User:Seraphimblade

Why am I here? Why do I volunteer my time on this project?

This is a good answer to that. Wikipedia will never, ever, ever be perfect. But it is good, even great, and it is free as in freedom. That's good enough for me.

If that's not quite enough for you, consider this. In a little over a decade, a group of self-selected volunteers have constructed what is the greatest educational work ever developed by mankind. Millions have contributed and billions have learned and benefited. Please contribute here in good faith and to further that mission of education and learning.





User page: Seraphimblade
This user page has been vandalized many times, and reverted an equal number. If you would like to make test edits, you are welcome to use the sandbox or my userspace sandbox here.





Administrator and arbitrator
As of March 12, 2007, my request for adminship was successful with a final total of (91/2/1), and I am an administrator. I am very grateful for the community's trust, and will make every effort to live up to it.

In December 2013, I was elected to the Arbitration Committee, and served a two year term (lasting into early 2016 to finish up carryover business). I did not seek reelection due to upcoming events in my own life that I knew would not allow me the time to continue serving, but may run again some day in the future if that's not the case any more. I'm glad to have had the experience of working with some truly exceptional people on the Committee.

General information about me
I'm a software developer who currently resides in Denver, Colorado. I am male, but it seems my username is rather androgynous, so I won't be upset with you if you got that wrong. I have been editing Wikipedia for approximately twelve years as of 2017, starting out as an anonymous editor doing small fixes, and eventually deciding I would like to participate more fully. My activity, of course, waxes and wanes, as inevitably real-life commitments do arise.

You're welcome to refer to me as "Seraphimblade", "Seraphim", "Blade", "Todd" (though please don't do that in widespread discussions, it may confuse others), or for that matter "Hey you" if it's clear who you're talking to.

I use the alternate account Seraphimbladepublic to edit from potentially insecure public machines or networks, to avoid any risk of compromise of my admin account. Unless I explicitly note otherwise from this account (i.e., if that account is compromised), edits from that account are mine and I take full responsibility for them.

Personal views and information
I believe that it is important for editors to give a general overview of personal viewpoints, so that others can call out if the editor is exhibiting unconscious bias toward those viewpoints while editing articles. This does not mean that I will recuse entirely from editing articles regarding these subjects, but rather will listen carefully to any assertion that my edits may not be neutral.


 * I am male but a strong supporter of gender equality.
 * I am from and reside in the United States.
 * I am an atheist and secular humanist.
 * I am Caucasian but a strong supporter of racial equality.
 * I am politically liberal in most cases, but tend to make up my own mind issue by issue.
 * I do not belong to any organized political party.
 * I am heterosexual but a strong supporter of LGBT rights, including the right to marry.
 * I support the free culture movement. (I volunteer here, after all.) I also support open source software.

Licensing notes
All images and text which are my original work and which have been contributed to Wikipedia are released to the public domain, or if for any reason this is not possible, I irrevocably and perpetually relinquish all rights to control the content granted under the copyright law, and grant license to anyone to use, copy, modify, distribute, and otherwise utilize the content in any way and for any purpose whatsoever.

Miscellaneous
Temporary space for stuff in process.

Second temp sandbox

Desk

Deletionist
Yes, I'm a deletionist. That's landed me in more than one conflict with other editors. Some of them, granted, are out to place nothing more than a silly vanity page or a spamvertisement, and while I'm very willing to help them to contribute better content, I'm not at all sorry they didn't get to contribute that type of thing. On the other hand, some other editors are well-reasoned, thought-out people, and have disagreed. A recent discussion I had with one such user caused me to consider this position-and ultimately, to decide to continue it, though his arguments were well-reasoned and I believe his intentions are the very best.

WP:V and WP:OR are core policies. For Wikipedia to continue to have any credibility whatsoever, these policies must be enforced and enforced strictly. The very reason we don't want a vanity bio or article from a band (with no more "sources" than a self-created page) are that no assertions about the subject can be verified. The reader has no way to check out if what they're reading is true, or if the writer of the article (who frequently, for such non-notable subjects, is the person the article is about or a member of the band) has inflated or distorted things.

Without deletion of unverifiable content, there is really no need for administrators whatsoever. We might as well call it Myspace II and be done with it. Of course, any intelligent reader knows that anything they read on Myspace may be inflated or totally fabricated-it has no credibility. To fail to remove unverified facts here would place Wikipedia in that same situation.

I believe, as the user I discussed this with, that Wikipedia should be the sum of all human knowledge. What I disagree with is what that entails. The name of my dog is not "human knowledge"-it's not verifiable to anyone here and no one cares anyway. For that matter, my own biography doesn't fit that criterion, for the same reason. Technically, someone "knows" what I had for dinner (namely me) but no one can verify that and no one cares.

The theory of relativity. World War II. The Roman Empire. Hell, even Britney Spears. These things are human knowledge in that they are important (or at least notable) to humanity as a whole, or at least to a significantly large fraction thereof. The things I mentioned above are not, they are personal knowledge-and such things don't belong here, paper or not aside.