User:Sp

Who am I
I live in Mid-Michigan and active in the areas of gnoming, local (to me) articles, aviation in general, and dead end pages. I have no other accounts (sans the occasional from an IP when I forget to log in) and personally do not believe in the use of sock puppets. Why hide?

Why I am Here
I am mostly a gnome here to clean things up through the dead end page project and sometimes help on the intake of new items such as new pages and recent changes. I am also here to comment on things I see that could potentially cause larger issues in the future, and try to be generally helpful. I don't always succeed in the latter but I feel better that I tried.

Why I think Wikipedia is here

 * First and foremost, WP is an attempt to be a NPOV encyclopedia.
 * Second and close to the first, Wikipedia is a community that works together to improve #1.
 * Third is that it is a way for people to wield power positively over others to drive #1 and #2 to be better as a whole.

(formulated with a bit of help from WAS 4.250)

The Life Cycle of an Article in a Nutshell
1. Birth

2a. Growth

2b. Death (AfD,CSD,PROD)

3a. Good Article (GA)

3b. Maintenance

3c. Decline

4a. Death (AfD,CSD,PROD)

4b. Featured Article (FA)

This is how articles grow, prosper, decline, and die here. Articles that make it past 2b generally live long lives and become permanent residents. Only through vandalism and external forces can articles die at this stage. I mostly work at stages 1 through stages 2b through the dead end page project. I am one of the "gatekeepers" that take the marginal articles that may or may not be encyclopedic and push them towards their ultimate fate. If you see my name on the AfD or CSD lists, be assured I have tried to figure out a way to make the article live through searching, sourcing, and verification. Some of us are better at certain things than others. I do well with searching and sourcing so I stay in those areas. My counterparts are what could be considered deletionists that work at 3c and 4a and take down borderline articles to cull them from the herd. Then there is the eternal struggle in the middle of those who build articles and those who vandalize articles. I try to stay out of the murky middle but I venture there to help out when I can.

Articles I have started

 * Castle Museum (Saginaw)
 * Government of Saginaw, Michigan - Split from main
 * Hoyt Library
 * William Martin Aiken

Articles I have contributed significantly to

 * George Eiferman
 * Ht-//dig
 * Cleats (comic strip)
 * EgyptAir - Sourced the hell out of this one...

Articles I have significantly cleaned up

 * Anna Furtado
 * Desmond Hawkins
 * Port of Vancouver, USA
 * Sacral nerve stimulator
 * Saginaw, Michigan
 * University of North Texas Symphony Orchestra
 * Winlink
 * Young Americas Business trust