User:The Bipolar Anon-IP Gnome/Mensa

My contributions - a tale of research
It all started when I stumbled across Asia Carrera while checking members of Category:Members of Mensa (subsequently deleted by CFD on 2007-03-08) after the 2nd AfD for "List of famous members of Mensa" ... she had a link to a scan of her article from the American Mensa monthly magazine ... I remembered reading that issue, which had about 20 "famous" members, and vaguely remembered her only because she was a noted porn star ... well, that led me on a quest for that issue to add cites for others who already had articles here ... that's when I added "" That reference was enough for me to go online to the Library of Congress and request a copy of the article ... a few days later, I got a phone call from a researcher at the LoC (it's a local call), a fellow Mensan, to let me know that he had found it, and wanted my FAX number to send me a copy!

Since I don't have a FAX, he mailed me a xerographic copy, and I updated the citation ...""

You see, American Mensa will neither deny nor confirm anyone's membership ... active members may purchase an annual membership directory, but members may also request that their names not be included, so it is not a reliable source ... OTOH, a published article featuring notable members is, so I figured I'd take this as an opportunity to reliably add some names to the Category ... among the 20 or so people featured in the article (each with several paragraphs and a photo) I found others who already had Wiki-bios (to name a few):


 * Jean M. Auel - author of The Clan of the Cave Bear
 * Mike Carona - the Sheriff-Coroner of Orange County, California
 * Martin Cooper - considered the inventor of the cell phone
 * Geena Davis - actress
 * Nelson DeMille - author of Night Fall
 * Myles Jeffrey - actor
 * Ranan Lurie - editorial cartoonist and journalist
 * Alan Rachins - actor
 * Marilyn vos Savant - listed in the Guinness Book of World Records under "Highest IQ"

I actually had a conflict with another editor over the Geena Davis article, which already had a mention of her membership with a reference to her IMDb biography ... long story short, I replaced the IMDb citation with the one from Mensa Bulletin as being more reliable, and they reverted it ... we compromised by having two citations because it was IMDb that made the dubious claim of an actual IQ number ... since there were multiple refs made to the IMDb bio, I turned it into a  as well. - "Davis is a member of American Mensa with an IQ of 140."

from the URL and created a  to replace the multiple links, they said that I was a WP:VANDAL and reverted to their last version.

But since my IP address changes randomly, any User Contributions will only show a few days or weeks of my activity, and it's usually focused on something Entirely Different than it was a month before, or even the week after that snapshot of my edits. So if I appear to be on a vendetta of "drive-by tagging" articles, you're just seeing a temporary, passing obsession on a single topic ... and I'll move on to something else in a few weeks.

Right now, I'm in a Very Strange Place ... I tag an article for dubiuos citations, the author removes the tag, another editor prods it, the prod is removed, a third editor does a WP:CSD, and the author takes it to WP:DRV, where the Speedy is overturned, and it goes to WP:AFD for consensus ... all within 24 hours, and simply because I put a  or   tag on an article where I had just spent an hour trying to track down and clean up a bunch of refs, all to make Worthy Citations out of them, with author names and publication dates.

But some editors feel threatened when a stub article that they have neglected for months since creation is questioned for WP:N because it does not have any WP:RS citations, just External links to websites that turn out to violate WP:COI or WP:NPOV ... or sometimes the entire article turns out to be a WP:COPYVIO from a bio page for them on some other website, and the next thing you know I'm commenting at another DRV because after I put a  on an article, Some Other Editor replaced it with a. &mdash; 11:11, 5 January 2007 (UTC) -
 * Extracted from User talk:72.75.85.159 &mdash;The Bipolar AnonIP Gnome 14:01, 9 May 2007 (UTC)