User:Mac Dreamstate

"Alright stop. Collaborate  and listen..." I realise that typed words, especially around here where it's all about rapid-fire editing, often make users sound (or rather, read) abrasive and haughty—that might describe me, but words can be deceptive. Being the chatty type I enjoy a good typing exercise (via talk pages, not edit summaries), so if I come across as hot-headed, unyielding, overbearing or snide, give me a chance and work with me! We'll almost certainly create a better article that way, and I'll always remember an editor who likes a team effort.

From 2008 to 2014 I mainly edited music album articles relating to instrumental rock and jazz fusion, whilst creating a few soundtrack and film score articles as well. Other genres in which I regularly dabbled include power metal, heavy metal, progressive metal, progressive rock, and hard rock. For the curious, my username derives from guitarist Tony MacAlpine's nickname of "T-Mac", combined with the song "Dreamstate" from his 1987 album Maximum Security. Otherwise, call me Mac.

In 2015 I created a few ski jumping articles (and its badass sibling ski flying; rewritten from scratch and now a GA). In the same year I started creating bio articles for professional boxers and began work on MOS:BOXING, a much-needed style guide for WikiProject Boxing, which finally got finished in 2016.

Itchy edit finger
I'm extremely fussy about the smallest of things, and it's not unusual for me to make multiple minor edits to an article in the space of a few minutes until I'm absolutely happy with its appearance and layout. Whether it's the smallest of grammatical or punctuational nuances, or bits of Wikipedia's markup/syntax that don't sit with me, I'll keep going back until it looks the way I feel it should. If that annoys you, and an article's edit history starts looking a bit silly, do let me know through my talk page and I can try to tone it down a bit! No promises, though..

My cite style.. or lack thereof
I actively shun the use of almost all Wikipedia templates – cite web, cite journal, album ratings, allmusic, etc. – to cite sources. They just bug the hell out of me. Too many parameters to mess around with. I've always had an aversion to things being typed on my behalf when I'm perfectly capable of doing it myself, so much so that I make it an issue to switch off any form of autocomplete/autoreplace wherever possible. The only templates for which I make an exception are boxrec, fis, and official website.

To some it might look clunky or laborious as to how I insist on manually typing out the full details of a source, but I think the templates themselves look clunky, and I hate copying and pasting those silly fields all the time. I find it much quicker to simply type out the source as it would look like when being read. Mechanised.. Machine-like. Machines are good. Live like the machine. Think like the machine. Act like the machine. Become the machine. Be the machine!

Ski flying
Split off the History section into its own article and rewrite a shorter version for the main article.

"Lone wolf project"
For bio articles, change any instance of "[Name] is a former [nationality] [occupation]" to "[Name] is a [nationality] former [occupation]". An example of this absurdity. In normal circumstances there is no such thing as a "former American". It is flat-out poor English, makes no sense, and applies to any nationality. Unless someone outright renounces their citizenship or is made stateless, how can they possibly be a "former American"? I will be ruthless on this in the form of random drive-by edits, often without summaries, or systematically working my through as many nationalities as I can be bothered with.

I am aware that this has been discussed before, but I disagree vehemently with those editors who advocate the use of "former [nationality]". It's putrid.

IPA/respell
Add IPAc-en and respell to the names of any person, place, or company notable within English-speaking countries in which there is even the slightest ambiguity as to its pronunciation. We have them for Joe Biden, Jessica Biel, Alicia Silverstone, Dua Lipa, etc., so we certainly need them for 'wackier' names such as Adrienne Palicki, Coco Gauff, or Laci Green.