User:WilliamJE

Greetings
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Stuff
  can't retire

Thank you, faithful user who warns of "one too many screws loose", for quality articles on golf and air incidents, such as Sun-Young Yoo and Viasa Flight 742, for going after reliable sources and for, - you are an awesome Wikipedian!Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:34, 30 November 2013 (UTC)


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General
I am 61 years old. Have tried out twice unsuccessfully for Jeopardy!. Some people who know me will say I have a head full of useless trivia on a variety of subjects. I am a cancer survivor. During my life I have traveled to all 50 United States and have been to over a dozen countries. I've been to Hel and back. On two occasions I have received media credentials to blog LPGA Tour golf tournaments. I once played a correspondence chess game against both Claude Bloodgood and Louis Jones Jr. This user survived a pulmonary embolism. I was born in New York and live in Florida at present but have family(in-laws) on Leyte in the Philippines, mostly in Tacloban. I'm related to Catello Manzi and my father was a business partner of Bruce Nickells. I have played speed chess against Arnold Denker. At present I'm working on a novel that begins with an alien spacecraft crashing in the United States in the not too distant future. Later in the story, I make mention of the Chicago Cubs going to the World Series and women golfers playing Muirfield. Somebody might say the last two happenings are more improbable than the first.

I have personally written twenty-six fiction ebooks. All of which are for sale at Amazon. Has anyone bought my work? I sold just over 100 ebooks my first month. The rest I'll let you guess.

One of my favorite quotes "What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left."- Oscar Levant

Another quote- “One's dignity may be assaulted, vandalized and cruelly mocked, but it can never be taken away unless it is surrendered.”― Michael J. Fox

Another favorite quote- “My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world.”- George Bernard Shaw

Another favorite quote- "Writing is painful, it`s lonely and you suffer and there`s no immediate feedback."- Robert Shaw

Another quote from a writer- "The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense."- Tom Clancy

One more quote- "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."- Abraham Lincoln

My father used to say "The world is full of many types of people and if you live long enough, you'll meet every single one of them."

My maternal grandfather used to say "The complaint department is on the roof."

At Wikipedia, among the over one hundred new articles I've written are-

Martin Gaffney Jim Duckworth Viasa Flight 897 Viasa Flight 742 Sun Young Yoo Jane Blalock cheating controversy

International plane crash articles are some of the toughest to write. If the incident took place 20 or more years ago or took place in a 3rd world country, it can be extremely difficult to gather information. Take for instance Viasa Flight 742 which was the deadliest aviation disaster ever when it took place in 1969. There is very little written about the crash on the internet or even in print.

Most of my Wikipedia edits are in articles related to Golf, Baseball, Television shows, anything Florida, and Aviation accidents.

Google News Archive
I like finding news stories via Google News Archive searches and then make them inline citations in articles. Those articles I most often do this for concern politicians or actors.

A tip for writing or editing Wikipedia articles- Consult Google news search. Google has an extensive news article collection that can be used for referencing and checking facts. Some History gets distorted over time. For instance, Minnie Rojas, a former major league baseball pitcher who was tragically paralyzed in a auto accident.

Rojas played for the California Angels and his tragedy is often cited as one of bad things that happened in Angel history. In the wake of the death of Nick Adenhart, Rojas name was mentioned. The information about the accident that paralyzed Rojas was usually incorrect. Either who was killed in the accident was misreported or the year it happened. If there is the slightest bit of doubt about some fact, try a google news search for an article that was written around the time an event took place. They will usually be far more accurate than one written years later.

Another mistake involves Bill Kenney being labeled as Mr. Irrelevant. Both articles said he earned the title though he was the next to last NFL draft pick in 1978. It was stated he earned it because the last pick, Lee Washburn, never reported to camp. A check of Google News Archive shows that to be untrue. Mr. Washburn got the honor at the third annual 'Irrelevant week'. He even appeared on the Tonight Show because of it.

Wisdom or paging Mr. Spock
From User:Antandrus/observations on Wikipedia behavior "The only one hundred percent certain way to get rid of a troll is to close the browser tab. Takes a mouse click. Hard to do though, isn't it?" The trouble is- trolls stir up emotions in people which aren't easy to subdue.

Factual mistakes and referencing
Wrong information on Wikipedia can have consequences. From the Summer of 2006 till February 2012, the article on Harlan F. Stone said that the former Chief Justice died of a cerebral hemorrhage while sitting on the bench as another Justice read his opinion in a case the United States Supreme Court was handing down. Stone dying on the bench is untrue. Newspaper articles written at the time say he died at home after becoming ill with indigestion earlier in the day while working at the Supreme Court.

Along comes a book titled 'Five Chiefs' written by former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and published in 2011. In it Stevens recounted Stone dying on bench. Where did Stevens and the persons helping him write the book get that information? It has to be Wikipedia or the websites that mirror it.

In the article on Norm Sherry, it was written (in a 2015 edit) that he and his brother Larry Sherry were in 1960 the first all Jewish battery in baseball history. Where Norm died, it was reported so by Associated Press. A simple check of baseballreference.com showed this to be untrue. In Norm Sherry's very first baseball game, he caught Sandy Koufax. If you wish to see the proof, go to Sherry's talk page.

Another mistaken edit that ended up in the mainstream involves former Congressman Walter B. Jones, Sr. Someone edited into the article that Jones got an electoral vote in the 1956 Presidential election. On the surface this sounds so wrong, Jones was an obscure state legislator at the time and not from the same state as the electoral voter, that it should have raised red flags with an editor. Instead this easily verifiable wrong information remains in the article for over 18 months and during that time CNN picks up it and includes the wrong information in a webpage on the 1956 Presidential election.

Mistakes on Wikipedia can be rectified. Books that use information that comes from this website and once they are printed, can't.

The article PauknAir Flight 4101 at one time stated that the one of the reasons for the crash was the pilot having a greater than allowable blood alcohol level. This in spite of the accident report that the article linked to saying no such thing. How would you feel if you were a friend or family member of the dead pilot?

User:Ahunt is right about the need for articles to be scrupulously referenced. Pay his page a visit to learn why.

Don't use IMDb as a source
The website can be used as an external link but not as a inline citation. Please read the essay WP:Citing IMDb. I just came across the article on Tatiana Capote, a Miss Venezuela World winner. From the time the article was created about her till almost five years later, the article made mention of her being disqualified at the 1979 Miss World. She was not disqualified. What was the source for this? IMDb. IMDb content is provided by users and is too often wrong to qualify as a Wikipedia reliable source.

Blogs aren't a reliable source either
I'm a blogger and have on a few occasions done original reporting. Would you believe I did some sports blogging at Newsweek's website? One of my posts was used as a inline citation by an editor. Most of the time however, what I blogged was based on information provided by others and it was done at non-mainstream media websites.

While I don't ever recall deliberately false information ever being posted at any blog I contributed at, I still agree with WP:SPS. I've lost track of how many times I've deleted some juicy information out of an article because its source came from a blog. The blog might be right, but who knows. Remember you have to come up with a source other than a blog.

Be careful in regards to books
I just recently removed sourced material from several articles on members of a prominent American family. The reasons- The book that was used as a source was self-published and it was mostly being used for highly inflammatory material. How do you know if a book is self-published? Do a google search for the publisher. It took me only minutes to determine the author was also the publisher.

On another occasion I found entries in articles that linked to a book at Amazon.com and that were clearly added by the author and a clear case of linkspam.

Obituaries or Find a Grave as a source
Obituaries fail WP:RS and shouldn't be used as a reference but I will make one small exception to that statement. An obituary can be used to verify a person as being from somewhere. Recently I and another editor discussed this in regards to a person being from Yreka, California. The other editor wrote 'A good obituary for the time before the Internet era is sometimes about all that's available.'

Find a Grave also fails WP:RS. I don't see any reason why it can't be placed in an article as an external link.

Who says lightning don't strike twice
Twice on the same day, experienced editors left messages for me here rather on my talk page. I have a message at the top of my talk page that says to reply to any of my posts at your page, there, not on my talk page. That's routinely missed by editors too.

One of the funniest things I've read on Wikipedia
"Since such a high percentage of anonymous IP editors are vandals, they are all treated like shit. Trying to make serious edits to Wikipedia as an IP editor is like blindly blundering through the countryside on the first day of hunting season dressed like a moose." Thanks Carrite

Walang
"MCYH - AA and A for Squirt-Midget WYHA - AA and A for Squirt-Midget RYH - AAA, AA, and A for Squirt-Midget Rochester Grizzlies - AA and A for Squirt-Midget Perrington Blades - AA and A for Squirt-Midget Rochester Monarchs - AAA for Squirt-Midget"

Can you understand any of that? The article was CSD under G1 but an editor thinks it isn't gibberish. It wasn't the article creator either. So for the sake of process, it must go to AFD. What a waste of time for total nonsense.

Don't just stand there
If an article contains a mistake, fix it.

If you think something in the article needs a citation, try looking for one rather than add a citation needed tag. Googling for a source isn't hard.

Simply- Be Bold

Not needed detour
Articles on how to take care of acne or a guide to how to play some game get written. These articles clearly fail WP:NOTHOWTO and WP:NOTGUIDE. An AFD will will be a snow delete but that takes time. You could Prod the article but just as easily the article creator can take down the prod. Besides the proposed deletion process takes at least a week. So why not CSD the article giving a custom criteria of what I say above- NOTHOWTO and a AFD is certain to be a delete. I've done that and seen the article speedy deleted. I've also seen the CSD tags replaced with a prod. Going through the process for deletion just because an article doesn't meet the usual criteria but is a certain delete is a waste of time.

Star Trek is real or Beam me up Scotty
That's the only sensible explanation for someone starting a Sockpuppet investigation into me when the other editor lives over 800 miles away from Florida. Yes the allegation is hilariously bad and should be worthy of some type of bad Wikipedia editing award. My accuser did get trouted however. The IP I'm accused of also being isn't so amused and I don't particularly blame them.

Some of my more curious Wikipedia experiences
One of them involved the removal of Colorado related templates on articles about people connected with the French revolution. The editor who added the templates is quite experienced around here and has received multiple barnstars. I am clueless as to what went wrong.

Then there was the case of Moss Trestaman which claimed this person had once been General Manager of the Boston Red Sox, but nobody by that name has. The hoax article existed for approximately five years though at one point another editor said it was also a hoax but didn't take any further action.

An experienced editor is unhappy an article is speedy deleted under WP:G5. He takes it to Deletion review. There he says he wants the article. Well I emailed him a copy and informed him the closing administrator would also assist him. He wants the article recreated that was deleted but refuses to recreate it himself when he could. The editor has been made aware of WP:DENY but stubbornly feels that only the article created by a banned editor should be posted. In 2013, someone wrote an advertisement article about their escort service. Do you think there are many people who come to Wikipedia looking for hookers in Delhi? I think we know the answer to that question.

A real head scratcher- I once left a wikilove message on an editor's talk page. Not long afterwards, an established editor came along and deleted it without leaving a reason.

From the incomprehensible files- I ask an Administrator two questions on the talk page of a blocked editor. The administrator answers the questions on his own talk page in a thread that had been inactive for over two days and in which I never took part in. I have never seen anything like that in seven years of editing here.

The $64,000 Question
Is editing while not signed in allowed just so to make the detection of vandals easier? This editor's own experiences makes him believe most vandalism is done by IPs or editors who don't have a User page.

Put the padlocks down and step away
An editor can not do a non-administrative closure, except in one one very strict instance, if they have a conflict of interest or have taken part in the discussion. Yes there is a deletion discussion backlog but that doesn't allow for overriding a very clear cut policy.

Can someone please tell me what Calvin Peete's lifetime PGA Tour playoff record was?
I think Wikipedia has the best recordkeeping of the PGA, LPGA, and Champions golf tours. Better than those tours themselves have. At Wikipedia you can find details about these tour's best golfers you won't find anywhere else. Not just what tournaments they won, but what scores they shot on the way to their victories and if a playoff was needed, how that was resolved also.

FYI Calvin Peete's playoff record is 0-1. He lost to Curtis Strange at the 1986 Houston Open after Strange birdied the third sudden death playoff hole.

One score and twelve years ago
One attractive filipina, one Roman Catholic bishop, one guy the less said about his looks the better.

Me and the wife reached our 25th wedding anniversary on June 17, 2014. The Roman Catholic diocese we live in has a annual mass for those celebrating 25 or more years of marriage and we just went to it for the first time.

See also sections
The use of See also links is a pet peeve of mine. For example


 * It's a red link. What's there to see also when no article exists?
 * External links in the See also section. Per See also, this section isn't for External links.
 * Linking to the same similar type articles but ignoring other similar articles. Like microburst aviation caused crash articles. An editor putting in See also section will provide links to Pan Am Flight 759 and Delta Air Lines Flight 191 but rarely to Eastern Air Lines Flight 66 or other windshear accidents.
 * Linking to articles or lists when the connection between the two of them is very tertiary in nature. Like linking a Associate Supreme Court judge article to a list of Chief Justices in order of how long they served.
 * Many articles have See Also links to articles that are already linked the body of the article. Per See also there shouldn't be these redundant links. The same applies if the article has a navigation box which links to an article it shouldn't be in the See also section.

Thanks for the mammary
My all-time favorite title for a article that was deleted- Untited Tour.

Proposed deletions
I think the policy for WP:Proposed deletion should be altered some. For one thing, why should the article's creator be allowed to take down a prod? Secondly, I think prods should be allowed again but after a certain amount of time has passed. I'm talking about a year or more. Thirdly, I don't think IP editors should have the right to take down prods.

Recently I saw an article that had a prod placed on it once. If an article is prodded and nobody takes it off after a week, it is normally deleted. The Prod on this article was up for over a month but it was never deleted before somebody took the PROD down. Now it can't be PRODed again even though the fist prod wasn't handled properly.

An aviation edit summary you are unlikely to ever see repeated
It was to Short 360 and read 'The source makes no mention of whether the donkey lived or died.'

=="Suggesting that someone resign as an admin does not qualify as a personal attack. Not even close." ==

One of the most dangerous things to do around wikipedia is stand up to certain administrators. Note the use of the word certain. There are administrators out there who abuse their tools and the way Wikipedia is set up, all administrators have their jobs for life. That causes a problem. As the old saying goes- Absolute power corrupts absolutely. For some administrators the power becomes more important than taking care of Wikipedia. This is a small minority of the administrators but there is a problem with the rest of the corps. The rest of the corps is very hesitant to take action against the bad apples and in the process this gives them all a bad reputation.

Note- That picture was given to me at my talk page by an editor and I posted it here with their permission.

Where's the trout?
I incorrectly CSD, using the wrong criteria, an article not once but twice before getting it right the third time.

Many editors are going to feel faint
When and if they learn I voted strong keep for Joseph Deluca at an WP:Articles for deletion since I have made many AFD nominations myself and have almost voted delete. I believe Deluca is notable because of his being awarded the Congressional Gold Medal Twilight Zone tragedy was another exception to steady support of deletions. When a notable person, Vic Morrow in this case, is killed in an aviation accident then the accident is automatically notable.

Visual editor
The less said about this the better. What I most disliked most about VE was having my editor's preferences changed. That was done to my account so I could use WP:VE and it didn't improve my ability to edit at all. So I had to opt out, but I shouldn't have been opted in to start without being asked if I wanted to.

On August 2nd 2013, somebody not learning from their first mistakes reactivated VE for all editors. To say I wasn't happy with this action is an understatement. Furthermore my preferences now read 'Temporarily disable VisualEditor while it is in beta'. Temporarily? Does that mean WP plans on changing my preferences yet again? I hope not. Don't think I'm the only one mad at what has been done. Go read this page. There are many editors up in arms over what has been done.

Will I ever attempt a return to Visual Editor? The answer is- No.

Have you lost your mind?
One day I made consecutive edits to Tami Mauriello and a AFD on Lesbian-identified male. One of my userboxes does say I have a screw loose.

Maybe I just wrote this section so to have a sentence containing two wildly different topics. Remember what I said up above. This page is brought to you by Chaos.

I don't see the parade
Color me skeptical whenever I read that some movie or television show has a cult following. The term is found in quite a few articles but it is almost always unreferenced. Put in a WP:RS for this designation otherwise me or some other Doubting Thomas editor may remove the statement.

Did you know?
A fact from Crossair Flight 498 appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on December 1, 2006. It read- "that the crash of Crossair Flight LX498 was initially attributed to cell phone use, and led to bans of cell phones in airplanes in several countries?" I don't know about it leading to bans, but Crossair Flight 498 didn't crash due to a cell phone. The accident report on Flight 498 makes no mention of cell phones.

The article at the time of the DYK linked to the accident report, and mentioned the actual causes of the crash. I'm not writing this to criticize the editors who tried to qualify the article for DYK status, but instead to make a point. Don't take it for granted that the IC for some bit of information in a article actually verify the information. Go and double check. People make mistakes.

What no parachute?
A administrator is before ARBCOM at present, July 2015. What for? He is being accused of violating WP:INVOLVED for his block of another administrator. If the administrator had blocked a normal editor, this would have almost certainly have never gone to ARBCOM. I say that because it has been shown that an administrator can get away all sorts of behavior against non-administrators. The double standard should be clear to anyone.

Maybe that's why I could never win the Golden Knights
It is due to the San Diego sports curse and my living there for two years once upon a time. There is a problem with articles like this and Rural purge. They become the dumping ground for lots of things editors think are connected to this but really aren't. Poor television ratings and the loading of combustible materials on board an aircraft are clearly the acts of humans.

Categorization
Most articles are categorized very well but I just have a couple of comments.


 * Don't add a category to an article if it doesn't exist.
 * If you are categorizing by a person's location, don't put the article in both a category and one of its subcategories. If a person is from Rye, New York you don't categorize them both in 'People from Rye, New York' and its mother category 'People from Westchester County, New York'. A person can however be categorized in multiple subcategories of a category if they apply.
 * Also, I wouldn't categorize a person as being from somewhere if the only 'proof' is that they died there. From personal experience I know somebody's place of death isn't necessarily a place they are from and I therefore don't categorize by place of death unless there is further proof, such as a news article that says the notable person died at home, that indicates the person was from that place.
 * If a United States town, city, or village is in more than one county and it has a notable person from it, make a 'People from' category for that location. There is a community consensus that even the smallest places will survive a CFD if the place is in more than one county.
 * Category pages aren't for faux articles. A short description of what is contained there is all that is needed.

No hesitation
Do it if its called for. Don't hesitate to template administrators too, but as I wrote above, expect to get some heat in return from some of them. Nobody should be above the rules because they've been around here a long time or they are an administrator. Repeated refactoring of other editor's talk page comments is uncalled for.

Userboxes
By looking around this page, can you tell I like them? Well, stop looking and get to work on making some more!

I'll have a ham on rye
A common organizational mistake I see in articles is the placement of the references section underneath the one for external links. Per WP:ORDER, references always come first. Think of it this way, the categories links at the bottom of an article are also in a way an external link. Wouldn't it seem obvious that the section for links to anything outside wikipedia come on top of that?

Time to close things up or where's the Band-aid?
Like quite a few other editors, I have had my User page vandalized. Should there be the Wikipedia version of a purple heart?

There is a big white space after my closing words on this page. Another editor recently posted to my talk page asking how he could reduce the white space in a article. I didn't know how to help the editor.

At my User page, I just decided to write about it to lessen the 'problem'.