User:Trackinfo

'''""If people would spend half the effort they wasted trying to delete content and instead use that time to improve content, wikipedia would be a whole lot better for it."" ''' Who is this guy on wikipedia? I am an expert in the sport of Track and field athletics with over 50 years of experience on all levels and functions.

Early on in my editing experience, I edited an article about a subject I knew personally; Bruce Jenner, who I had competed against in my younger athletic days. I wrote the majority of the content of his pre-Kardashian career (since tweaked thousands of times by other editors). Who knew at that time he would make the transgender announcement that would light the internet on fire? During the last week in April 2015, that article was the second most read article on Wikipedia. A month and a half later, when she announced her new name was Caitlyn Jenner, this same article was the overwhelming most read article during the first week of June 2015, more than quadrupling the second most read.

Let me make this perfectly clear. I am not approaching this from the perspective of being a jurassic right winger, far from it. I wish Caitlyn the best future as a woman. But I am arguing firmly for the retention of history. It was Bruce Jenner who won the decathlon in the 1976 Olympics. To say it was Caitlyn, who was not named until 2015, is a rewriting of history in order to make a point. It disagrees with what was written at the time, which is not wikipedia's role. Caitlyn did not set women's world records while Bruce was performing as a man in 1976.

I have leapt off to create a few missing articles that have related to knowledge I have gained in working with the sport, sometimes the reference is oblique but there is still a tie in. For example, I spent time creating articles for and marking defunct schools who I am familiar with through their athletic results. I've also added to other subjects I have knowledge about such as my profession of Television, or the musicological knowledge I gained from my early days in radio. With a Masters in Mass Communications, I have an anal retentive streak for poorly written articles. As I find them, I have used my english and developing wiki/html skills to correct many poor articles. Red links--missing Wikipedia articles--frequently bother me and inspire me to create that article. I try to add to the chain of information, to complete that missing element. "Good Articles" usually don't need my attention.

And hey, you can do this too. When I want to know something, I look it up. If it is not already on wikipedia, I write it up. If you are here, you are looking something up. . . ME. So you've got the skill. When you find something that needs to be written up, do it. If you don't know how; write me a message.

As I roam through wikipedia and now its administrative hierarchy, I am getting increasingly more upset with those who attack articles they do not understand. There is too much of a movement to create articles for deletion and adding unnecessary BLP unsourced tags. I am fervently working against the "Information Police" who wish to remove knowledge from this database on flimsy excuses based on their personal prejudice. With the recent proposal that threatens to remove articles tagged as an "unreferenced BLP," I am making a serious effort to reference and remove those tags so valuable articles are not threatened.

I take my contributions here seriously. If I'm going to go through the effort to edit something into or out of an article, it is with the intent to improve the world's knowledge about something I know about and have researched. I take particular offense to the number of edits that have been deleted. Actually that number comes from the number of edits contained in articles that have been deleted. So far, well over of a hundred of my contributions to articles that I thought were important, have been deleted. Those are not because I was in error or have been subsequently corrected, I accept that as a condition of working on wikipedia; but because someone else, usually only a handful of self appointed patrollers of wikipedia, thought THE SUBJECT was not worthy for the world to know about. I read the AfDs. Many of the "delete" respondents didn't even know about the subject. If you are able to read the article and understand the subject, then you should be speaking about its content. If you don't, butt out.  For the un-human bots who are placing improper references and the people who have no expertise in a subject denying an article's significance, you will attract my ire.

My wiki philosophy is simple (taken from the statue outside Faber College). Knowledge is good.


 * Unreferenced BLP backlog: Category:All_unreferenced_BLPs I am paying attention.

Barnstars
-- Dolotta (talk) 01:12, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Link rot
I believe in what is called "Link rot." Actually what I believe in is using bare URLs. The wikipedia administrators have carried Anal retentiveness beyond reason. On wikipedia, we want verifiable information, that is a given. I clearly give the source where I found the information or "source" that backs up the information I am supplementing. There is nothing improper about that. I DO NOT go through the slow, laborious and unnecessary step of creating the complicated and difficult to read wikipedia format for displaying the source. I don't think I should have to. My contributions to this global knowledge database already require far too much labor and concentration. Completing all those source details would slow my progress immensely. Completing those details would inhibit the majority of content contributing editors from depositing valuable content to wikipedia.

My point here is, writing all that source detail is totally unnecessary. The minority oligarchy that controls wikipedia procedures has decided that a bare URL reference automatically results in the link going down, or the information being obscured. Yes that is a possibility, but a small possibility. We cannot control what happens to outside sources. Our posting a URL does not cause that nor will writing all that detail solve that.

One additional point. These sourcing formats cause problems to wikipedia. Each source adds two to three times the amount of characters. On large articles, or on a cumulative basis, that slows the server by increasing the necessary bandwidth to open each page. From an editing point of view, reading through complex formatting with multiple lines of text make it much more difficult to find the visible text amongst the other gibberish related to the source. Google sources like google books and other complex php search code from our sources also doesn't help that. We can't control outside sources, but we can control our own complexity.

What they wish for is verification, which requires human supervision--someone actually re-reading the source and confirming that the conclusions in the wikipedia article are backed up by what an independent reliable source says. Its a two way street. When the site does go down, the information is no longer secured by all that source detail. Yes an article was once there, no we can't verify what its contents once were. There is zero protection of wikipedia for the verifiability of the information and it will get marked with a dead link tag.

Tagging
Let me examine the psychology of the person who leaves these Tags. If you read through the source citing guidelines, one of the subsequent steps for sourcing, if there is a problem with the source, one of the solutions is to find other sources. Just leaving such a tag without taking any further action to search for other sources is the height of laziness. I equate it to Vandalism and sometimes leave sarcastic comments to that effect. Like when a gang leaves Graffiti they unnecessarily deface the look of an article, its credibility and the overall look of credibility for wikipedia. If you leave such tags without doing the further work, you are NOT helping. All you are saying is "I was here." Kilroy. Instead, if you feel so motivated to detect a bare URL someone has left, you have several better options. Each will take some of your time and labor.

Run reflinks. Its easy to find--its in the tag you would be leaving behind. Like I said, I don't do it because I don't see a purpose to its results, but if you think the article desperately needs have the bare URLs cleaned up then DO IT YOURSELF.

If the source is no longer present, or there is no source listed, spend your time and find another source. Google, Yahoo, Bing, Dogpile and many others are great search engines. I've been amazed with the stuff I find when I search, based upon a start from a contribution into wikipedia. Someone with intelligence should be able to come up with combinations of key words to search out the content that needs to be verified. Watch out for the sources you do come up with--many times after something is reported in wikipedia, it is copied or mirrored on other sites. Look for unique phrasings of similar content, rather than an echo. Further, if the original source article is now missing, look for it in the The Internet Archive and WebCite.

And finally is to point out that a citation is needed or that a contention is dubious. Even there, after a serious search for the information, before you place the tag, make some sense of the content. Search back through the history of the article. If a piece of information has been part of the article for a long time, particularly if the article has had traffic, consider that a lot of eyes have looked past that point. Before you base any tag on your limited personal opinion, realize that the people who look at and find such articles over time (and made no change to the content) know more about the article than you do and probably did so because there is no problem with that content. Understand your own limitations before you tag outside your area of expertise.

Learning
So I am kind of repeating myself but I want to put in a positive spin: I will say that the best thing about working on wikipedia is that I have personally learned from it. I watch over fourteen thousand articles in subjects that I know, understand and am interested in. I service those articles, deleting absolute garbage that is added by all manner of vandals, spammers or idiots who do not read the article. At the same time, I take each new addition at face value. Many times, what someone else has posted leads me to do the kind of research I expect of others. I learn that even things other editors have dismissed are legitimate, documentable pieces of information that do belong in the article. That doesn't mean that the original edit is perfect, but with that tidbit of truth you can google paragraphs of amazing stuff I did not know about before that post.

There is a certain amount of ego involved in making wikipedia edits. You have to think you know more than what is already posted. At the same time, you have to learn when to turn off your ego and absorb new information that may conflict with what you think you know and might be inconsistent with the Point of View you might initially have. I do not know where the path will lead me, but its an interesting journey.

Censorship
Wikipedia is not censored. That is a principle. That is not the fact. I'm not referring to people using various expletives and vulgarities. While I support that and use those words occasionally myself, I am referring to a different censorship. Censorship of Wikipedia is a form of whitewashing facts, trying to take information out of the public space. When I see that, I do use expletives. We can't control when governments restrict the availability of information from their citizens, though I think it would be perfectly applicable for us to publish an instructional article on how to evade such censorship. It is much more obvious when someone with an agenda deliberately removes content and sources. . . to try to make something they disagree with, disappear. (Poof * * @). As I said, I watch. When I see that, after my expletives, I come back hard and I recommend you do it too. When I spot a subject, a derogatory, sourced piece of information being removed, not only do I revert the edit. That is easy. If someone wants to get sneaky hiding something, that means it should be elaborated upon. Find other sources, find MORE of the story. They wanted to hide something, maybe a sentence, or a paragraph. . . now its a section with multiple sources. . . now its multiple sidebar articles. Fight back. The information we present is important. This is why I constantly fight the artificial, corrupt deletion process so often.

Thoroughly Disappointed
I've spent too much time fighting the deletion process here. I'm sorry I don't have good faith, because I've seen too many administrators abuse their powers in order to remove content from our pages. The BLP debates brought forth many of the crazies. I refer to them in those terms because of the passionately psychotic fashion they exhort their power here. I'm not the only observer of this phenomenon. Another editor wrote the best summation I have seen of this. It is a must read for anybody puzzled by the wikipedia decision making process, or by my sometimes biting comments about that process.

Another article just forwarded to me is Gwern's "In Defense Of Inclusionism".

Stupidity
Wikipedia rules of decorum threaten anyone making a direct accusation in this regard. I am making it in a more wholesale, indirect fashion. We have a certain type of editor who loves to be argumentative, but uses the debating skills of a second grader. To this type of editor, facts don't matter. I phrase this kind of editor, conveniently stupid. "No it isn't" is their reaction to evidence, written information from a reliable source. There is no reasoning with this child. Yet it is this child who wags the entire dog.

It is an absolute crying shame on this great encyclopedia that a few well placed idiots can affect what the world is allowed to learn. The damage they do with a few words can last forever.

If you have read this far, you were probably trying to figure out why I seem so aggressive. You might have already engaged me in a * Deletion debate. Surprise, I fight back. It should be obvious to all, I clearly am an inclusionist, so I will be fighting to keep content. I don't defend what shouldn't be here. By the time I have taken up a cause, you are not fighting me about an opinion. I know my facts. You should lose. You should give up. That is not an egotistical statement, I just do the research that, if you are opposing me, you have failed to do. 100,000 edits, I am well beyond what I know. I am good at research. I am good at google; apparently better than most, because I find information when nominators say it is not there. Are you being conveniently stupid? Did you fail WP:BEFORE? I will call you on that. If I can find it, why did you miss it? Why do you want to push your case further? When I show you the facts, stop. You can have an opinion, but facts should be common among us all. On wikipedia, facts should matter. They don't always. My won/loss percentage should be 100%, but its only in the high 90's.  Some agendas have succeeded and I am quite disappointed in the wiki community for allowing that situation to happen--to have a process to allow it to happen. Agendas shouldn't win, right should win. Truth should win. If you are not on the side of facts, STOP.

Stupidity continues
Here is an unnecessary battle I have fought with the forces of stupidity that rule wikipedia. This was supposedly a discussion initially brought by a well meaning editor who suggested the name of the category I created should be renamed, not deleted, renamed. But by bringing it into a domain called Categories for Discussion, the article came into the realm of what this truly is Categories for Deletion. If you read through the discussion, there are several people suggesting different renamings of the category and three individual editors who push for deletion. The result, on just three and a half "votes," the category ended up deleted. There were three and a half others suggesting a name change. You'd think we could solve this kind of thing by creating a new category with a proper name. But here is the dastardly legacy of such a discussion. I created a new category, named more consistently with the previous discussion. In fact, I took the suggested name from one of the people who voted to delete. And don't let the consensus semantics fool you these are votes.  The result is this discussion for deletion started by an editor who apparently wants to delete everything. He accused the category of being too broad. Who votes, who even participates in the discussion? Two of the same three who had it deleted previously. And it gets a "speedy" deletion because it is a recreation. That is what I refer to as prejudice. Above I mention how people who have no knowledge of the subject should butt out. This is the case.

Wikipedia is about compiling knowledge that other people can learn from. Categories help people find information. Granted the world's knowledge is not greatly affected by star high school athletes or even the sport of track and field to which I have contributed to so heavily. But this is the field I have my knowledge in and one I know where to find the sources. I looked through the history of the handful of editors who successfully had these categories deleted. I could not find a significant editorial contribution any of them had made to an article regarding the subject of the category under discussion (though they have made minor formatting edits). They blow out an opinion of the significance of something they know very little about. And that opinion, by their mere presence and the absence of others, affects what everybody else in the world can potentially learn about the subject.

What is upsetting is the system. This small minority of wikipedia elite are the only ones who travel in these backrooms. So they are the only ones who make decisions about what the world can know. . . about anything. There are probably plenty of things on wikipedia that are totally useless. But for that clean up effort, how much valuable content is being quashed and stamped with a future mark of death, by this extreme minority in the process?

Oligarchy
I keep seeing some very vocal, active editors on wikipedia, many of them with administrative credentials, who spend their time sanitizing what we are allowed to know. If you see me talking about people who are more equal than others, I think the reference is applicable. As I repeat through this page, I am here about furthering information. Whenever I remove information, it is because I have researched the subject and know it is wrong. More often, I correct errors, if there is substance to what is posted.

Categories for Deletion Discussions
I've said this elsewhere, I have to say it here. The current system for Categories for Discussion (formerly and better named as Categories for Deletion) is seriously flawed. This back region of wikipedia is toured only by a microscopic few of the active wikipedia editors, much less the public viewership. If you give any value to categorization as a helpful tool for our users, then these categories should be treated as such and use such a standard in the discussions. The problem comes from the limited knowledge from the limited pool of participants. In short we are not providing notification to the editors who have added these categories to articles, we are not putting a notification on the articles the removal of a category will affect. In the absence of the interested participants, you are conducting ALL of these discussions in an enclosed bubble. Paraphrasing the way I have bluntly reacted; there are thousands of categories, each potentially affecting hundreds of articles. I can't possibly watch all the categories on the off chance that someone will make a stupid nomination. So it keeps happening. Stupid nominations, categories deleted with only a few (thoughtless) comments, and poof a category is gone. Somebody gets their brownie points for a successful deletion and wikipedia users. . . remember them, the people we are supposed to be helping with this organizational tool. . . are left without the help we should; we were providing. Look, I'm all for deleting frivolous garbage, maybe that is the majority of your work. All I see are unpredictably random, useful categories excised and salted. I say you are stupid because in each case, if just one person has done a WP:BEFORE and acted upon it, certainly the tide would have changed. Somebody needs to open their eyes in this dark room. Sunlight is needed. You need to invite people who understand these subject INTO the discussion, not hide your discussion from them. That can be achieved by the two items I mentioned.
 * 1) Send a message to each editor who has added the category (under threat of the deletion discussion) to an article.
 * 2) Post a notification message on all articles contained in that category.

Wikipedia Success Stories
This site is a collaborative collection of knowledge. I'm here helping to impart the missing information I am able to recall, much of it as an adjunct to what I am able to learn from the site. It sometimes makes the subject matter I jump in to seem haphazard. One such case produced the wonderful chain of events that shows what is possible. I found an article under attack at WP:AfD. Knowing a little about the subject I looked to see if that point was there (which it was), which took me another couple of links deeper. Standing out like a sore thumb was the air name of a radio legend I knew of. He had no article, so I googled to see what was available. After collecting what became about a dozen sources, I started the article Captain Mikey. Within hours, a couple of other editors discovered this article and added to it. One editor in particular has made close to 150 edits in the first three days of the life of this article. He has taken this from a better than average mention of this man's career, into details I could never have imagined were available. This shows the potential of Wikipedia and makes the battles to retain content worthwhile.

While I pay attention to Road Running, I'm no long an active competitor in that portion of the sport, so its not at the top of my list of things to notice. But I saw activity around the 2019 Boston Marathon and realized, this is the third Monday in April, Patriots' Day, yeah it happened. The article looked incomplete, so I found the missing information and completed it. And because the winner was a red link, I googled. The first one I tried was the female winner Worknesh Degefa, turns out she's the #4 marathoner in history, obviously due for an article, so I created it. These things take a while. Before I had gotten to the male winner, Lawrence Cherono, the article was nominated for In the News. Shortly after I got his article started, the 2019 Boston Marathon was on the home page of Wikipedia.

100,000
January 28, 2019, 11 years 9 months 25 days since my first edit and now I have hit my 100,000th edit. I'm actually in the midst of a bunch of cleanups to a massive article I started almost 8 years ago; List of United States high school national records in track and field. This page has been viewed 337 thousand times in the last two years (the best statistics available). So I can take this moment out to pat myself on the back for making an impact with the information I have presented on wikipedia. Helping the world learn, that is why I do this.

My athletic career
Just for the record, I ran against Bruce Jenner many times during the training times in San Jose. I happened to be a better sprinter and long jumper than he, so a feather in my cap is to say I was ahead of Jenner in a decathlon. That was temporary, I still can't throw, while that is the reason Jenner was exceptional. Jenner's 100m personal best is only .06 faster than mine. Jenner set that in the Olympics vs the world's best. I set mine the first time vs Jenner.

Over the years I have had exceptional opportunities to compete against some of the best athletes in the world. Lee Evans, Millard Hampton, Cyndy Poor, Francie Larrieu, Andre Phillips, Brian Oldfield, James Lofton, Jim Ryun, Rod Dixon, Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers, Florence Griffith Joyner, Alice Brown, Bob Richards, Marion Jones, Tyree Washington, Dave Johnson, Dwight Stones, John Godina, Willie Banks ,Robert Cannon. I'll probably keep adding to the list. That's the neat thing about track and field, you never know who will show up on the same starting line (or enter a field event) as you. Sometimes celebrities are paid just to show up. Other times, they are there for the same purpose as you are, to do their best.

Credits
I'll take credit for initiating and writing the majority of these articles (and many of the related derivative articles):
 * United States Olympic Trials (track and field)
 * 1968 in athletics
 * Running boom of the 1970s
 * All-weather running track
 * Starting blocks
 * CIF California State Meet
 * Masters Athletics World Records
 * United States Records in Masters Athletics
 * World Masters Athletics
 * World Masters Athletics Championships
 * Mt. SAC Relays
 * List of Masters Athletes
 * List of closed secondary schools in California
 * United States high school national records in track and field
 * And almost all event analysis content under


 * Athletics at the 2016 Summer Olympics
 * Athletics at the 2012 Summer Olympics
 * 2011 World Championships in Athletics
 * 2013 World Championships in Athletics
 * 2015 World Championships in Athletics
 * and the 2017 World Championships in Athletics

Click here for the full list.

I don't spend my time creating articles for random future upcoming athletes, I create them when the information about their performances indicate a need. The 2016 IAAF World Indoor Championships showed the attention I pay. I was keen enough to what was happening, that I had already created the articles for six world champions;
 * Trayvon Bromell
 * Boris Berian
 * Matthew Centrowitz, Jr. also won an Olympic Gold Medal
 * Marquis Dendy
 * Francine Niyonsaba (also won an Olympic Silver Medal)
 * Vashti Cunningham

Future articles
>794

Note to self: Here are a few articles I intend to start, in no particular order. Sandbox Picture Upload Hilmer Lodge Stadium Earl Fee Nolan Shaheed Stan Whitley Gary Tuttle Leslie Maxie Cyndy Poor Jeshua Anderson Reggie Wyatt George Porter (athlete) Paul Wilson (pole vaulter) Brandon Richards Henry Thomas (athlete) Tommy Skipper Candy Young Polly Plumer Lasse Viren Finnish Invitational Carlsbad 5000 Arturo Barrios Invitational Sunkist Invitational

Category: Athletics (track and field) officials