User:Fredsmith2/Archive 1

Add content please
Here's some text you can copy and paste when some wikipedian that is too hoity toity or fancy schmancy reverts your edits and quotes a bunch of confusing policies by thier acronyms. These folks should remember that wikipedia isn't a real encyclopedia, it's a wiki.

I appreciate your attempts at making wikipedia into an encyclopedia, but your efforts are in violation of one or more of wikipedia's behavioral policies of Please do not bite the newcomers, Etiquette. You might find one or more of these pages helpful in returning to the spirit of wikipedia: No angry mastodons, Don't be a fanatic, Editing Under the Influence, Don't smother conflict.

Also, the following may be beneficial for you to review: Ignore all rules, Be bold, Build the web, Polling is not a substitute for discussion, NOT, Consensus, Ownership of articles, Assume good faith, Assume the assumption of good faith, Assume good wraith.

WP:WikiProject Newcomers
I'm thinking about helping to start WP:WikiProject Newcomers. My take on it would be something like this:
 * 1) In addition to the regular welcome tag, there would be a welcome/help tag
 * 2) This welcome/help tag would acknowledge that even though newbies tend to work initially on articles they may have a conflict of interest with, there are ways for them to contribute
 * 3) This would encourage newbies to put questions on their talk pages, especially about articles they have conflicts of interest with.
 * 4) There would be a template that newbies could tag their page with, that could request help on editing an article they're interested in, but scared of editing.

Example information
This is something that can steer a newbie toward editing objectively:
 * 1) You don't have to admit that you have a conflict of interest, and you don't have to admit any personal information about yourself.  You don't have to admit where you work, what books you read, what you do for fun, what your name is, what your relatives names are.  In fact, User:Fredsmith2 suggests that you admit none of this, especially while you're a newbie.
 * 2) *There are certain admins want you to admit everything, because then they had a definite case to build against you for WP:COI and a case to nominate your articles for deletion. But technically, as of today, you don't have to fess up to anything. There are lots of people who won't tell you that, just like the police officer won't tell you that you don't have to use a breathalyzer or take their drunkenness tests. But, you don't have to admit to anything. Admitting to stuff just makes the admin's job easier, much the same as admitting you're drunk makes the police officer's job easier.
 * 3) Because you're connected to certain articles, you really should have a 3rd party do the editing of those articles. If I were you, I'd focus your efforts on getting the stuff you're connected to in the paper, in books, or other wikipedia-quotable sources, and once your subject is in the paper more, post something to the welcome board, requesting for someone to integrate the newspaper articles into the article.
 * 4) Edit a lot of different kinds of articles, rather than just ones you're connected to.
 * 5) Edit articles that are connected to your subject, but ones that you're not connected to, such as San Francisco AIDS Foundation and Hills Like White Elephants. The better the articles linking into the thing you're interested about, the more chance you have of other editors helping with the pages you're connected to.

Looking for nice wikipedians
Are there any wikipedians who have been on here for more than a year and who edit regularly who haven't turned into...I'm not sure what the right word is...

Please don't bite the newbies
I've decided to start defending the newbies Here's a list of my newbie defense posts:  

Please, please, please don't bite the newbies
The newbies are future wikipedians who aren't bastards. Out with the old, in with the new, please.

Seriously folks, please don't bite the newbies
Please?

Pending lawsuits
Why am I so passionate about those COI tags? It's because they really open wikipedia up for a huge lawsuit that wikipedia will lose. What's very likely to happen in the future, is an overzealous admin, who really likes to hunt down personal information on people, is going to go too far, and the newbie, who will get bitten hard by this admin is going to sue wikipedia, and win, for invasion of privacy.

There's a movement toward making newbies fess up all of their personal information before they can edit it, and from what I can tell, it's both against the original spirit of wikipedia, and all it does is contribute toward the demise of wikipedia.

Why do I think the COI tags need to be deleted? Because they really don't have anything to do with WP:COI. They have a lot more to do with people using wikipedia for advertising than for COI.

Desperately needed articles
Please someone create these Wikipedia policies:
 * Not a real encyclopedia. Just because Wikipedia tries to get encyclopedic content doesn't make it a real encyclopedia.  It's a wiki, not an encyclopedia.
 * Don't be a bastard. This is for those folks who bite the newbies, and who are generally unpleasant.
 * Wikipedia's weird talk-page language. You don't learn this until you've been a contributor for a while.  You can't speak in real, unfiltered language when talking in wikipedia.  Everyone who is still here after a year or so speaks in an arcane wikipedia-friendly language.  Someone needs to document this and explain it so that there's not a 1-year learning curve.
 * Emotional maturity test to become an admin. I won't accept any offers to become an admin until Wikipedia has emotional maturity requirements for administrators.  I think that would be good for Wikipedia, but it would also get rid of a lot of administrators.
 * Wikipedia is too negative. My assessment on why wikipedia is such a hostile and unfriendly place, especially toward newcomers, is its general negativity in its policy pages.  The "What Wikipedia is/isn't" was a good idea, but all of these things need to be overhauled to tell us what we need to do, not telling us what we don't need to do.

Wikipedia content indicating the future demise of wikipedia
Wikipedia, like Wal-Mart, will eventually fall. Here are the weak links in the chain, that signify the beginning of the demise of wikipedia. That reminds me, I need to sell my stock in Wal-Mart.
 * Template:COI2
 * Template:COI
 * Ignore_all_rules, because it's never enforced.
 * BITE, because even though technically it's a behavioral guideline, it's never enforced. With the respect that most established users give to WP:BITE, it should be downgraded from a guideline to an "unused suggestion."