User:Indefatigable

I am a resident of Edmonton, Alberta, who started editing Wikipedia in August 2003. Prior to that, I had heard rumblings and rumours of the project, but had never bothered to check it out, thinking the concept of anybody being able to edit pages would doom the project to never getting off the ground. However, when I finally looked at Wikipedia, I was quite impressed and became an instant believer.

I'm a persnickety editor who believes in getting commas, capitals, spelling, diacritical marks, and especially apostrophes exactly right, and a lot of my Wikipedia work is in this area.

Subjects of interest:
 * Canadian history
 * Railways
 * Constitutional development
 * Canadian geography
 * Heraldry
 * Flags
 * Ceremonial aspects of navies, armies and air forces
 * Calendars
 * Units of measure

Annual summer wikibreak
Wikipedia began to interfere with other aspects of my life early in 2006. In addition to spending too much time on Wikipedia and not enough on other important things, I was far too obsessed with checking my watchlist, so much so that I was making few edits, and the ones I did make did not add much value to the articles. I therefore took a summer "sabbatical" away from Wikipedia, and I did no editing and rarely checked my watchlist from Victoria Day to Labour Day 2006. This is now an annual break for me: I rarely edit from the Friday before Victoria Day until the Tuesday after Labour Day.

Source of the user name
I chose the handle simply because indefatigable is one of my favourite words. When I first came across it, I could immediately tell its meaning by breaking it into its roots, but I was puzzled at how to pronounce it (I'm usually good at guessing the pronunciation of a word I haven't seen before) until I finally got around to looking it up. Then I began to like it even more because of its unusual rhythm for an English word: two unstressed syllables, a stressed, and three more unstressed (in de FA ti ga ble). Then I ran into the word again in a list with other grand-sounding names of British warships built in the arms race preceding the First World War. HMS Indefatigable was sunk in the Battle of Jutland. Another reason I chose the handle is that I think (or wish) that it describes my character. And of course, who can forget "Camelot" from Monty Python and the Holy Grail: "In war we're tough and able, / Quite in-dee-fat-ee-gay-bull; / Between our quests we sequin vests / And impersonate Clark Gable."

Full disclosure
Here is a list of my points of view that may inadvertently appear in my edits.


 * Federalist. In my teenage years, I had an inclination towards western separatism, and didn't really care if Quebec was in Canada or not. However, just as there is no more annoying non-smoker than an ex-smoker, there is no stronger federalist than an ex-separatist. After a couple trips across the Dominion, and a year living in Montreal (I got to vote "no" in 1995), I "saw the light", and I am now the mapleleafiest thing going.
 * Monarchist. I can't be neutral on this; therefore I recuse myself from all but minor edits of the relevant articles.  I wish the hard-core republicans would do the same.

fr:Utilisateur:Indéfatigable