User:Stephenb

Hello, I'm Steve, and I have been a UK editor of Wikipedia since June 2005.

I am no longer editing Wikipedia regularly, if at all. Why? Deletionists. Simple as that. I'm afraid I no longer believe that Wikipedia works for the majority of editors, and that people that follow process dogmatically, rather than pragmatically and with understanding, have too much control.

Topics of interest
I occasionally look in on the magazines category, and related categories (see also Wikipedia:Categorization), and seeing whether I can categorise the articles therein a little better.

I often go on RC patrol to relieve stress, using a useful tool called Twinkle. Useful links: Template_messages/User_talk_namespace!

I am also a member of the EastEnders WikiProject but rarely have time to edit in detail.

Some statements of belief

 * 1) I believe the majority of effort in Wikipedia should be to continue to add to the sum total of knowledge by adding and improving articles. Those editors that only look to delete articles or valid information within articles (that are not nonsense, violations of BLP or vandalism), but which do not meet guidelines yet, should be ashamed, as their actions alienate both existing and potential editors and destroy faith in the Wikipedia project.  It's all too easy to delete articles, less easy to accept that readers may find the content therein useful and therefore may contribute to the encyclopaedia by improving them.
 * Further: If Wikipedia really is the encyclopaedia that anyone can edit, then we must accept that articles will often get created that do not meet guidelines for notability, fiction or whatever. This being the case, it becomes obvious that there are a significant number of editors who believe that such articles should be present, regardless of whether they have read those guidelines.  In this case, the guidelines end up being a tool used by another set of editors who simply want to protect and ensconce those guidelines and delete articles that do not (in their view) meet them, rather than discuss their relative merits and/or allow exceptions.  This is starting to cause a significant clash between "deletionists" (who slavishly nominate articles for deletion rather than making positive contributions - i.e. adding content and improving articles) and "everyone else", whether prolific, casual or single-article editors who obviously felt that a particular article ought to be present.
 * This slavish following of guidelines as if they were unbreakable or unchangeable rules is at the heart of the problem. Wikipedian "deletionists" should be more tolerant, should attempt to improve (or add tags to request improvement of) articles before citing guidelines to get articles deleted.  In addition, a significant debate about these guidelines (how they are managed, debated and how they are brought to editors' attentions), deletions (how they are managed and publicised for articles with significant histories and contributors), and acceptable content for a "free encyclopaedia for everyone to edit" should begin.
 * "Notability" has become a war-cry of those who want to restrict the freedom to edit articles about subjects that others do not feel are notable. It is obviously easier in some circumstances to determine whether the subject of an article is worthy of having one - individuals and groups spring to mind - but on other issues, where an object clearly exists and has related information that might be of use to other people, such as individual episodes of TV shows, the case is less clear-cut.  Personally, I think in the latter cases, the article should be tagged for notability and left alone for a period - it may well be that the episode or whatever is truly notable for reasons that are not immediately clear.
 * 1) I believe in going easy on vandalism that is obviously only test editing, but hard on vandalism that is obviously disruptive.
 * 2) This user doesn't believe in spending time and effort shoving every possible userbox on his page :-)

Barnstar
This barnstar was the first I ever got, on the wrong page too, so I have left it here for posterity: