User:Ivanvector

Welcome to my user page! I am a long-time contributor to Wikipedia, first registering my account on 8 October 2009. I'm proudly Canadian and an accountant by profession, but my interests on Wikipedia cover a very wide range of topics. I am originally from London, Ontario and spent much of the 2010s in Toronto, although I now live on (in?) Prince Edward Island.

Off-wiki, I can be found on a number of websites such as my cat's blog, usually using the name "ivanvector". Chances are good that if you're interacting with "ivanvector" on another site, you're interacting with me, but that is not guaranteed. There are certainly websites where others have taken the name "ivanvector", and some of them are attempts to impersonate me. If you need to confirm that an off-wiki ivanvector is actually me, please post a note on my talk page and await a response from my main account. I am no longer active on Twitter and will not respond to messages there; the only social media I'm regularly active on is my Mastodon account, @ivanvector@oceanplayground.social. Note that I do not deal with Wikipedia matters through social media, I have a talk page for that.

Wikipedia administration
I have been an administrator on English Wikipedia since 27 December 2016 (RfA) and a CheckUser since 9 October 2018 (CUOS 2018, global rights log). You can see stats on my administrative actions here, or browse logs of things I commonly do such as blocks, deletions, and page protection. Ever since a security incident in January 2021 I am more active with my non-privileged account,. I am notified and respond just as quickly to messages left for either account, however pings are inconsistent.

You can email me using the form at Special:EmailUser/Ivanvector, or the "Email this user" link in the sidebar (desktop only). I am a human resources professional and experienced in private communications, and I will try to keep your email communication private, however I cannot and do not guarantee that any information sent this way will not be seen by others. I may share limited information with other privileged users for administrative purposes, unless you ask me not to in which case I may not be able to help.

I also have a personal policy of transparency: if you email me to request administrative action which does not need to be kept private, I will ask you to make the request at the appropriate Wikipedia noticeboard. You will get a faster response by posting at a noticeboard in the first place. Noticeboards are continuously monitored by several hundred administrators and thousands of other users who may be able to handle your request or answer your question, while my email is only monitored by one person (me) and only when I happen to have it open. For truly private matters, or if you're not sure, please email and I will advise.

If you have received a message that a block prevents you from editing, then you have also received instructions to have the block lifted. You should also read the guide to appealing blocks. If you have read them and you still think you should email me, read the instructions again. If you have exhausted all other options and still think you need to email me, please explain why in your message. If you have obviously emailed me without reading the instructions I will delete your email without responding.

All Wikimedia Foundation websites are separate projects with separate governance and administration. I am an administrator on English Wikipedia only, and do not have a privileged account on any other project. If you need an administrator's assistance on another project you must ask an administrator on that project. If you leave me a message on another website I will not respond; most likely I won't see your message at all. Abuse of cross-wiki messaging may result in your account being blocked on all Wikimedia Foundation websites.

As of May 2021, due to the Freenode/Libera Chat controversy, I am not monitoring IRC channels and cannot be contacted through any IRC network.

Names and pronouns
My real name is not Ivan Vector, which many people find confusing. My real name is Greg, but I don't take offense in being referred to by my pseudonym, nor by Ives, Ivan, Vector, or other variations. I'm also not Russian, as some users think this name implies. For what it's worth I am primarily English with an odd mix of French, Irish, Scottish, Dutch, Slovak and Jewish heritage, and my username is a reference to an inside joke from when I was in engineering school.

There have been many disputes on Wikipedia about the use of gender-neutral pronouns. I try to assume gender neutrality if a user has not stated their pronouns, and refer to most users using singular they. I do my best to respect all users' wishes in this regard, and if I have misgendered you it is not out of malice but out of cluelessness. I identify as male, and you can use the male gendered pronouns (he/him/his, etc.) to refer to me, but I won't take offense to any particular set of pronouns.

What I do around here
My core editing philosophy is to not give a fuck. You shouldn't either. I don't do things that I expect to get credit for, or to rack up my edit counter, or to please or anger anyone. I do things because they are the right things to do. I certainly make mistakes; if you disagree with something I've done, I absolutely welcome you to inform me and we can discuss a solution.

I spend a significant portion of my Wikipedia time contributing to discussions about content. You will see me in places like redirects for discussion, sockpuppet investigations, move discussions and reviews, as well as patrolling pending changes and reverting vandalism. I sometimes dabble in the disambiguation challenge, and quite often I'm just around doing my own thing.

Languages
I am fluent in my native language, English, and read and write at a professional level. I speak with what has been called a southern Ontario urban accent. I have also studied French academically and Spanish for travelling, which has come in handy in evaluating foreign-language redirects, for example. I have a handful of edits on the Spanish and French Wikipedias, and have done some work on Simple English Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and Wikimedia Commons. On this Wikipedia I write in Canadian English unless there is a good reason to use a different local variation. On the other Wikipedias I just write poorly.

Submitted articles
The vast majority of my article-space edits are minor things like spelling and grammar corrections, general copy-editing, navigation templates and vandalism patrol. I've also ended up being credited as the creator of a few pages where all of the older revisions were deleted, due to copyright violations I worked on repairing. The pages I list here I feel are my most significant real content contributions.

Projects and interests
I add userboxen to this section to give a little more detail about me as a person, identify projects I regularly or occasionally participate in, and to make myself available for connections to other users with similar interests. For example, the userbox with "gtr-2" indicates that I am a novice guitarist, and adds my user page to the category Wikipedian guitarists, a list of all of the Wikipedia users who play guitar. If you were looking for help from an editor who plays guitar for some reason, that would be a good place to start looking.

I've added and removed a lot of userboxen over the years, eventually settling on this collapsed-box format which may be less-than-ideal on narrow monitors (and probably awful on mobile). If you have a userbox you think I should add, you should tell me about it.

Recognition from fellow editors
Barnstars and WikiFun are interesting and creative ways for Wikipedians to show appreciation for one another. This is a selection of appreciation notices and templates that fellow editors have left for me over the years.


 * Well thank you! I should point out that the article was already 40k before I ever touched it. What I've done is mostly just clean-up of what many other users contributed in the past, and plenty of others have helped. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:33, 31 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Thank you! ツ


 * A red-billed francolin for you!

For helping unscrew the mess I created in trying to bring a debate to its conclusion, and getting everything settled with a minimum of rancor, I present you this Peace Barnstar. I've probably done this wrong too.


 * I'll second that. Articles should be neutral, but ~I think a bit of humo(u)r at editor-side pages greases the wheels. Si Trew (talk) 14:24, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

For calling for the deletion of Fox News Channel I present to the editor this WP:TROUT. That was just silly.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 22:20, 4 May 2015 (UTC)



Lenticel ( talk ) has given you a Cheeseburger! Cheeseburgers promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a Cheeseburger, whether it be someone you've had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Happy eating!

Spread the goodness of Cheeseburgers by adding {{subst:Cheeseburger}} to their talk page with a friendly message, or eat this cheeseburger on the giver's talk page with {{subst:burger-munch}}!

Enjoy your wiki-burger! :) -- Lenticel ( talk ) 00:18, 18 February 2015 (UTC)


 * Heh :) Thanks! Ivanvector (talk) 16:55, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

You have been trouted for: You asked for it :P
 * Ha! I still don't know much of anything about deleting images though. :( Ivanvector (talk) 17:09, 20 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you! But this beer should definitely go to, for actually fixing the article. Ivanvector (talk) 21:25, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

The Maple Leaf
To my knowledge, I am the first editor to employ the red maple leaf emoji in my signature, having started with this edit on 30 June 2015 at 21:58 UTC, and it pleases me greatly that several other users have since followed my lead. If you would like to flaunt your Canadian-ness to the world (or just really like appreciate envy your hoser brethren) visit Special:Preferences and add   to your signature where you would like the maple leaf to appear. Note that the use of templates in signatures is discouraged, so using red directly is not possible. Also note that you can't use the proper Canadian spelling of colour in the code, because of systemic bias against us.

I occasionally turn the maple leaf blue when discussing the Toronto Blue Jays, even though the maple leaf in their logo is red. I don't change it when discussing the Toronto Maple Leafs, even though their logo is a blue maple leaf.

I'd also appreciate being corrected if I am in fact not the first to use the maple leaf. Credit where credit's due, eh?

UPDATE: as of some time in late summer 2016, the character set containing the character was given native colouring; subsequently, at least for me, the icon always appears yellow regardless of the coded colour. Yellow maple leaves don't mean anything to me, so I've removed it from my signature.

Accountability
In the interest of transparency, should there ever be a need to mine my contributions, I am aware of the following edits which were made by other people on my computer while logged in, or edits I made while logged out:
 * - an edit actually made by while carelessly using my laptop. After I asked, he admitted the error. For the record I stand by the assertion that Nikola Tesla was a mad scientist.&#91;citation needed&#93;
 * - a test of whether anonymous editors could post into active requests for adminship pages. At the time they could, obviously. The IP used here is a WIND Mobile dynamic IP, the other edits from that address are not mine.

I have one alternative account,, confirmed here, which I use for editing in public places or anywhere that I'm not confident that my connection is secure. Since November 2018 I also use PEIsquirrel for semiautomated edits with AutoWikiBrowser (permission confirmed here). Although real squirrels keep finding a way into my basement, PEIsquirrel holds no other privileges.

I have a second reserved account,, reserved to prevent trolling. As of November 2018 I do not use this account.

I have no other accounts other than these three, and am reasonably certain that I have never edited as an IP other than what is listed here. Any contributions from any other account claiming to be in my name are not me and the user should be blocked immediately.

Favourites

 * Favourite sports statistic: the NHL record for most combined points by two brothers is 2,861. It is held by Wayne Gretzky (2,857) and his brother Brent (4).