User:Loganberry/Olduserpage

NB: This is no longer my current user page; it is archived here simply for the convenience of anyone who wants to read it.



Introductory waffle
Hello there! I'm Loganberry, named after the fruit as a homage to Watership Down. You see, I'm a lapine fur, and in WD most of the male rabbits bear the name of a plant - Hazel, Dandelion and so forth. As to what a fur actually is, I shall be immodest and point you in the direction of the furry lifestyler article, which I had a substantial hand (or should that be paw?) in bringing to its present state. I think that Wikipedia's coverage of the furry fandom as a whole is reasonable, allowing for the frequent vandalism it suffers.

I do a lot of writing about cricket, and am a member of WikiProject Cricket. (New members welcome!) Within this subject, my particular interest is in biographical articles; as I write this (August 2005) there are still a number of very significant cricketers who do not have a word written about them, and I hope that in due course we can at least come up with a reasonable article on anybody who has played Test cricket. I also proposed a new template to assist in such editing, which was created on 16 August 2005.

Thoughts on Wikipedia
A somewhat pretentious title, I know, but at least it's clear. I've been here now for a bit over a year (first edit was 1 July 2004), and Kate's Tools tell me (rather terrifyingly) that I've managed to rack up several thousand edits in that time, so I suppose that I should use my nice little space here to do some pontificating.

The most important thing
Wikipedia's reliability when it comes to speed is unacceptable; simple as that. If this is ever going to become a real encyclopedia of record, then pages need to start loading within five seconds at least 999 times out of 1000. We are currently nowhere near this, which is not the case with the BBC, Yahoo, Google, or indeed any other major information provider's site. It's bad enough that editors often have to try several times to get an edit through, but readers should be able to come here with the confident expectation that pages will load quickly. At the moment, they're not doing so, and it's going to hurt our reputation if this is not fixed soon. I'd go so far as to say that funds should be diverted to this from elsewhere, since if people can't get at information then Wikipedia is useless anyway.

Notability
I think that any time people start to try to define a hard edge of notability, they're asking for trouble. Using cricket as an example: clearly anyone who has played Test or ODI cricket is notable, but what about a player who has appeared once for a minor cricketing nation such as Afghanistan? Someone who has played ten seasons of county cricket should be there, but what about the person who has appeared twice for MCC? A tentative set of personal standards (for cricket) is here.

Vandalism
As hinted above, this is a significant problem with some of the furry-related articles. I have sympathy with those who believe that only logged-in users should be able to edit Wikipedia. It's true that making such a change would mean that editing would no longer be open to everyone, but Jimbo Wales himself has endorsed the statement that [http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-January/018735.html Wikipedia is not primarily an experiment in Internet democracy. It's a project to write an encyclopedia.] That being so, there should be no absolute objection to having some form of registration requirement if vandalism gets too bad, though it should be as simple and easy as possible - allowing freemail accounts is a must, for example. However, for the moment I don't think that stage has been reached and so I don't think we need to stop anonymous editing.

Update: Jimbo's decision to stop anons starting new articles, but still allow them to edit existing ones, is an interesting one and I hope it works well. Early signs seem to be qutie good: WP:AFC could become a very important page.

Microthoughts

 * There's nothing wrong with using spaced hyphens - like this - for dashes. So they're not used in print encyclopedias? Neither are redlinks. Language changes over time, and typography does too.
 * I can't see what's so important about having consistency in serial commas. We have a much bigger inconsistency in endorsing the use of both US and British English in the same encyclopedia, after all.
 * After some wavering, I now mark as minor only edits that simply correct grammar, spelling or syntax. Adding a stub notice, or changing an existing one, is not minor. Redirects may or may not be, depending on whether they need an explanation.
 * There are too many lists and categories that serve no real purpose; personally I find the Births/Deaths by year ones to be of very little worth.
 * Articles for Deletion can be a morass: criteria for speedy deletion could do with being expanded.

Cricket

 * [[Image:Earth flag PD.jpg|25px|International]] ICC Trophy, 1979 ICC Trophy, 1982 ICC Trophy, 1986 ICC Trophy, 1990 ICC Trophy, Cricket at the 1998 Commonwealth Games, Smokers v Non-Smokers, Triple Crown Tournament


 * [[Image:Flag of Afghanistan.svg|25px|Afghanistan]] Afghan cricket team


 * 🇦🇺 Australia A cricket team
 * Biographies: John Ferris


 * 🇧🇩 Bangladesh A cricket team


 * 🇨🇦 Biographies: Charles Baksh, Christopher Chappell, Brian Christen, Austin Codrington, Bryan Mauricette, John Valentine


 * 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 England A cricket team, Fostershire, Gentlemen v Players, List of Gentlemen v Players matches, Midland Counties cricket team, Royal Navy Cricket Club, Walter Lawrence Trophy, Worcestershire County Cricket Club
 * Biographies: Joe Ainley, Michael Ainsworth, Kabir Ali, Tom Armitage, Billy Bates, Ian Bell, Albert Bird, Jack Birkenshaw, Granville Bromley-Martin, Douglas Carr, Rikki Clarke, Dominic Cork, David Denton, Graham Dilley, John Fereday, Christopher Foster, Norman Gifford, William Greenstock, John Harber, Tom Hayward, Patsy Hendren, Graeme Hick, Richard Illingworth, Shaftab Khalid, Devon Malcolm, Nadeem Malik, Matthew Mason, Maneer Mirza, Parvaz Mirza, Albert Moss, Reginald Moss, Alan Mullally, Phil Newport, Eddie Paynter, Andy Pick, James Pipe, Neal Radford, Chris Read, Maurice Read, Dermot Reeve, Steve Rhodes, Mark Robinson, Harry Rogers, Fred Root, Fred Rumsey, Ian Salisbury, Andy Sandham, Chris Schofield, David Shepherd, Sandy Singleton, Ben Smith, Vikram Solanki, John Spilsbury, Thomas Straw, Fred Titmus, Hedley Verity, George Ulyett, Mark Wallace, Stuart Wedge, George Wheldon, David Wigley, George Alfred Wilson, George Clifford Wilson


 * 🇳🇱 Dutch cricket team
 * Biographies: Feiko Kloppenburg, Roland Lefebvre, Steven Lubbers


 * 🇳🇿 New Zealand A cricket team


 * 🇵🇰 Sind cricket team


 * 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Biographies: Gavin Hamilton


 * 🇿🇦 Biographies: Xenophon Balaskas


 * 🇺🇸 Biographies: Tony Reid


 * 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Welsh cricket team
 * Biographies: Billy Spiller


 * [[Image:West Indies Cricket Board Flag.svg|25px|West Indies]] West Indies A cricket team
 * Biographies: Winston Davis, Andy Ganteaume, Lance Gibbs, Malcolm Marshall, Patterson Thompson


 * 🇿🇼 Biographies: Peter Chingoka

Motorsport

 * British Hill Climb Championship, Hillclimbing
 * Mark Colton, Adam Fleetwood, David Grace, Martin Groves, Roy Lane, Tony Marsh, Andy Priaulx, Graeme Wight Jr
 * Prescott Speed Hillclimb, Shelsley Walsh Speed Hill Climb
 * English Racing Automobiles, Grand Prix Legends, Pilbeam Racing Designs

Places

 * Bewdley, Kidderminster railway station, Mamble, Titterstone Clee Hill, Watership Down, Hampshire

Other

 * Amstrad NC100, BeebEm, Furry lifestyler, Kidderminster Shuttle, Tales from Watership Down

Extras


Multilicensing
I agree to multi-license all my text contributions to the main, main talk and template namespaces, as described below. Contributions in other namespaces, such as user pages, are excluded. This agreement remains in effect so long as the following notice remains on my page.