoffer did a helpful survey of the literature to find that the style is predominately…&mdash;wait a minute:
 * The MOS job is not to make or report upon surveys, then based on that, categorize a style or term. The MOS doesn't have members that can gerrymander the lines to paddle the boat to some drum.  We've participants whose activity just happens to happen, and so we should try only to perfect editor ideals.  The vicissitudes of life and the ad hoc nature of reality raise defiance precisely at "battle lines" of ambiguous and arbitrary thresholds.
 * The MOS job is to make life bearable on Wikipedia; to list notable styles and terminology. The editors job is then choosing listed terminology using ad hoc notions of aesthetics, which will include audience sentiments towards what style is notable for the article edited. Thus articles work themselves out, in an ad hoc fashion, for all manner of styles and terminology, which we list and explain in a neutral fashion.
 * Ideally, all articles are featured. Featured articles are the epitome of the MOS. Therefore the MOS should list what's notable and offer local reasons and associations as the articulation of the list evolves. The external reasons for terminology and style is thus made less relevant here, as we focus on internal rationalizations.
 * Ideally, an editor scans the entire MOS and then works-up articles towards featured status. The scan, if absorbing details, should leave style-oriented details, not content-oriented details, in the memory.
 * An encyclopedia should be "scholarly", not because it covers lofty ground, but because it covers notable knowledge on all grounds worthy of learning.
 * While this MOS requires more mandates than the WP:FNNR MOS, that MOS is par excellence where it says "possibilities include", and how it provides both explanations and reasons for associating them with choices. Even if some of those reasons are over the top, they're a list of internally usable rationalizations and mnemonics, and they are ignorable (in parenthesis) for those simply filling up there memories with a scan. WP:FNNR separates footnote-style-content and footnote-style-title/terminology. FNNR used to say "the most popular title for footnotes on the wiki", just as this MOS used to say  "mya is not popular in geophysics".
 * I can generalize this: the meta-MOS MOS-world, where there is a sad state, an army of wanna-be general semanticists (like me perhaps), is found dictating in a perfect oblivion "how things are", having no real (because responsive) ownership of the future's practical terrain.

Mis Escribos del Wikipedia
To go slow is to be shown mo' fo' sho'.

Arts-y:
 * A Tour of Styles: /essay_on_wikipediaStyle
 * /My Constitutional Bias: An analogy between Wikipedia editorship and the U.S. government. (Also below.)
 * /Why I love Wikipedia Logical poetry. (Also in the top section.)

Tech-y:
 * /Surf your cache: An imaginary power user takes a flight of fancy.
 * /click-o-phobia: Edit this page is safe. A be bold wanna be.
 * User:Marx01/Human_Vs_Computer: A new article under construction and mentorship.

Wikipedia Polity: (Not recommended reading yet.)
 * 3RR edit wars: ended for good
 * Naming sections can cause future problems a bot can't solve
 * /fringe theory: My effort to systematize the identification of Wikipedia's special notability requirements for Fringe Theory.
 * /wasSignificant: An attempt to understand notability.
 * /my personal consensus: The description of a Wikipedia micro-climate, and an opinion on the state of consensus building on Wikipedia.
 * /Pilot light a flame war: Further inquiries into the poor state of civility during discussions.

My other page is a sandbox

Cpiral workbook

 * Watch these ✅

/LearnToDo

/DoToBe

/Reference notes and links

/Notes of a beginner


 * Rubric is titular.
 * Wikipedia consensus decrees concerning phraseology and ideology are implicitly stored in the document, and explicitly in the discussions resolutions. It is not yet clear which parts of the guideline or policy are such decrees.  That's why it is now imperative to use the browser to open each archive and the browser's own search mechanism to search them.  Consensus is not stored by footnoting or page watching.  It is therefore important to either scrub-search all discussions or discuss phraseology or ideology changes to documents produced largely by consensus.  As archives pile up we must develop annotation or search improvements.
 * Vandalism. The following odd pairs: sustainable efficiency and destruction of usable material, or sustainable improvement and burying usable material serve to strengthen the foundations of our abstractions because the knowledge, not the sabotage, is the foundation. Vandals are made relatively weaker in their abstractions with each act, relative to those who repair the damage, because the strengthening attribute is, of course, conferred only upon the builders of abstractions, especially to those who rebuild the foundations of all of our abstractions. For example, anti-virus software revisits the foundations of computing and networking, and anti-vandal editors learn, as a side-effect of watching pages, how articles grow, and who grows them.  An anti-vandal editor is a farmer's angel, and we are all farmers.
 * An editor wisely parcels out a set of related editing actions, in a series of sets, so that they may be contested or undone as a set of edits, without foolishly cluttering up the history-page views and server storage of saved pages. Only the differences are saved in the history log, not the entire page. In an amazing logical, memory act, the page is built upon request only from these stored changes (or from some an efficiently chosen benchmark document&mdash;perhaps from scratch).
 * If edit summaries are always used by everyone, then (1)if what is stated, then we all inherit a picture of the evolution of an article on its history page; (2) if why is stated, in the edit summary, then we conserve brain cycles on a diff page (3) a watchlist will speak for itself, so that we conserve the time, bandwidth and computing resources that would otherwise be wasted doing a diff report from the watchlist.

Procedures
/Howto

About editing
Here at Wikipedia the rules of editing have changed. The price for all-you-can-edit content is standard styles and Wikipedia templates. (See Category:Wikipedia templates.) However, as for user pages, there is no standard, and many user pages are highly stylized.

New Family of Stylistic Rules
(Hu)man, have the rules changed! Computerized learning is collaboratively improved until some optimal bite-size of the material to be digested is seen. At first, brain storming causes floods. Dam! Get out the hydroelectrics and cut the fog.


 * 1) Forcing the reader to refer to the title when reading the text reduces overload and increases whitespace.
 * 2) Sir, link a lot.  (Link lucidly.)
 * 3) M'am, insert graphics. (See the commons and the meta.)
 * 4) Son, bullet. (Have style.)
 * 5) Daughter, proofread others. (Help:Editing)

Older Rules
Nomenclature shortens common syntax, and makes for an effortless, lucid reading of the content.
 * Emphasis substitutes for "the term".
 * I use italics to (1) create the phrase "the term" out of thin air, an invisible prefix to whatever is emphasized (such as a semantic disjoint) (2) a visual link of a parent idea which will later show up (perhaps surprisingly) as a child idea, and (3) to show which word to stress when spoken, in an otherwise ambiguous phrase.  Thus emphasis colors, emphasis links, and emphasis saves us from writing the term the term over and over. Emphasis connotes the term or phrase (and rarely very but not much.) (Wiz quiz: Why might I have chosen to put "the term" in quotes instead of emphasis?  Answer hint: what are the many uses of quotation marks?)


 * "Quotes" substitute for "so called". A synonym of eponym is "namegiver".
 * I use quotes to (1) create, out of thin air, the phrase "so called" as an invisible prefix to whatever is quoted (such as "and about your 'rules'...") and (2) to make the quoted words a "referent" from anything anyone else can say, write or even think.


 * Endash substitutes for and, "to or through", and "to or verses".

'Single quotes' alternate with "double quotes" when a recursive quote occurs, or in use-mention distinctions.

Bold serves as a "quick-reference" for scanning purposes. The reason article topic words are the first word, and they are bolded is because scanners need to skip over the header material.

(Parenthesis) mean unnecessary when rereading or quoting. I use parenthesis for (1) statements that would be no longer be necessary when rereading (2) statements that only serve to entertain (3) introducing an abbreviation, or (4) the numbers of numbered lists. Anything in parenthesis is fair game for elimination-by-ellipsis when quoted. As for footnoting it depends on the length of the diversion and on the general tone.

If these tools are used only when necessary, they will make for a pure style.

Year numbering systems
Year numbering systems measure age and duration over historic, geologic, and cosmic time. Conventional terminology pairs "AD" (Anno Domini) with "BC" (Before Christ), or it pairs "CE" (Common Era) with "BCE" (Before the Common Era). The latter is common in scholarly and religious writing, but is less traditional. Either is an appropriate choice.


 * BC and AD, BCE and CE are written in upper case, no abbreviation points (full points).
 * Where AD is found before the number, the Latin "... in the year of the Lord" is being expressed, Reforms were mandated in AD 106. Placed after the number AD is more like a unit of measurement than an abbreviation.
 * The others appear after the number as in 106 CE, and 3700 BCE, and 3700 BC.
 * Use CE or AD mostly to avoid confusion
 * in reference: He did not become king until 55 CE, where CE (or AD) clarifies "55" does not refer to his age.
 * in context of other calendars and their abbreviations.
 * At some point in the timescale of a subject, the date or century may become ambiguous without CE or AD: The Norman Conquest took place in 1066 not "1066 CE" or "1066 AD", but Plotinus was a philosopher living at the end of the 3rd century AD. Dates around the first century are usually ambiguous, and around the tenth are not.


 * Use a non-breaking space between the number and the unit. Terms like "14 mya BCE" will require two, or use nowrap.

A set of abbreviations indicating a long interval of time depends on the audience. For scientific and academic subjects and where long time intervals are mentioned frequently, spelling-out "X years ago", or "X years" can become trite, although the British Museum has allowed the spelling-out of the many. If abbreviations are chosen as content for an article, they will be one of two sets:
 *  ka, Ma, Ga (annum "year") are the Greek and Latin abbreviations "kilo-annum" (103), "Mega-annum" (106) and "Giga-annum" (109) years ago; "years" and "years ago" will be implied, so do not use the three-letter Gya, Mya, or kya form. These three abbreviations are compact and efficient, for use in the more obscure topics.
 * kyr, myr, byr (years), kya, mya, bya (years ago) abbreviate thousands, millions and billions of years ago; nothing need be implied, and it is in English. These six abbreviations are for either plain or scholarly exposition. (Berkeley has allowed them.) For increased readability prefer two or even four of these, even when the other set's one or two abbreviations might suffice for the entire article.
 * For directly quoted abbreviations use a square-bracketed editor's note to match the article style. For example an article that would normally use bya would quote "The galaxy formed 4.5 Ga [billion years ago]".

The abbreviations used in cosmic and geologic timescales are uncommon, and the Greek and Latin ones are more obscure.
 * BP (years Before Present), means years before January 1, 1950. Do not spell it out as before present, or years before the present or years before 1950.  BP implies the date is calibrated.  If the date is uncalibrated use the abbreviation 14C yr BP; The varve samples averaged 4.5 ka BP and The varve samples averaged 2.3 ka 14C yr BP.
 * Introduce each abbreviation as soon as convenience permits in the article. In the lead it is spelled out followed by the abbreviation in parenthesis: 14 billion years ago (Ga); otherwise use the abbreviation directly, but gloss: 14 Ga (billion years ago). The same English glossing is used for either set of abbreviations.
 * Avoid glossing or linking the abbreviation in a focused subtopic. While text leveling an abbreviation style remember that an abbreviation's original intent is to minimize itself.
 * Val simplifies the styling of numbers, spacing, and markup, and it can link the abbreviation. (Val has many other numeric units on its current list.)

Do not change an established and consistent style in an article unless there are reasons specific to its content. Maintain article consistency in abbreviating. Seek consensus on the talk page before making many "obvious" corrections. Open the discussion under a subhead that uses the word "era" or "eon". Briefly state the reason. Personal reasons are usually not justification.

Users
Other's user pages are one of the best places to learn about Wikipedia. Hang out. Click on user names. Look at their contributions. Some contributors are more "things and events" oriented. They're a gold mine of information. Some (like me) play more of an idea-and-structuring role. I'm most interested in words, while others are most interested in things on Wikipedia. It takes all kinds. I can appreciate Wikipedia's bare reality much better now after looking at others user pages and contributions lists.

User:Marx01: Good example of a highly stylized user page that makes for a unique visitor experience.

Grutness: Spectacular case of success sickness, and an ongoing show of strength.

User_talk:Ohms_law: No user page, but good writer. And Influential. Signs as V=I*R.

User:Antandrus: Wikipedia's finest topical island.

Wikt:User:Eclecticology: An influential wiki architect. Study his vision on data hierarchy, and then go and size-down too-large articles with precision.

Ty: Role model. Rare combination of intelligence and civility. Good tips for beginners.

User_talk:Guillen: Bottom of the barrel. Barely tolerable, for the sad practice of hope.

User:Rd232: Exemplary. An essence of Wikipedia.

Like me
Wanna says have similarities:

User:NapoliRoma 'Probably right, but incomprehensible'

Humor
I find a peculiar irony on discussion pages.

That wasn't funny? Try these
 * I just fixed a typo on the WikiGnome page.
 * "Italicize section titles unless they are section titles." (No logical conflict, just hypocracy: are should be (italicized).)
 * The written request by Sanaz Alavi at Help talk:Searching... So yesterday.
 * Talk:Tuple Doh!
 * The search result for shows a spurious NOTOC_ in the search result page for Wiki markup.

A certain linguistic relativity subconsciously puts the discussion page "speaker" into a mode akin to an "accent" of the subject, which is distracting obstacle to the attempted communication. Or is it just my WPDP-PTSD? (Note: WP:AGF, User:Cpiral/R3R, WP:TINC.)

Myself
I aspire to own a valuable set of biases.

Bio
Greetings. My name is James Hoppe, and I'm on Google! I spend my days reading, writing, and volunteering in the community.
 * 48 yr old white male (beginning 30 Oct 2010)
 * resident of Seattle, WA for most of 19 years
 * Electrical Engineering degree in 1989 from University of Houston.
 * Cellular Telephone Central System Operations person for 10 yr.
 * Retired 11 yr.
 * Single, never married, no children

During my working years I traveled, working on Ericsson, Lucent, and Motorola switches: I also lived for over two years on a research vessel in the waters off Alaska and Mexico, while serving as a reflection seismologist, and in similar capacity, worked the roadsides in rural areas of the united states of Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York.
 * Hawaii (1.5 yr CDMA rollout)
 * Chicago (1 yr Global Support Center)
 * San Diego (6 mos System Improvement Project (SIP))
 * Las Vegas (6 mos Contractor)
 * Sri Lanka (6 mos Year 2000 problem (Y2K))
 * Mexico (6 mos SIP)
 * China (2 mos Y2K)
 * Ghana (2 mos Y2K)
 * Japan (2 mos Y2K)
 * Philippines (6 mos Replace Manila's entire Cellular System)
 * Korea (Pusan, 7 mos Consultant role)

My early retirement came from a string of "misfortunes". (They were neither motorized nor brain-related, and no, I did not sue.) I survived only by being very still and reflecting upon religion, then philosophy, then science anew. In that critical span of time I acquired rationales which enriched me to pay more attention to the "Why?" of things that move, and to give more admission to the whereto.

Poetic choice of username
(Caveat Lector: the following combines science of an encyclopedia with the religion of an encyclopedia.)

What "Cpiral" signifies is a "seeing" spiral. Seeing because that is what is required for direction, which editing Wikipedia seems to be. Also "direction" because that is what a spiral does to a circle. Circle because Cpiral logic might graduate a "loopy" article from circular logic, applying an opposing truth to point to a higher, at-most spherical, objectivity. I like to think of Cp i r al Cpiral  on Wikipedia as a roving electromagnetic field, with its orthogonal E and M fields. The content of an encyclopedia is magnetic to readers anyway, but a wiki-encyclopedia is an electrifying force to writers and editors, where dimensions manifest in manifold ways in the words of the English language. From my aim of an article with a neutral point of view, my attention fields the yet unseen dimension in the common word, where others have paddled before and yet not seen or left the wake I seek. I'm no star, but you can call me Ray, because Cpiral's an array of radiating ideation.
 * Words and ideas in a mere article evolve from a small circle of interior content to encompass a larger exterior content, if you will. But! An encyclopedia, all knowledge; plus a wiki, all people; plus an uninhibited social forum, all personalities, are the linked equivalent to the "meta-letters" of a "meta-alphabet" which is linking earthlings in a talk space, with infinite, subject space citing "new worlds" that are motivating the propelling, by the paging out of our own species, toward its real property, like how earth spins 'round sun lines, a toroid of toroids, linking, in an ever-rocking talk space, bidirectional currency, inducing, finally, a magnetic shift driving one more, articulating dimension from out there onto the stack we already have in the evolving article.
 * The circle is a symbol of completion, and the spiral a symbol of direction. And in case of an intractable, electrical storm, life goes on, for Wikipedia is a big sea with many portals.
 * The sound of of my keyring appeared during the required moment of decision.

I also considered Neurogenesis...

Thanks for reading.