User:DisillusionedBitterAndKnackered

DisillusionedBitterAndKnackered is a mostly ex-user, of many years' experience, who is – ah, you guessed! – disillusioned, bitter and knackered. 

I first edited this encyclopaedia in September 2002 and my attempts to give it up have not yet been wholly successful. In my worse moments I sometimes think of Wikipedia as a graveyard of creativity and common sense, into which I hoped to avoid once again being drawn, and I sometimes feel that I shouldn't really have this account at all. Ho hum. On the other hand, to be fair, I have other moments of thinking, er, hang on, this is quite good actually, and I like it. Tsk! Such indecision ...

And then I have other other moments of thinking, yes, I was right all the time about the graveyard.


 * Famous quote: "The collegial editing environment on Wikipedia would be just fine if it wasn't for all those other people."
 * Another quote: "its obvious you are stupid and you have no PH.D." This brilliant rejoinder deserves to be famous; I love it very much and intend to use it at every possible opportunity to quell dissent in editorial debates. Without even paying a licence fee. This in so many ways represents the True Spirit of Wikipedia&trade;.
 * Another very perceptive quote: "I bet you guys are proper boring editing Wikipedia all day everyday". Yes, yes we are. Well spotted.
 * ... and perhaps the most important quote of them all: "This is a community, not a crazy den of pigs." Indeed. It was said a fair while back but is still referred to from time to time.

Have I been rude to you? I'm sorry
I try to not get over-involved here, and to edit politely, and especially not to get angry – see my slightly annoying cutesy (but sincere) list below. The trouble is that I sometimes get it wrong, I suppose because it's something I'm sometimes passionate about, or at least that I care about a bit. I've been editing the wretched thing, as noted above, since September 2002 and (a) I do care about it more than I usually like to admit but (b) I sometimes let it get to me in ways that vary from a bit unhelpful to really alarmingly stupid and extreme. If we add in to this that I do have plenty of actual proper government-certified gold-plated shrinkwrapped heatsealed stresses out there in the supposedly real world (whatever that is) ... well, it's not great. Sometimes if I am yelling at someone about the spelling of Middlesbrough and being horrible about it, it is not repeat not about you and this encyclopaedia – it is probably some stupid real-world stress poisoning my brain and making me take it out on someone here in a completely inappropriate way. So I am sorry if that was you. I sometimes wonder if I should just pack it in completely. Taking breaks has not been an entirely successful treatment for this either ... "disastrous" would be more like it.

And yeah, sure, we all have stresses to deal with, what's so special about you? is a perfectly reasonable response to this. But whilst I'm sorry about your stress, everyone deals with it differently and clearly many people are better at it than I ... and some are worse.

I am not sure what the way forward is, or if there is one. But in the meantime, while I try to see how to do this better, I am really very sorry if I have been vile to you. Apologies. I'm trying to improve my approach and to remember my own rules.


 * You total utter bastard. People from Middlesboro are people too, you know!! Great to see you've got more more of this wisdom splashed all over this so-called cutesy "User page" Martinevans123 (talk) 22:12, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Middlesbrough is not Middlesborough
Middlesbrough is not Middlesborough. Middlesbrough is in the north east of England. Middlesborough (or Middlesboro) is in Kentucky. The spellings are not interchangeable. Honest.

Seamless is not Seemless
Seamless is not Seemless. Please check the links. Seamless means without a seam - you know, a seam like a line of stitching or a seam of coal - so it's without a noticeable join. That's what all the editors writing "can be played back seamlessly with the crossfading backend" and other such marvellous things actually mean. It is seamless: it has no seam. You can't see the join. Seemless, on the other hand, is a Wretched Young Persons' Popular Music Ensemble&trade; which flourished 2002-2009. Seemless is not a real English word: it is a witty neologism like Beatles. Everyone knows what The Beatles are, but few people think that beetle is spelt otherwise. Similarly, most people - it is to be hoped - know that "seamless" is the correct spelling in precisely 99.78% of all cases. In general, I change "seemless" where it is blatantly a mistake, and leave it alone where it is or might be the word related to Wretched Young Persons' Popular Music&trade;. OK? Goodoh! :)

Clement Attlee is not Clement Atlee
... nor any other misspelling. It would be nice to get this right. Really.


 * One A


 * Two Ts


 * One L


 * Two Es

Consensus is not Concensus
The one on the left is correct. The one on the right is a made-up spelling, or "wrong" as it is sometimes daringly termed. Consensus is related to consent, and has sweet FA to do with the census. Geddit? Good.

Drive-by tagging is evil, wrong and lazy
I think it's a spectacularly useless piece of editing to add an NPOV tag (and certain others) to an article without having the basic courtesy to go to the Talk page and explain what's wrong with it. People who do this should (1) look at what the NPOV tag actually says (because I must conclude, from their behaviour, that they have never actually bothered to do so) and (2) pop in and have a nice little read of WP:DRIVEBY where it says, inter alia: It is not an act of "last resort" to drop in for three seconds to an article, tag it, and run away. If you do this, and I remove your lazy driveby tag, well, what did you expect? Look again: The editor who adds the tag must address the issues on the talk page. Simple enough, no?
 * Drive-by tagging is strongly discouraged. The editor who adds the tag must address the issues on the talk page, pointing to specific issues that are actionable within the content policies, namely Neutral point of view, Verifiability, No original research and Biographies of living persons. Simply being of the opinion that a page is not neutral is not sufficient to justify the addition of the tag. Tags should be added as a last resort.

Stolen genius
My own safety copy of Foxhill's excellent page Internet reference sites accessible with a valid UK Library card.

Article blame
This is was very useful. (But the "official" one on the History page is pretty good too.)

Whatever
Whatever. It's only an encyclopaedia.

Reminder 1
See above under "Whatever".

Reminder 2
For stress-related reasons it is better to stay away from contentious areas and stick to bunnies, kittens etc or whatever seems least likely to erupt into hissy fits. There are too many difficult people with too much time in their hands. It's a classic no-win/no-win situation.

Reminder 3
See above under "Whatever". Rinse and repeat.

Interesting stuff about editing here

 * Rjgibb: An editorial viewpoint (or thoughts on the FAC)
 * Wetman's user page
 * Frog boiling - Runciman reviews Lih (LRB)
 * Mike Christie: How I survive Wikipedia
 * Awickert: Curmudgeonly opinions
 * Antandrus: Observations on Wikipedia behavior

Note: these were mostly nicked directly or indirectly from User:Jimmy Pitt. Sadly he no longer edits here as of 2011: draw your own conclusions.

Count to 10
Count to ten

And do it again
Lots more times

Pause a bit
Stop and Think What You're Doing

Make the most of it
Do something better with your time than getting angry with some person on the Interwebs.

At the end of the day
Actually, who gives a monkey's woo-wa?

Don't do it anyway
It is always always always better not to react. Really.

It's never too late
And even if it's already started to go a bit pear-shaped ...

To just walk away
... you can still disengage and go and do something else. Or make tea.

Interventions
I'm trying to think of one example of where I have tried to help/intervene with a user who was having a disruptive efffect – not an out-and-out vandal, but someone trying to do it right, their way, and getting it wrong – and it has ended well. I haven't come up with one yet. How depressing.

Codicil to protocol 9.5a, subsection (i)
Which leads me to wonder if there is actually any point in this at all.

Notes to self
M 38; S 30; H 111; C 8 (1,0); H2; A! (numbers are stale)

CCSS CCCS CSCS