User:Proteus71

Proteus71 claims no supernatural abilities himself, he has been known to go through pizza and pho with preternatural skill (but not at the same time). He is the founding editor of The Doctor Who Ratings Guide.

Interests
Classic Literature: Sophocles, Chaucer, Dickens, Epic literature,  Shakespeare.

Modern Literature: Patrick O'Brian, J. K. Rowling, Jeff Shaara, Tolkien.

Film: Buster Keaton, Kurosawa, The Marx Brothers, Orson Welles.

Mathematics: Linear Algebra.

Music: Beach Boys, Beatles, Haydn, Mozart.

Radio: The Goon Show, The Navy Lark

Television: Doctor Who, The Prisoner, Quatermass.

...plus Bigfoot.

Contributions to Wikipedia
All over the map. He is proud of the work that he and others have done on Buster Keaton, Mason & Dixon, and The Daleks' Master Plan.

Saving Wikipedia by Deleting Articles
There's a new breed of editor on WP: they delete everything that's not cited. They allow very little room for negotiation, ignore some of WP's rules (WP:IAR), and have had one minor victory already. They are now working on Chuck Cunningham Syndrome and The Goon Show.

Is this a conspiracy? No. WP at-large is seeking to redeem itself in the eyes of its pro-Britannica critics. To do so, every nut and bolt must be tightened in order be considered legitimate. These editors have undertook this mission on behalf of the The Powers That Be who would sacrifice interesting information for the sake of accuracy. Is this bad? No, but it's not the policy of a Wiki that I want to spend time working on. Didn't Jimmy Wales say that Nupedia was no fun because it seemed like he was back in school? What will WP when a bunch of Rule Zealots who think they are as competent as librarians take over? (I'm married to a librarian &mdash; from that alone, I can say these Rule Zealots don't have the first clue about managing information, let alone volunteers.)

If the Rule Zealots take over, I hope to start my own Wiki. It would definitely include the aforementioned articles. Perhaps others. But it will be small and not compete directly with WP. If WP wants to be a site where you can find everything you need to know on Political parties in Estonia, the Keukenhof flower garden, and zithers, more power to it. We need that in this world. But we also need a place for trivial subjects such as TV characters who disappear without a trace and British radio comedies from the 50's.

I'll post developments here, if any.


 * I endorse your idea to have a separate Wiki for CCS and other things.


 * In general, I think Wikipediatrix has a point that such listings can be a magnet for lots of subjective fancruft. And that we really don't have a clearly enforceable defintion of CCS (Consider unexplained absences, like my favorite: Zara Cully from the third (or fourth?) season of The Jeffersons. The aging actress was sick in real life and continued to be in the credits as a regular. But, considering how frequently she was in the show in previous seasons, and how large a role her character played, it is extremely surprising that she isn't even mentioned all season until she returns, in a wheelchair, near the end of the season. How does that fit? It's too short to be Lazarus Cunningham).


 * But the first point can be dealt with by someone (or some people) watchlisting the article in question and aggressively making sure stuff is sourced or fits the definition, and the second ... well, if we went with my proposed name change we wouldn't necessarily be bound by some hard-and-fast rule but we could note all the nuances. I think 'atrix's opposition is to the very idea of this. But we don't refuse to run articles on undeniably notable things just because of the maintenance problems they would create (if so, we would have had no articles on high schools). I wish she'd say so.


 * And I really think her editing style merits an RFC at some point. She does the easy work of tagging but never hangs around to finish the job (I am beginning to think use of some of those maintenance templates should be restricted to admins), usually thinks her snotty edit summaries are sufficient to establish consensus and refuses to respond to complaints. Daniel Case 18:46, 28 July 2006 (UTC)