User:Mel Etitis

Me
Now, there's not much point using a pseudonym if you then blurt out your mundane identity (where would that have got Batman?), but a couple of misunderstandings have occasionally arisen, which I ought to head off.

First, despite my User name, I'm not Greek but English (half Irish, in fact, but born and brought up in England). I took the name "Mel Etitis" from some on-line dialogues on the philosophy of religion; the original Greek word has been distorted to make it look like a name, but it means something like &quot;one who studies&quot;.

Secondly, the character in the dialogues is female; I'm male. Not important, but some people get needlessly embarrassed if they find that someone they've been referring to as &quot;she&quot; turns out to be a he.

Thirdly, despite my youthful appearance (both on the page and – you'll have to take my word for this – in real life) I'm fifty years old; I'm a philosopher by profession, teaching in the University of Oxford, and spent many years teaching English as a Foreign Language, also in Oxford.

Aside from all that, my interests are wide and varied, my musical, literary, and other tastes are eclectic, and some of them are represented in my contributions (though some are not, and some of my contributions are utterly unrelated to my tastes or interests).

I'm an admin., which means that I'm an ordinary editor who's been trusted with a few extra powers to help me do some largely tedious housekeeping jobs. Being an admin doesn't mean that I'm in any way above Wikipedia policy, and in fact brings with it extra responsibility &mdash; so if you think that I've behaved wrongly, let me know &mdash; but politely; it's most likely to be inadvertent, as is most wrongdoing here. (If I have a fault ("if"!), it's that I tend to respond badly to rudeness and aggression.)

 '''[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:Mel_Etitis&action=edit&section=new Please click here to leave a message on my Talk page. ]'''

My contributions
I spend a little time randomly paging through the encyclop&aelig;dia, tidying English and style, adding categories and stubs, occasionally doing more extensive editing. It's not glamorous, but I think that it helps make the encyclop&aelig;dia better and more readable. I also patrol the New Pages list, do work at the Speedy Deletions category, and try to defend articles against vandalism and disruption. My more substantial contributions include 207 new articles as well as work on existing articles that ranges from significant expansion to complete rewriting:

{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" align="center" ! style="background:#cdcdcd;" align=center width="50%"| New articles ! style="background:#cdcdcd;" align=center width="50%"| Existing articles
 * valign="top" style="background:#e6e8fa"|
 * Music
 * Albums & compositions
 * See also my Jazz-L 100 project.
 * Al Haig Trio [Esoteric] (Al Haig album)
 * Bar Kokhba (John Zorn album)
 * Black, Brown, and Beige (Duke Ellington composition)
 * Black, Brown, and Beige (Duke Ellington album)
 * The Bollywood Brass Band
 * Dreaming Wide Awake (Lizz Wright)
 * Dreamland (Madeleine Peyroux album)
 * The First of a Million Kisses (Fairground Attraction album)
 * Got You on My Mind (Galison & Peyroux album)
 * Hi Fly (Peter King album)
 * Huntington Ashram Monastery (Alice Coltrane album)
 * Journey in Satchidananda (Alice Coltrane album)
 * JuJu (Wayne Shorter album}
 * Me Myself I (Joan Armatrading album)
 * A Monastic Trio (Alice Coltrane album)
 * Music from Macbeth (Third Ear Band album)
 * "Perfect" (Fairground Attraction song)
 * Ptah, the El Daoud (Alice Coltrane album)
 * Salt (Lizz Wright album)
 * Speed Trap (Peter King album)
 * A Swingin' Affair (Dexter Gordon album)
 * Third Ear Band (Third Ear Band album)
 * This Is Our Music (Ornette Coleman album)
 * Instruments
 * Bateria
 * Diplica
 * Double clarinet
 * Guitaron
 * Ring of bells
 * Saz
 * Sipsi
 * Musicians & composers
 * Alèmu Aga (Ethiopian musician)
 * Ambrose (bandleader)
 * William "Cat" Anderson (U.S. jazz musician)
 * Neil Ardley (English jazz composer &amp; popular-science writer)
 * Gürer Aykal (Turkish conductor)
 * Guy Barker (English jazz musicians)
 * M'bilia Bel (Zaïrian singer)
 * Julia Biel (English jazz singer)
 * Blue Highway (bluegrass band)
 * The Bollywood Brass Band
 * Ian Carr (Scottish jazz musician &amp; composer)
 * James Carter (U.S. jazz musician)
 * Clout (South African band; material supplied by anon)
 * Arnett Cobb (U.S. jazz musician)
 * Alice Coltrane (U.S. jazz musician)
 * Alec Dankworth (English jazz musician)
 * Mercer Ellington (jazz musician & composer)
 * Fairground Attraction (Scottish band)
 * Leonard Feather (jazz pianist, composer, and writer)
 * Frank Foster (U.S. jazz musician)
 * Charles Fowlkes (U.S. jazz musician)
 * Michael Garrick (English jazz pianist &amp; composer)
 * Paul Goldberg (U.S. jazz musician)
 * Sonny Greer (U.S. jazz musican)
 * Al Haig (U.S. jazz musician)
 * Andy Hamilton (Jamaican-born jazz musician)
 * Jimmy Hamilton (U.S. jazz musician)
 * Ted Heath (bandleader)
 * Alina Ibragimova (violinist}
 * Nikki Iles (English jazz composer &amp; musician)
 * Peter King (English jazz musician)
 * Fran Landesman (lyricist &amp; poet)
 * Robert Lee McCollum (bluesman, known as Robert Lee McCoy and Robert Nighthawk)
 * Midge Marsden (New Zealand musician)
 * Tina May (English jazz singer)
 * Charnett Moffett (jazz musician)
 * Jimmy Mundy (U.S. jazz arranger & composer)
 * National Youth Jazz Orchestra
 * Oliver Nelson (U.S. jazz musician &amp; composer)
 * Joe Newman (jazz musician)
 * Pavel Haas Quartet (string quartet)
 * Sonny Payne (U.S. jazz musician)
 * Lonnie Plaxico (U.S. jazz musician)
 * Gerard Presencer (English jazz musican)
 * Russell Procope (U.S. jazz musician)
 * Eddi Reader (Scottish singer)
 * Don Rendell (English jazz musician)
 * Dannie Richmond (U.S. jazz musician)
 * Ben Riley (U.S. jazz musician)
 * Guilherme Rodrigues (Portuguese jazz musician)
 * Dennis Rollins (English jazz musician)
 * Marshall Royal (U.S. jazz musician)
 * Gurdev Singh (Indian sarod player))
 * Charlie Spivak (bandleader)
 * Clare Teal (English jazz singer)
 * Tulsi (U.S. tambura player)
 * İlhan Usmanbaş (Turkish composer)
 * Michael White (U.S. jazz musician)
 * The Windy City Strugglers (New Zealand band)
 * Eugene Wright (U.S. jazz musician)
 * Lizz Wright (U.S. jazz singer)
 * Vienna Chamber Orchestra
 * Other
 * Copyist
 * Manuscript paper
 * Manuscript paper


 * Philosophy
 * Anton Wilhelm Amo (18th-century Ghanaian philosopher)
 * Anamnesis (Plato)
 * Robert L. Arrington (U.S. philosopher)
 * Bachelor of Philosophy
 * Basic Limiting Principle
 * Boetius of Dacia
 * Lady Anne Finch Conway (17th-century English philosopher)
 * Definist fallacy
 * Kwame Gyekye (Ghanaian philosopher)
 * Seiichi Hatano (Japanese philosopher)
 * Martha Klein (modern philosopher)
 * Madhusūdana Sarasvatī (17th-century Indian philosopher)
 * Maņdana Miśra (8th-century Indian philosopher)
 * Toju Nakae (17th-century Japanese philosopher)
 * Navya-Nyāya
 * Of Miracles (by David Hume)
 * Opaque context
 * Henry Odera Oruka (Kenyan philosopher)
 * Padmapāda (8th-century Indian philosopher)
 * Philia
 * Retrodiction
 * Sureśvara (8th-century Indian philosopher)
 * Placide Tempels (Belgian missionary, influential in African philosophy)
 * Vācaspati Miśra (10th-century Indian philosopher)
 * Wang Ch'ung (1st-century C.E. Chinese philosopher)
 * Wang fu-zi (17th-century Chinese philosopher)
 * Well-founded phenomenon
 * Kwasi Wiredu (Ghanaian philosopher)
 * Anthropology
 * Encyclopedia of Anthropology
 * H. James Birx
 * Robert John Braidwood
 * Eolith
 * Miscellaneous
 * Academic world
 * Collection (Oxford Colleges)
 * Double degree
 * Past paper
 * Books & publishing
 * The Last Samurai (novel by Helen DeWitt)
 * Manchester Book Award
 * Virago Press
 * Films
 * All Night Long (1961 film)
 * Bagdad Café
 * Bird
 * The Happiness of the Katakuris
 * The Red Balloon
 * Rebetiko
 * People (real &amp; fictional)
 * Arete (goddess)
 * Thomas Bell (novelist)
 * Norman Blamey (artist)
 * Dandi (poet) (6th-century India)
 * Israel Isidor Elyashev (1873–1924)
 * Anouska Hempel (actress)
 * Javan (one of Noah's grandsons)
 * List of Qazis of the Maldives
 * Maya (Egyptian official)
 * Lenrie Peters (poet)
 * Bezawada Gopala Reddy (politician)
 * Soraya (bellydancer)
 * Juliet Stevenson (actress)
 * Honeysuckle Weeks (actress)
 * Places
 * Blythburgh, Suffolk
 * Bruisyard, Suffolk
 * Churchill, Oxfordshire
 * Fa Hien Cave, Sri Lanka
 * Grandpont, Oxford
 * Hosseiniye Ershad (institute in Tehran)
 * Mater Misericordiae University Hospital, Dublin
 * Nuneham Courtenay, Oxfordshire
 * 1770, Queensland
 * Snape, Suffolk
 * Snape Maltings, Suffolk
 * Sturmer, Essex
 * Tombs of the Kings (Paphos)
 * University of Ghana
 * Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
 * Times
 * Archaic period in Greece
 * Miscellaneous
 * Alèqa
 * Astronomical constant
 * Beauchamp-Feuillet notation
 * Bumboat
 * Coat of arms of Cyprus
 * Dumb Britain (Private Eye item)
 * Fishing smack
 * Great Tom (bell)
 * Jazz Interactions (non-profit organisation)
 * Kalaba-X (constructed language)
 * Mekatelyu (Costa Rican creole)
 * Paeonia mlokosewitschii
 * Round-tower church
 * Sugar-baker

(I haven't included new Category or disambiguation pages here, of which I've created or revivified a few.) I've also created the following page, into which I plan to insert all the relevant free images from the Wikipedia archives:


 * List of images/Places/Europe/United Kingdom/Counties/Oxfordshire

I started a page designed for those who are contributing, or who want to contribute, to Wikipedia in a language other than their first or native language:


 * Contributing to articles outside your native language

Finally, I've up-loaded a few of my own photographs.

Articles on which I've done significant work, up to and including complete rewriting:
 * valign="top" style="background:#e6e8fa"|
 * Music
 * Jimmy Blanton (jazz musician)
 * The Blues and the Abstract Truth (Oliver Nelson album)
 * Bert Boeren (jazz musician)
 * Joey DeFrancesco (jazz musician)
 * Charles Earland (jazz musician)
 * Tubby Hayes (English jazz musician)
 * Henry Charles Litolff (British romantic composer)
 * John Medeski (jazz musician)
 * Out to Lunch (Eric Dolphy album)
 * Madeleine Peyroux (jazz singer)
 * Omara Portuondo (singer)
 * Carlos Santana (guitarist)
 * Saxophone Colossus (Sonny Rollins album)
 * Ronnie Scott (jazz musician)
 * Sketches of Spain (Miles Davis album)
 * Song for My Father (Horace Silver album)
 * Time Out (Dave Brubeck album)
 * Turkish folk music
 * Lenny White (jazz musician)


 * Philosophy (or related)
 * African philosophy (a continuing project)
 * al-Kind&#299; (medi&aelig;val Arab philosopher)
 * Aspasia (hetaira, mistress of Pericles, inspiration of Plato)
 * Arete (excellence)
 * Cartesian circle
 * Cogito ergo sum
 * Creationism
 * Divine command theory
 * Divinity
 * Johann Augustus Eberhard (German philosopher)
 * Euthyphro dilemma
 * Feng Youlan (modern Chinese philosopher)
 * Paulin J. Hountondji (modern African philosopher)
 * Hindu answers to the problem of evil
 * Human
 * James McCosh (Scottish philosopher)
 * Melissus of Samos
 * Performative
 * Phronesis
 * Scottish School of Common Sense
 * 17th-century philosophy
 * Francisco Suarez (Spanish scholastic philosopher)
 * Syllogism
 * Ernst Tugendhat (Czech-born German philosopher)
 * Giovanni Vailati (Italian analytic philosopher &amp; historian of science)
 * Tetsuro Watsuji (Japanese philosopher)
 * Victoria, Lady Welby (19th-century English philosopher)


 * Anthropology
 * Nikolay Yakovlevich Danilevsky
 * Ella Cara Deloria
 * Euthenics
 * Weston La Barre
 * Robert E. Park
 * Kenneth L. Pike


 * Films
 * Democrazy
 * Tsubaki Sanjūrō


 * People
 * Henry Heimlich (of the Heimlich manoeuver)
 * Andrey Illarionov (Russian politician)
 * Siegfried Lenz (German writer)
 * Kylie Tennant (Australian writer)
 * Michael Triantafyllou (Greek roboticist)
 * D. P. Tripathi (Indian politician)


 * Places
 * Aldeburgh, Suffolk
 * Konark (town in Orissa, India)


 * Miscellaneous
 * Apostle spoon
 * Batemans Brewery
 * Chimney money
 * "The Lady of Shallott" (Tennyson poem)
 * Murmillo (gladiator)
 * Necktie
 * Olympia Academy (discussion group including Einstein)
 * Prison education

Plans for significant work on existing articles:


 * Possible worlds
 * Theory of conduct
 * Will (philosophy)

Jazz-L 100 project

 * The Jazz–L Top 100: some years ago Eric Saidel compiled a list of the top 100 jazz albums, as suggested by subscribers to the Jazz-L mailing list and Usenet group. I'll be adding these (where no article yet exists) as and when I can.  It's a long and occasional project; aside from articles that I've up-dated and completely rewritten, I've created:
 * 1) Album Album (Jack De Johnette)
 * 2) Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section (Art Pepper)
 * 3) Ask the Ages (Sonny Sharrock)
 * 4) At the Five Spot vols 1 & 2 (Eric Dolphy)
 * 5) The Ballad of the Fallen (Charlie Haden)
 * 6) The Blanton–Webster Band (Duke Ellington)
 * 7) Body and Soul (Coleman Hawkins)
 * 8) Change of the Century (Ornette Coleman)
 * 9) ''E=MC² (Count Basie)
 * 10) The Far East Suite (Duke Ellington)
 * 11) Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation (Ornette Coleman)
 * 12) From the Soul (Joe Lovano)
 * 13) Further Definitions (Benny Carter)
 * 14) Jazz at Massey Hall ("The Quintet")
 * 15) Liberation Music Orchestra (Charlie Haden}
 * 16) Masada: Alef (John Zorn)
 * 17) Mingus Ah Um (Charles Mingus)
 * 18) Mingus at Antibes (Charles Mingus)
 * 19) Moanin' (Art Blakey)
 * 20) Our Man in Paris (Dexter Gordon)
 * 21) Out of the Cool (Gil Evans)
 * 22) Outward Bound (Eric Dolphy)
 * 23) Plays Duke Ellington (World Saxophone Quartet)
 * 24) Speak No Evil (Wayne Shorter)
 * 25) Too Much Sugar for a Dime (Henry Threadgill)
 * 26) Tuskegee Experiments (Don Byron)




 * }

I score, incredibly, only 161 on the Wikipedia addiction test. This labels me an addict, but only just. On the other hand, it'll definitely have gone up since the last time I dared to take it.

I've made edits since I registered on 29th December 2004. Good grief, that's over 3,000 edits a month; that addiction test isn't doing its job. (My 10,000th edit: 25th April 2005. My 15,000th edit: 12th June 2005. My 10,000th edit on an article: 17th July 2005. My 20,000th edit. My 25,000th edit. My 15,000th edit on an article: 8th September 2005. My 30,000th edit: 19th October 2005. My 20,000th edit on an article: 16th January 2006. My 35,000th edit: 18th February 2006. My 25,000th edit on an article: 10th April 2006. My 40,000th edit: 11th April 2006. My 45,000th edit: 2nd January 2007.

I'm rather proud of the fact that about two thirds of my edits are to articles, rather than to Talk pages etc. We are writing an encyclop&aelig;dia, after all.)

My attitudes to Wikipedia (an excuse for some moans)
My main attitude, of course, is the desire to help build this into an ever more useful reference work and information centre. I've some more specific thoughts, however:


 * 1) Votes for deletion. There's a tendency on the part of some editors to see this as their most important task.  Well, it is important, of course; removing what's inaccurate, misleading, or biased is as important as adding what's accurate, helpful, and neutral.  On the other hand, an overzealous attitude can lead to the removal of genuinely useful material that's of minority interest.
 * 2) *One frustratingly annoying habit is the appeal to Google &mdash; the unargued (and largely unchallenged) assumptions being, first, that any topic worth mentioning appears on the Web (and with a frequency that reflects its importance), and secondly, that Google is wholly accurate. The latter is relatively insignificant, but the former is breathtakingly and demonstrably false.
 * 3) *The most significant area is people, though: whilst the smallest village in the U.S. has its own page, with full and tedious census details, let someone add an article about an academic, actor, writer, etc., who isn't widely known and acknowledged, and a pack of editors appear, yapping that the person isn't &lsquo;notable&rsquo;. Leave aside the inconsistency for a moment; many of those who are claimed to be non-notable by this Afd-pack are known to and have affected more people than all the nay-sayers put together (one sometimes wonders if that isn't the problem).
 * 4) *Update. My basic attitude remains unchanged, but as Wikipedia becomes more popular, more and more an more people are using it to advertise/puff themselves or their friends.  There are therefore more genuinely unencyclop&aelig;dic articles being added now.
 * 5) Voting in general. There's a disturbing tendency on the part of many editors to jump into a discussion, vote without reading any of the comments, and then leave.  The main symptom is a terse comment that clearly ignores what's gone before, and even seems to have been made in ignorance of the object of the discussion (see, for example, here, or the full, depressing debate here).  It can make the business of voting a farce.  Some admins take comments into account, and presumably make allowances for this sort of blind (and therefore pretty irrelevant) voting, but some just mechanically tot up the numbers.
 * 6) Admins. The vast majority of admins with whom I've had contact have been helpful, considerate, and professional in their approach.  They're human, though, and occasionally one will develop a blind spot with regard to some issue, or a far from disinterested approach, and act against Wikipedia rules.  What seems to happen then is that either their behavior is ignored by other admins, or (especially when the clamour of ordinary users is loud) they're subjected to a mild finger-wagging.  If non-admins had behaved in the same way, they'd likely have been blocked from editing for a while &mdash; either generally or on a specific article or topic.  Simple fairness demands the same treatment for the same behaviour &mdash; but given that admins are in fact expected to behave better than ordinary editors, it would seem right that they should be treated more strictly when they fall well short. Now that I am an admin, I hold the same view, incidentally.
 * 7) Finger waggers. There's a small group of editors, mainly or wholly admins who have been here for a while, who seem to spend more time lecturing other admins than working on the encyclop&aelig;dia.  Their edit histories typically show an articles-to-Talk/Wikipedia pages ration of 50:50 at best, often very much lower.  Together with the many vandals and fanatics who try to take possession of certain articles, they make life here a lot less pleasant and productive than it could be.
 * 8) *Update. After a brief holiday from Wikipedia of a couple of months or so, I discovered that most of the main culprits had been de-sysopped in my absence.  One stress reduced...
 * 9) Philosophy I'm a philosopher; why don't I edit the article on my subject?  Because it's hopeless.  I've tried at various times, and each time have given up in depressed disgust.  Philosophy seems to attract aggressive zealots who know a little (often a very little), who lack understanding of key concepts, terms, etc., and who attempt to take over the article (and its Talk page) with rambling, ground-shifting, often barely comprehensible rants against those who disagree with them.  Life's too short.  I just tell my students and anyone else I know not to read the Wikipedia article except for a laugh.  It's one of those areas where the ochlocratic nature of Wikipedia really comes a cropper.

Licence
I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below: