User:L'Aquatique/thoughts

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See also:L'Aquatique's RFA Q & A

Introduction
I fell some six feet off my loft today, clutching my computer in my arms till the end, of course. Now, quite unfortunately, I didn't have any real religious epiphanies while lying on the hardwood floor looking up at the light with half my brain considering trajectories and gravitational forces and the other screaming "OW", though if you consider the fact that a person who once broke her arm playing duck duck goose (those kids are pretty damn mean!) managed to take a fall that caused her computer screen to bleed without suffering from anything more than a headache, excessive confusion introspective thinking, and an inexplicable desire to listen to the song Piano Man, it might just have been a religious experience after all. Praise God, Moses, and, uh, Billy Joel. In any case, it's the aforementioned introspective thinking that led me to follow the crowd and create a page in which I list my thoughts on various wikipedia topics. I'm not sure if other people read these, but I like browsing them, so why not have one? Well here goes, and remember, if you find anything I say incorrect, grossly offensive, or simply not well thought out, it's not my fault; I have a head injury.

Wikipedia in General
I like it. Not because it's a particularly awesome encyclopedia, not really even because it's pioneering the Web 2.0 movement (thought that's neat, too), but simply because it's about the closest thing humanity has ever gotten to a collective consciousness (resistance is futile), and that's pretty damn cool... and certainly something I want to be a part of. Some user whose page I read said that he (she?) considers Wikipedia a "grand social experiment," and I think they're right. In many ways, it's a microcosm of the so-called real world, brought down to a size we can see and contemplate without needing to consult the local priest or the Tanakh. Quite simply, Wikipedia isn't a product of people, Wikipedia is people and I think that's kind of mind blowing to think about. Either that or I hit my head harder than I thought.

Anonymous Editing
There's always talk about requiring registration before one can contribute. That's fine with me, but ya'all are going to have to change the motto. Wikipedia cannot be the Free Encyclopedia that Anyone Can Edit without anonymous editors, and without those anonymous editors we lose that hive mind concept I was talking about earlier, and Wikipedia becomes just another dumb online encyclopedia taking up bandwidth on the internet that I could be using to do something worthwhile, like pay my bills or make webcam whore videos.

Vandalism/Blocking
As I hinted at earlier, I strongly believe that IP editors are the lifeblood of this project. But I am fully willing to acknowledge that they are conversely also the source of much of vandal patrollers' grief. It's a catch 22, and there's no easy way to fix it. However, I think that more effective blocking can go a long way. Looking at the talk pages of established vandals is enough to give even lucky-concussionless folk headaches- a hodgepodge of multihued warnings in no particular order and increasingly violent sounding-block notices. I believe admins need to be swifter to wield the ban-hammer in cases where a particular IP has already been blocked before.

Copyright
I find copyright socially disruptive, morally unethical, and all around pointless. Just because we create something doesn't mean we own it, otherwise child slavery would be legal. Copyright laws are excessively bureaucratic to the point of obfuscative and usually require a Harvard Law Professor to interpret: something lawyers aren't necessarily very good at. Now, I understand why it exists- a product of a corrupt capitalist society that spends sabbath at the bank, values a wayward spoiled hotel heiress who never contributed anything worthwhile above hard-working, honest people, and considers petroleum products and public alarmism as rationale for war. But that doesn't mean I think it's right.

Consensus
I really think the way Wikipedia is governed is brilliant. The idea of consensus- that is, the quality of opinions over quantity, really highlights what makes this encyclopedia so special. The one thing that really gets me is something I'm going to call...  L'Aquatique's Law  People voting support or with the majority (depending on the situation) are less likely to rationalize their vote. For example, think about RfA's. If you're voting in an RfA, it's considered perfectly okay to just write support and sign your post. But if you were going to vote oppose, you had better have a perfectly typed, organized essay on why you are voting this way, or else you are going to get pounced on. Unless, of course, you're voting with the majority. The effect of this is that oppose votes carry more weight because by their nature they have to be better thought out. There is a simple answer for this: justify your vote, folks! Write a couple of sentences at least about why you are giving your vote one way or another. Don't say "per User:Example", think for yourself! If there's something someone else says that you agree with, say "Like User:Example, I believe... because..." Ya' only get one edit, make it count!

Adminship
So, I'm probably going to be RFAing sometime in the relatively near future (maybe a few months), and I should probably also talk about what I believe adminship is all about. Firstly, the statement "Adminship is not a big deal", is the biggest load of crock this side of the Patriot Act. Becoming an autoconfirmed user is not a big deal, when we as a community agree to give someone the mop, we are basically giving handing over the ability to wreck complete and utter havoc, replace the main page with various forms of the word lol, and also block me. Sorry folks, but that's a big deal to me, and it should be to anyone else who values not being blocked! Secondly, I've decided to have Assume Good Faith tattooed to my forehead whenever I get within six degrees of an RFA. Seriously, folks. I can understand opposing, there's nothing wrong with that as long as you have good reason, but try to have some fricking respect! I mean, come on! The above sentence has suddenly filled me with an inexplicable desire to watch South Park. I'll finish this later.


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