User:Jwyllie

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iPad
All of the edits and contributions I have made to Wikipedia were performed using an iPad 2 manufactured by Apple Inc. I mention this for two reasons: (1) the iPad 2 is a truly amazing device that can do remarkable things anywhere; and (2) I have a disability that often makes it difficult to work while sitting upright at a desk, but that difficulty can be overcome because of reason (1). [My reasoning is circuitous or, in software terms, loopy, but that may not be surprising given that Apple Inc.'s headquarters are located at One, "Infinite Loop", Cupertino, CA.]   But seriously, the iPad 2 has made it easy, comfortable and possible for me to participate in the Wikipedia project.

Bio
I have the following university degrees: (1) B.Com,. 1980, Sprott School of Business, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada; (2) M.A. in Public Administration, 1981, School of Public Policy & Administration, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canda; (3) L.LB., 1984, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada; (4) M.A. in Religion, 1990, Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary and Graduate School, Liberty University, Lynchberg, Virginia; and (5) Ph.D. in Theology, 1995, Trinity Theological Seminary, Newburgh, Indiana.

I was a Lecturer in labour relations at the Sprott School of Business and the School of Public Policy & Administration, both at Carleton University, from 1980 to 1987. I was also a Lecturer for the graduate program at the School of Public Policy & Administration, from 1985 to 1995. I also taught for the Bar Admission Course of the Law Society of Upper Canada.

I have practised law in Ontario, Canada from 1986. My practice was concentrated on business law, labour law, technology law and trademarks. I was a registered trade-mark agent and held the TEP designation (Trust and Estate Practicioner) from the Society of Trust and Estate Practicioners (STEP). I was also a certified Christian Financial Advisor through Advisors With Purpose, a ministry of the Canadian National Christian Foundation CNCF). I was a founding director of CNCF.

I am a certified Graduate Teacher of the Evangelical Training Association (ETA). I have advised the boards of local and national Christian organizations and churches, particularly with respect to governance issues and regulatory compliance with laws and policies related to charitable status.

I have been a professional actor, director and producer. I co-founded one of Canada's first professional improvisational theatre companies (Stage Fright). I also co-founded the Canadian Improv Games (CIG), which consists of training in improvisation and improvisational competitions for high school students. It is used in hundreds of high schools across Canada and is produced in association with Canada's National Arts Centre. It began in 1976. It also operates summer camps and produces festivals for alumni under the banner "Next Act Festival". Well over 100,000 students have participated in CIG curriculum. Personally, I studied improvisational theatre under David Shepherd, the co-founder of America's first modern improvisational theatre company, the Compass Players (the immediate precursor of The Second City).

Helpful Compendium of Wiki Editing Guidelines
See also:

The five pillars of Wikipedia

How to edit a page

Help pages

Tutorial

Wikipedia Policies and Guielines

How to write a great article

Manual of Style

Contributing to Wikipedia
I've reproduced the following text here so that I can find it quickly while I am learning how to contribute PROPERLY to Wikipedia. The original can be accessed by clicking on About Wikipedia.


 * Main pages: Contributing to Wikipedia, Starting an article, New contributors' help page
 * Guide to fixing vandalism: Help:Reverting

Anyone can contribute to Wikipedia by clicking on the Edit this page tab in an article. Before beginning to contribute, however, read some handy helping tools such as the tutorial and the policies and guidelines, as well as our welcome page. It is important to realize that in contributing to Wikipedia, users are expected to be civil and neutral, respecting all points of view, and only add verifiable and factual information rather than personal views and opinions. "The five pillars of Wikipedia" cover this approach and are recommended reading before editing. (Vandals are reported via the Administrator Notice Board and may be temporarily blocked from editing Wikipedia.)

Most articles start as stubs, but after many contributions, they can become featured articles. Once the contributor has decided a topic of interest, they may want to request that the article be written (or they could research the issue and write it themselves). Wikipedia has on-going projects, focused on specific topic areas or tasks, which help coordinate editing.

The ease of editing Wikipedia results in many people editing. That makes the updating of the encyclopedia very quick, almost as fast as news websites.

Editing Wikipedia pages
Wikipedia uses a simple yet powerful page layout to allow editors to concentrate on adding material rather than page design. These include automatic sections and subsections, automatic references and cross-references, image and table inclusion, indented and listed text, links, ISBNs, and math, as well as usual formatting elements and most world alphabets and common symbols. Most of these have simple formats that are deliberately very easy and intuitive.

The page layout consists of tabs along the top of the window. These are:
 * Article. Shows the main Wikipedia article.
 * Discussion. Shows a user discussion about the article's topic and possible revisions, controversies, etc.
 * Edit. This tab allows users to edit the article. Depending on the page’s susceptibility to vandalism, according to its visibility or the degree of controversy surrounding the topic, this tab may not be shown for all users. (For example, any user who is not an administrator will not be able to edit the Main Page).
 * View history. This tab allows readers to view the editors of the article and the changes that have been made.
 * Star. ("Watch") If you are logged in to your account, clicking on the star icon will cause any changes made to the article to be displayed on the watchlist. (Note: when this icon is clicked, it changes to a filled-in star.)

Wikipedia has robust version and reversion controls. This means that poor-quality edits or vandalism can quickly and easily be reversed or brought up to an appropriate standard by any other editor, so inexperienced editors cannot accidentally do permanent harm if they make a mistake in their editing. As there are many more editors intent on improving articles than not, error-ridden articles are usually corrected promptly.

Wikipedia content criteria
Wikipedia content is intended to be factual, notable, verifiable with cited external sources, and neutrally presented.

The appropriate policies and guidelines for these are found at:


 * 1) What Wikipedia is not, which summarizes what belongs in Wikipedia and what does not;
 * 2) Neutral point of view, which describes Wikipedia's mandatory core approach to neutral, unbiased article-writing;
 * 3) No original research, which prohibits the use of Wikipedia to publish personal views and original research of editors and defines Wikipedia's role as an encyclopedia of existing recognized knowledge;
 * 4) Verifiability, which explains that it must be possible for readers to verify all content against credible external sources (following the guidance in the Risk disclaimer that is linked-to at the bottom of every article);
 * 5) Reliable sources, which explains what factors determine whether a source is acceptable;
 * 6) Citing sources, which describes the manner of citing sources so that readers can verify content for themselves; and
 * 7) Manual of Style, which offers a style guide—in general editors tend to acquire knowledge of appropriate writing styles and detailed formatting over time.

These are often abbreviated to WP:NOT, WP:NPOV, WP:NOR, WP:V, WP:RS, WP:CITE, and WP:MOS respectively.

Editorial administration, oversight, and management
The Wikipedia community is largely self-organising, so that anyone may build a reputation as a competent editor and become involved in any role he/she may choose, subject to peer approval. Individuals often will choose to become involved in specialised tasks, such as reviewing articles at others' request, watching current edits for vandalism, watching newly created articles for quality control purposes, or similar roles. Editors who believe they can serve the community better by taking on additional administrative responsibility may ask their peers for agreement to undertake such responsibilities. This structure enforces meritocracy and communal standards of editorship and conduct. At present a minimum approval of 75–80% from the community is required to take on these additional tools and responsibilities. This standard tends to ensure a high level of experience, trust, and familiarity across a broad front of aspects within Wikipedia.

A variety of software-assisted systems and automated programs help editors and administrators to watch for problematic edits and editors. Theoretically all editors and users are treated equally with no "power structure". There is, however a hierarchy of permissions and positions, some of which are listed below:


 * 1) Anyone can edit most of the articles here. Some articles are protected due to vandalism or edit-warring, and can only be edited by certain editors.
 * 2) Anyone with an account that has been registered for four days or longer and made ten edits becomes Autoconfirmed, and gains the technical ability to do three things that non-autoconfirmed editors cannot:
 * 3) *Move articles.
 * 4) *Edit semi-protected articles.
 * 5) *Vote in certain elections (minimum edit count to receive suffrage varies depending on the election).
 * 6) Many editors with accounts obtain access to certain tools that make editing easier and faster. Few editors learn about most of those tools, but one common privilege granted to editors in good standing is "rollback", which is the ability to undo edits more easily.
 * 7) Administrators ("admins" or "sysops") have been approved by the community, and have access to some significant administrative tools. They can delete articles, block accounts or IP addresses, and edit fully protected articles.
 * 8) Bureaucrats are chosen in a process similar to that for selecting administrators. There are not very many bureaucrats.  They have the technical ability to add or remove admin rights, approve or revoke "bot" privileges, and rename user accounts.
 * 9) The Arbitration Committee is kind of like Wikipedia's supreme court. They deal with disputes that remain unresolved after other attempts at dispute resolution have failed. Members of this Committee are elected by the community and tend to be selected from among the pool of experienced admins.
 * Stewards are the top echelon of technical permissions, other than the Wikimedia Board of Directors. Stewards can do a few technical things, and one almost never hears much about them since they normally only act when a local admin or bureaucrat is not available, and hence almost never on the English Wikipedia. There are very few stewards.
 * 1) Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has several special roles and privileges. In most instances however, he does not expect to be treated differently than any other editor or administrator.

Handling disputes and abuse

 * Main articles: Vandalism, Dispute resolution, Consensus, Sock puppetry, Conflict of interest

Wikipedia has a rich set of methods to handle most abuses that commonly arise. These methods are well-tested and should be relied upon.


 * Intentional vandalism can be reported and corrected by anyone.
 * Unresolved disputes between editors, whether based upon behavior, editorial approach, or validity of content, can be addressed through the talk page of an article, through requesting comments from other editors or through Wikipedia's comprehensive dispute resolution process.
 * Abuse of user accounts, such as the creation of "Internet sock puppets" or solicitation of friends and other parties to enforce a non-neutral viewpoint or inappropriate consensus within a discussion, or to disrupt other Wikipedia processes in an annoying manner, are addressed through the sock puppet policy.

In addition, brand new users (until they have established themselves a bit) may at the start find that their votes are given less weight by editors in some informal polls, in order to prevent abuse of single-purpose accounts.

Editorial quality review
As well as systems to catch and control substandard and vandalistic edits, Wikipedia also has a full style and content manual and a variety of positive systems for continual article review and improvement. Examples of the processes include peer review, good article assessment, and the featured article process, a rigorous review of articles that are intended to meet the highest standards and showcase Wikipedia's capability to produce high-quality work.

In addition, specific types of article or fields often have their own specialized and comprehensive projects, assessment processes (such as biographical article assessment), and expert reviewers within specific subjects. Nominated articles are also frequently the subject of specific focus under projects such as the Neutrality Project or are covered under editorial drives by groups such as the Cleanup Taskforce.

Notice
