User:William2001

Greetings and welcome to my user page. My name is William, and I am proud to call myself a Wikipedian. My goal is simple: to share and provide free knowledge to anyone regardless of their background and to make sure that the process goes smoothly. Instead of focusing on one area, I like to go around the whole website and involve myself in various tasks, ranging from reviewing pending changes to fixing typos to reviewing AfC submissions. I also like reverting vandalism; after all, picking up trash1 is important! While these processes may be viewed as minor when compared to creating long articles, I believe that it is important for people like me to do these maintenance tasks for Wikipedia to strive. After all, school custodians/janitors are just as important as teachers in keeping schools running. Of course, I am absolutely not saying that content creation is unimportant, for without content, there would be no Wikipedia.

Many of my edits are classified as "(semi-)automated," and for some reason, many people are under the impression that (semi-)automated edits are less important or legitimate than a non-automated one. This is not necessarily true. A (semi-)automated edit simply means that an editor used a tool2 to make the process faster. Increase in speed is often associated with a decrease in quality, which perhaps is the origin of the bias against editors who make mostly (semi-)automated edits. However, in this case, the tools are increasing the efficiency, so while speed is increased, the quality remains the same. Here is an analogy: firefighters with fire hoses can extinguish fires more quickly and save more people, but that does not mean that the fire hoses decrease the quality of the work.

Please enjoy editing!

Footnotes

1Many inexperienced (and veteran) editors make mistakes, and those genuine attempts made in good faith are not trash since those efforts to contribute have the potential to become useful as new editors gain more experience. Unfortunately, many unconstructive edits are made in malicious attempts to disrupt Wikipedia or even cause harm to living persons. I refer to those as trash.

2For reverting vandalism and good faith edits, I like to use STiki, which, unfortunately, is currently down.

Signatures
William2001(talk)

William2001(talk)

William2001(talk) (06 February 2016 - 26 June 2019)

William2001(talk), to improve contrast (26 June 2019 - 02 May 2020)

William2001(talk) ( Please ping when replying ), to avoid missed replies (02 May 2020 - present) (I do agree that the long tail is perhaps not very aesthetically pleasing. The good news is that, in general, my username won't appear in articles, so most people in the world won't see it. Thus, the utilitarian form shall prevail... for now.)