User:Stagyar Zil Doggo

The Obligatory Blurb
Actually the name's Drew. My username comes from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - really, I just thought it sounded cool, but it happens to be the name of Ford's editor at the Guide, before the Guide gets taken over by Infinidim Enterprises. He's described as a dedicated editor, to the extent that he has a well-appointed office, well supplied with drinks, and furnished with a machine gun turret that automatically shoots researchers who come to him without anything to show for their efforts. So... Maybe a little unbalanced. Definitely unbalanced, but seriously hoopy. You would almost have to have that combination of traits to work for the Guide, wouldn't you? I guess the fairest thing you can say about him is that he knows what he likes.

I like Wikipedia, but I'm not murderously dedicated. I'm glad there is a Wikipedia; an online source of information about anything that's easily navigable by virtue of being dispassionately organized. But I believe that a thing like Wikipedia is, by nature, not wholly governable. Anyone who's read the Hitchhiker's Guide fifteen times could tell you what can happen when an entity tries to exert total control over something like this. A capable, interested and humble editor is a rare thing, and members of that set who are good writers also are rarer still, whereas disinterested users are in ready supply, in accordance with John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. Everyone - except those who will soon find out - is familiar with an editor who absolutely has to have his or her way. The guy who gets gibberingly, droolingly passionate about punctuation; the guy whose meager individual experience represents the sum of human knowledge about this or that; the guy whose writing is perfect, and must therefore be defended against everyone who would alter it... Add awareness of the scope of the project, and the scarcity of genuine expertise to these considerations and you have a cogent argument against taking Wikipedia super-seriously. So I don't.

I'm the kind of editor who's lousy at writing original material and doesn't. But I'm pretty good at copy-editing, and in the words of Jerry Holkins, 'I have a judo grip on the English language.' So I do plenty of that.

If I manage to offend your sensibilities, or if you want talk for some other reason - talk to me. Seriously, talk. Tell me about it. I'm not my namesake - I'd genuinely, probably like to hear what you have to say.

At least, I won't shoot you.

- Stagyar Zil Doggo 03:22, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

My Milestones ( if you want to know... even though you don't want to know )
- Reached two-hundred edits (and Novice Editor status) on 26 March 2010 - although the record will show 27 March due to a time zone difference - by adding the Award template to my user page.

- Reached five-hundred edits on 12 April 2010 with a general cleanup edit to the article on James Earl Ray.