User:John Fader

Stuff I did
keydrive, passport, Berti Vogts, USB mass storage interface, Universal Serial Bus, Kimberly Fortier, Red triangle, Dirty Harry, Tharg the Mighty, Barrowland Ballroom, Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, Boreham, Saajid Badat, Police Service of Northern Ireland, Hugh Orde, Gunther von Hagens, Black Mesa, Arizona, Black Mesa, Hervé Gaymard, Thierry Breton, Tit for Tat, Sonny Landham, Fresh Air, Iranian Embassy Siege, Wasfi al-Tal, Northern Bank robbery, Scutum (shield), Royal Ulster Constabulary, Deep fried Mars bar, XScreenSaver, Global dimming, Sophia University, Robert Stirling, Technology in Atlas Shrugged, Gray's Anatomy images with missing articles, Listed building, Edwyn Collins, Pacheco Pass, Peter Palumbo, Thiokol, MKB Raduga, Cape Farewell, Greenland, Crathie, Aberdeenshire, Crathie Kirk, Emanuel Wynne, Eduardo Paolozzi, Computer Misuse Act 1990, Greasemonkey, Arno Allan Penzias

Rio PMP300, Surface-mount technology closeup, Surface-mount technology closeup annotated, keydrive internals, Playa, Antelope Valley, Gmail inbox, Gmail threaded view, Gmail compose view, Tonopah Test Range, Thiokol airbags use on Mars Pathfinder, Loch Lubnaig, Enric Miralles' Santa Catalina market in Barcelona, Façade of Casa Batlló, Roof details of Casa Batlló, Barcelona Pavilion, Ninety Mile Beach, Victoria, Aupouri Peninsula, Lake Taupo, Taranaki, Otago Harbour, Wellington, Gisborne, Mahia Peninsula, Hawke Bay, Napier, New Zealand, Lake Wakatipu, Lake Rotorua, Cape Farewell, Greenland, Cape Farewell, New Zealand, Farewell Spit, Flag of the pirate Stede Bonnet, Flag of the pirate Blackbeard, Flag of the pirate Henry Every, Flag of the pirate Thomas Tew, Flag of the pirate Emanuel Wynne, Flag of the pirate Calico Jack, Edwards Air Force Base, Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, Dryden Flight Research Center, Greasemonkey

My extremist views

 * Well written popular culture articles are not "fancruft"; they are the (invaluable) gateway drug for wikipedia. If some teenager comes to read about The Itchy & Scratchy Show and leaves knowing what Socialist realism is (via Worker and Parasite) then the wikipedia has earned its keep.
 * 3RR is good (or at least better than the alternatives). If people can't learn basic social skills, it's better to be rid of them than deprive wikipedia's overwhelmingly well-adjusted editorbase the chance to edit an article (something denied them either by permitting the editwar to continue or protecting the page). Roll on 2RR.
 * We shouldn't have individual pages for highschools, mostly because I fear they're so peripheral that they'll either be ignored or they'll be subject to vandalism that no-one notices. Better we have pages about individual school districts, with sections for each high school.  Those who (perhaps rightly) worry that an individual highschool isn't sufficiently notable have less to worry about when dealing with a school district of ten or twenty schools.
 * Our blocking policy is crazy. It indulges vandals and inconveniences decent users of the same IP address.  If someone types FUCK FUCK FUCK into some article, they should be blocked immediately, with no chance to do it again and no lame "we've removed your test" message.  But they should only (in the first instance) be blocked for a trivial period of time (say 10 or 20 minutes).  That way they know their misdeeds haven't gone unnoticed, and that there's a penalty for misbehaviour.  Such a short block doesn't excessively penalise any subsequent innocent user of the same IP (our current blocks of 24 hours for a first-time vandal are excessive).  Worst of all are the "don't vandalise" messages that policy obligates us to give the vandals.  These are frequently seen only by later innocents, and often confuse, anger, and upset them.  Sometimes I use a friend's AOL account, and the wikipedia seems like a hostile, angry place because of all the undeserved "you have new messages" stuff one gets.  Particularly on AOL, Mr Vandal never ever sees the message you leave for him, but yet we leave a message anyway.
 * Blanking one page isn't vandalism, and neither is typing sssddsds - they're honest tests by people who just can't believe they're allowed to edit the live page. Doing that in say three or four pages clearly shows intent, and is clearly vandalism. If someone blanks one page and then either stops or makes constructive edits, a nastygram is unwarranted.  Remember that a lot of "vandalism" is immediately reverted by the "vandal", when they discover they've actually been allowed to edit.  We do it a lot, so the novelty of a user-editable website has worn off on us; it's a paradigm shift for almost everyone else.
 * Most RFCs have within them a kernel of truth, but most are hopelessly padded with procrustean javertism, and fail because of that. If you want Jim to start leaving edit summaries, or to quit reverting, then write an RFC that says that and nothing else.  Restrain yourself from dissecting Jim and finding every flaw Jim may have, every trivial mistake or questionable call Jim may have made.  Doing this turns it from a reasonable, on-topic request for comment into a rambling whiny witchhunt.  Reasonable people might concur with your original point, but faced with the apparition of your McCarthyism they'll kick back against the whole thing.

Useful templates

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Useful links

 * Tools, Scripts, Special:Log/block, Special:Log/protect, Kate's edit counter