User:RedSoxFan2434

Hello!

I'm RedSoxFan2434, and I created this account so I don't appear as my IP address when editing. That's about it.

If you for some reason wish to know me a little better, you can read my Infobox and many Userboxes.

My Work on Wikipedia
I started out here in Spring of 2012 as an anonymous vandal who was soon made aware of the error of his ways and converted into a loyal, vandalism-fighting, neutrality-defending editor. Soon after, I created this page on April 8, 2012, and became a full-fledged Wikipedian. My first edit was on The Office (U.S. season 8), where I removed a redundancy from an episode summary.

Soon after, I became a member in several WikiProjects, but only in the way that I prefer to edit articles on those subjects, as they are all subjects that interest me and that I have substantial knowledge of. I have been particularly active in the areas of the Baseball, Red Sox, and Office WikiProjects.

In addition to maintaining and improving the encyclopedia in general, I also focus my efforts on maintaining the neutrality of Wikipedia, especially in articles related to the elections or other controversial, often 2-sided events, where many editors are leaning towards one side and (sometimes intentionally) attempting to lean the encyclopedia to their side in order to influence the reader's views. I also function as a WikiGnome.

I have contributed heavily at 2012 Boston Red Sox season in the Game Log and season summary; many Wikipedians are opposed to the game logs due to the lack of season summaries to support them, so I have worked to make both viable at that page and will do so again at 2013 Boston Red Sox season when the time comes.

My first (and, to date, only) article I created was Turf War (The Office), which reached Good Article status in less than 3 weeks. Speaking of GAs, I have also had a hand in turning Free Family Portrait Studio and Philip Humber's perfect game into GAs. I have also been working heavily on Rhode Island should it ever be nominated for GA status again.

I recently scored a 17177 on the Wikipediholism test, making me so addicted that only the world's best psychologist, physiologist, and witch doctor combined can cure my Wikipediholism.

On November 17, 2012, I was promoted to the rank of Reviewer for the December 1 implementation of Pending-changes protection on the English Wikipedia.

Beginning in March 2013, a series of real-world stressors began to draw me away from Wikipedia (thus curing my Wikipediholism). Eventually, I became so detached that I declared myself "semi-active" in September 2013 and disappeared from the Wiki shortly after. I officially returned 20 April 2014 (UTC), which happened to be Easter Sunday (make of that whatever you want, but I assure you, I am no WikiChrist).

Discussion Hall of Infamy
I joined the Feedback Request Service on July 3, 2012, and I love it. And thanks to the FRS, I am announcing today, this thirtieth day of the month of September in this two-thousand-and-twelfth year of our Lord, the RedSoxFan2434 Discussion Hall of Infamy:

(NOTE: This only applies to discussions I was/am involved in. I will expand the DHI as I get involved with more infamous discussions.)

Pending Changes - The well-known, seemingly-endless debate about whether or not to have a Pending Changes policy at Wikipedia. I was vehemently outspoken against the upcoming policy, which, in my opinion, has serious issues due to a backlog of pending edits which can and will delay the functionality of an article. However, the pro-PC decision that was ultimately made was fair and I now urge that we move forward to solve the backlog issue.

Naming Fictional Characters - A series of move discussions about moving articles for fictional characters (such as at Apu Nahasapeemapetilon and Coach Ernie Pantusso), which became confusing since there is no guideline on naming them. This was taken to the village pump, which yielded no help and no results.

X on Twitter - The now-infamous debates about whether "X on Twitter" articles (such as Barack Obama on Twitter and Justin Bieber on Twitter) should be on Wikipedia. This soon became a debate as to whether or not WP:INDISCRIMINATE could apply to things not specifically listed in the policy as examples of indiscriminate information, and, if it could, whether or not it applied to "X on Twitter" articles. Not 2 months after becoming a Wikipedian, I was commended by an admin, Scottywong, for my defense of WP:INDISCRIMINATE's application in the "X on Twitter" debates, which Scottywong said I said better than he could. However, the AfD where I posted that comment was closed in favor of keep, and the closer, TParis, used the exact argument I had defeated in that comment.

Paul Ryan's Marathon Time - A rather long RfC at Talk:Paul Ryan about whether or not to mention Paul Ryan's marathon time gaffe in the Paul Ryan article. The RfC was so long, one Wikipedian created a preliminary proposal to close, and that subsequently became even longer than the original RfC. Various users have debated into every minute detail over there in just a few days, including whether or not someone misinterpreted my vote. Yes, THAT much detail.

The Beatles vs. the Beatles - Perhaps the most endless of infamous debates, it's the "The" vs. "the" debates regarding Beatles-related articles that I have recently become involved in. Supporting the 47% of lower-case t's since 2012! UPDATE: In a twist, one user actually resigned from Beatles articles because he couldn't stand the sight of "the Beatles," believing "The Beatles" to be the proper name. If you read that out loud, it sounds like an even bigger overreaction.

Abolish EmailUser? - This, thankfully mostly unnoticed, RfC in which I was basically the only person for abolition of EmailUser (even the proposing user reversed his vote soon after, resulting in an eventual close as withdrawal)

The 5th Pillar - A user's suggestion via RFC to remove a significant portion of text from the 5th pillar of Wikipedia; with nobody agreeing, I closed the "discussion" (my first closure!) in favor of keeping the 5th pillar as it currently is.

Binders Full of Arbitrary Breaks - In spite of the name I have given it, it is only remotely related to Mitt Romney, although the arbitrary breaks were actually called that. The actual discussion was an AfD for the Richard Mourdock rape comments controversy, ultimately deleted and partially resurrected at Rape and pregnancy controversies in United States elections, 2012, which you will likely see on the DHI many, many more times.

You Didn't Delete That - An AfD for You didn't build that, in which many invalid arguments were thrown (WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS being the most popular one) only leading to a lack of consensus, as expressed in one of the best closures I have ever seen (I'm not kidding; if there were a Discussion Hall of Fame, this would belong there as well just for Sjakkalle's closing statement).

The Case of the 19th-Century BLP - My misguided AfD of William Highfield Jones, ultimately withdrawn. A 19th-century politician who clearly meets inclusion criteria, only I had failed to recognize so. Oh, and I referred to the article at least once as a "BLP." If you don't see what's wrong with that, you need to refresh your memory of WP:BLP.

So You Think You Can Name a Rape Article - Rape and pregnancy controversies in United States elections, 2012 was created from pages centered on the infamous Akin and Mourdock comments, and discussions immediately commenced as to its proper name. Many people wanted the word "Republican" inserted, citing the fact that all of the controversies involved Republican politicians. However, as much as I may despise the GOP, in the interest of neutrality, I remained firmly against that. Ironically, there are now controversial comments by at least one Democrat included in the article.

So You Think You Can Name a Rape Article II: Screw It, Let's Just Delete the Thing - Some users, not satisfied with the aforementioned rape comment controversy article's surmountable problems, asserted that it is POV trash, and like all POV trash, should be thrown out. The problems were fixed and the article kept (but not necessarily in that order...)

So You Think You Can Name a Rape Article III: So You Think You Can Name a Section - Some users became concerned with my use of "selective quoting" in headers to clarify the controversial comments. We resolved to go by reliable sources, but, contrary to reliable sources, only Akin's and Mourdock's headers still receive "selective quoting."

Closing Non-Admin Closures - The discussion was actually quite good, but the suggestion - to discontinue allowing non-admin closures, a great way for non-admins to get admin-esque experience - was off-the-wall enough to land the discussion here. Oh, and it was closed by a non-admin. HA!

I Wanted to Contact a Politician, So I Came to Wikipedia - An anonymous feedback came in on a politician saying exactly that, and an RfC was promptly started at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons. It was almost unanimously opposed, including my strong oppose, which misinterpreted the suggestion as a demand for private contact information, which it wasn't. (Oops!) There was also one Support for the proposal, from a (hopefully TROUTed) Wikipedian who "just [doesn't] like the way a unanimous discussion looks on the screen."

SNOW in Italy - Yet another bad AfD nom by me, this time on Giovanni Battista Armenini, quickly SNOW Keeped. Lesson learned: don't try to delete an article about someone or something you've never heard of.

Idle No More or Hungry No More? - A rather long, convoluted debate that really didn't end, but sort of fizzled out when we all lost interest (some may have even left the project altogether). Unfortunately, this meant that a sockmaster got away, as it has been determined that there was IP socking involved at Theresa Spence, Hunger strike, and other pages involved Chief Spence's hunger strike which many users (mostly IPs) sought to illegitimize whenever possible, and then claim that I and other neutrality-restoring editors were the POV-pushers and socks. It was actually rather nasty, and infamous for all the wrong reasons.

I Wanted to Contact a Corporation, So I Came to Wikipedia - said no one, ever. Yet, there was a similar proposal to that in the case three above this one, except this proposal was to put corporate HQ phone numbers on Wikipedia infoboxes. It was quickly SNOWed out. RedSoxFan2434 (talk) 01:47, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

No Punny Title Out of Respect - Respect being something some people don't have when they formulate conspiracy hypotheses (because that's what I think they should be called) such as those as Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting conspiracy theories, which was AfD'd. I actually supported a keep, for good reasons, despite the reprehensibleness of the theories. However, there were some, um, interesting comments on that AfD, the best being "it is important that these be kept. Especially in this age of compartmentalization and State secret-keeping, once we start censoring ideas because a majority feel them to be outlandish or distasteful, we have begun down a slippery slope." Give me a break. And they did, with a no-consensus finding, which means "No Punny Title Out of Respect II" is an inevitable future addition to the DHI.

So You Think You Can Name a Snowstorm - The Weather Channel thinks they can, naming the February 2013 nor'easter "Winter Storm Nemo". Although a recognized alternative name on that article, many people want it to be the pagename. I would rather see "North American blizzard of 2013" as the pagename, and our minority are enough to keep a no-consensus status of the page's name. So, it has yet to change.

Civility Enforcement... without the Enforcement. - Remember that massive RFC a lot of people participated in that was going to finally solve the problem of whether or not to enforce the Civility policy? Yeah, well, that went nowhere. There were a few data collection and analysis spreadsheets involved, but that was about it.