User:David Gerard/old



David Gerard is an utter wikipediholic. He is apparently an administrator  and former arbitrator and helps clear the incoming spam on wikien-l. He is from Australia and lives in Walthamstow, London with his wife, and his girlfriend nearby.

My wife foolishly directed me here and I became an instant addict. Like Barney Gumble having that first beer.

My life has been spent filling my head with unbelievable quantities of trivia and rubbish. Here's a chance to get some of it out.

As a recovering editor, I can't see a grammatical or spelling error without my red-pencil hand twitching. Wikipedia provides tremendous opportunity in this field.

Contacting me
Put it on the article talk page in the first instance, my talk page in the second. If you email me stuff that would normally go on a talk page, I'll likely ignore it. I've also erroneously deleted such mail as spam before ...

Wikipedia press enquiries: Email me directly (wp at davidgerard dot co dot uk).

If you're inadvertently affected by a block I've made, do of course email. (Direct address: wp at davidgerard dot co dot uk.) Collateral damage is bad.

In Soviet Wikipedia, job finds YOU!
These are as well as writing and editing articles. If you are accused of being in the Cabal, count how many Wikipedia jobs you have. If it's ten or more, you are.


 * Administrator (mostly vandal and troll fighting; see WP:ANI)
 * Ex-arbitrator (retired, thank goodness; still on list to advise)
 * arbcom-l list admin (almost no work)
 * wikien-l list admin (this is actually work)
 * #wikipedia channel op (fun fun fun)
 * #wikimedia-au channel op (pretty quiet as yet)
 * James F. says he's going to land me with others. Oh boy.
 * CheckUser on en:
 * checkuser-l list admin (almost no work)
 * Communications committee (Press)
 * UK-based press contact for the Wikimedia Foundation ("You're on Irish radio in 40 minutes" &mdash; Danny)
 * To be UK press contact for Wikimedia UK
 * To be a director for Wikimedia UK (spork!!)
 * WikiProject Scientology participant (wrote lots of the project page)
 * Calming ruffled feathers as needed
 * Exacerbating ruffled feathers as needed
 * At least three five Wikipedia cabals, probably more if I thought about it

"On Wikipedia, the reward for a job well done is another three jobs" &mdash; me. This is because when a new task comes up, people tend to look for someone that they know already has competence and a clue. This is probably a feature rather than a bug. I think.

Oh &mdash; and whine about something long enough and you'll probably get the precise job you didn't want fixing it. "It may not be what your job or wife need, but you should have thought of that before you demonstrated sanity" &mdash; Snowspinner

I must write more articles
And not copyedit so much. And so must you. My scratchpad (for the terminally bored or work-avoidant). The Problem With Music.

Wikipedia 1.0 is my current obsession. Go to List of articles all languages should have and List of articles all languages should have and help bring all listed articles to Featured Article status.

I started WikiProject Scientology, Xenu help me. NPOV is pretty much a new approach to Web-based writing about Scientology.

The "Fix Crappy Prose" Challenge
I'd like everyone reading this who thinks they're a pretty good writer to middle-click* "Random page" twenty times and rewrite any crappy prose without sacrificing facts. Do this at least once a week.

Detail and accuracy beat eloquence when the choice arises, but that does not justify crappy prose.

If you're feeling particularly strong and have a fresh pack of Gudangs and a bottle of whisky to hand, there's a Metric Shitload of stuff on Category:Articles that need to be wikified that can only be fixed by hard editorial slog.

* or control-click or command-click. You do use Firefox, right?

My personal style guide

 * "It's about viral payload density." &mdash; John Hawkes-Reed

We're writing articles for someone who knows nothing about a topic but needs to get up to speed really quickly. You have ten seconds.


 * Who, what, where, when, why?
 * Summary lead, then inverted pyramid.
 * Omit needless words.
 * The Economist Style Guide: clarity with precision. ("I love The Economist. It's like a really rational guy on crack." &mdash; Erithromycin)
 * HOWTO: write bad documentation that looks good. "Why" is almost more important than "what."
 * Notes on brevity.

I sometimes picture my reader as a very bright ten- to twelve-year-old. Someone with a good reading age, but who knows nothing yet. Did you used to devour encyclopaedias as a kid?

Feature brag

 * GNU/Linux naming controversy &mdash; featured July 1, 2004 &mdash; front page July 2, 2004
 * Xenu &mdash; featured December 21, 2004 &mdash; front page February 19, 2005
 * X Window System &mdash; featured February 4, 2005 &mdash; front page September 3, 2005
 * Space opera in Scientology doctrine &mdash; featured July 16, 2005 &mdash; front page September 10, 2005

That's two FA classifications (Computing and Religion and belief) ... I need one more.

Sockpuppetry and CheckUser
I have the 'l33t power of CheckUser, a sysadmin-level facility to match IPs to usernames on the English Wikipedia, so that the Arbitration Committee doesn't have to bug the devs. I also administer the mailing list.

I can't promise a timescale for response, even for the plausibly AC-related ones. But I will try. Ask on the talk page.

Note that I can't check Wikipedias other than the English one. For a full list of users with CheckUser access across projects, see Stewards. If your Wikipedia has a problem, you need to find someone who knows lots about interpreting IPs and net abuse who your wiki trusts to check this stuff out, then ask the stewards to give you permission on this page.

If you've been given this power on another wiki, you should join the mailing list. I'm very happy to help make sense of IP evidence if you can't work out what's up with something or whether an excuse seems plausible.

I also have a sock puppet of my very own: User:Querulous, my favourite example user.

Text recovery
If you need access to a Wikipedia article that has been deleted, ask me. If it's not a copyright violation, libel or similar, I will make the text available to you.

Note that using the text to recreate the deleted content is speedyable, and using it to keep it hanging around in your userspace has gotten editors penalized before. But that's your problem.

Expertise and deletion
If you can verify for me that you are a subject expert in a subject considered notable enough to include on Wikiedia, I will, on your say-so, close any deletion debate as "keep" within your field of expertise, and will undelete any articles within your field that you say are notable.

A note on deletions
WP:AFD's culture is widely considered somewhat problematic. That said, almost all of what appears on it does in fact deserve as quick, painful and messy a death as can be achieved. If you think you're an inclusionist, do Special:Newpages patrol some time. Oh My Goodness.

Also, if I go on IRC these days, I'm usually there for a reason. Please put Deletion 101 discussion questions on my talk page.

Wikipedia meetups
These are always really good. I recommend them highly. It's amazing what a difference it makes to your view of Wikipedia to meet your fellow editors and have a drink with them. I attend the London ones where possible.

The following users are MY FAULT

 * Arkady Rose
 * Malkin

Hey, kid &mdash; your first puff of Wikicrack's free.

Trivia
Your humble editor has been inducted into the Western Australian Music Industry Association's Hall of Fame. I got in and Bon Scott didn't. User:Redcountess will never forgive me.