User:Yay unto the Chicken

A chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) is a type of domesticated bird which is often raised as a type of poultry. It is believed to be descended from the wild Indian and south-east Asian Red Junglefowl. Chickens are the most commonly found bird in the world. The population in 2003 was 24 billion (4 chickens for every human being), according to the Firefly Encyclopedia of Birds. They provide two sources of food frequently consumed by humans: their meat, also known as chicken, and eggs. Some fear that the number of chickens today is excessive and that they may have plans for world domination. It has been theorised that 4 "attack chickens" can take down an average human being in approximately 17.9 seconds, effectively meaning that chickens would be faster at destroying the world than Global Thermonuclear War.

=A bit about me= I consider myself partly a gnome. The edits I make are never ground-breaking but they're important. A typo here, a correction there. I'm yet to make any significant edit to an article of more than a few words. I'd like to one day and I have some thoughts on what that'd be but so far, I enjoy the quick fix lifestyle. I do seem to get into a disproportionate number of debates though, for articles which I then don't edit. Work that one out.

=Things to think about=
 * 1) Do we need it? List of United States Presidential nicknames; List of Konami code games
 * 2) Does it matter?
 * 3) Is there some measurement for "notability"? Should there be one? Castle Anthrax
 * 4) Image copyright, "fair use" of images (List of Virtual Boy games). Are images in lists of episodes doomed? List of Stargate SG-1 episodes Star-Trek etc...
 * 5) Is consistency required across all articles?
 * 6) How much is too much?
 * 7) Balance in all things. Centrism?
 * 8) Bedtime reading: Requests for arbitration; Resolving disputes; WP:WP.
 * 9) Hostility encourages action. Slating a stub / article for deletion incites those who care to add more and make the aticle better.
 * 10) Signpost
 * I'd secretly like to delete everything in this category which isn't a yearly list: If we have it for those shows, shouldn't we have it for all? If we have it for all, what are we really adding? The yearly lists are something someone might reasonably expect to find and is information of some pertinent future use (What did they watch on TV in Australia in the year 2004?). The articles for the individual television shows seem... useless? If we keep the information, would it not be better in the article for that show? What consistent self-governing policy can I create which fits with this reasoning?

Wikipedia is People!
Wikipedia is People! Whether that be user 12.144.5.2 who insisted on not using grammar the way everyone else was taught it and who decided to leave because of the decision to ban unregistered users from creating new pages or 212.135.1.53, an IP address assigned to various schools in the United Kingdom from which an almost intolerable amount of vandalism occurs but, from time to time, something useful too.

People hold Grudges. Like Joel Leyden of the Israel News Agency over  "[www.israelnewsagency.com/wikipedianewsisraelcensorship48480706.html A story which could actually serve as the deathblow for Wikipedia]". (Wikipedia takes 6 minutes to correct information which seems to be faster than Reuters) or BuddhaInside who didn't like the idea of per-article policy in determining facts and so took it out on the policy page without discussion.

Inclusionism
I like that only on Wikipedia can I find obscure facts and information about equally obscure bands, shows or characters. Britannica only has the stuff that's really very notable. Wikipedia has everything in Britannica AND the stuff that Bob down the corner store heard about and thought he might like to pass on. Some of it is too much ("What Bob said" is probably too much). Where do we draw the line and how?

Wikipedia is a summary of information, not a collection of raw, uninterpreted data.

Impact
Fame, notability seem to go to a matter of importance? Important: Strongly affecting the course of events or the nature of things. If something is important, it affects (effects?) you. "My neighbour's cat" affects me. It effects my neighbour. It might even effect the neighbourhood the cat is in, the local council. If it's of notoriety? A "normal cat" (of no note, only known by its neighbour) versus an "infamous cat" (well-known, mentioned in a newspaper of note). The infamous cat affects "many" people. Many people are aware of it.

60,000 people. If something affects / effects at least 60,000 people (1 / 100,000th of the world population) it is notable? Therefore a TV show in a small country town which is only seen by the local population of 5,000 people is not notable. Where-as a TV show shown on a major network is. Like-wise Qubit Field Theory affects several people (potentially, everyone) and therefore warrants an article, even though it is not known about outside of those in the study of quantum field theory. It potentially "impacts" upon a substantial number of people.

How do we measure this affect, this impact? Would 40,000 people be too few? How would you know? 1 / 100,000th is arbitrary? What are the justifications for a measurement?

Wikipedia could theoretically list everyone's cat and contain detailed information about everyone. Why shouldn't it? These people have no impact. IE: Who would care about them? Why should we record information simply because we can?

Things to do

 * Consider starting Case law page, listing previous decisions in all levels of arbitration (Implementation of Policy and per article situations) in an attempt to help develop consistency in decision making. Needs discussion with other editors (and more experience about Wikipedia on my part?) Mediation Cabal
 * Create an article!
 * Create 10 new articles.
 * 100 edits in the main namespace area.
 * Hrrm.. Work out how to actually count the number of edits I've made (If you - random wanderer - know, please pass on the knowledge by dropping a note on my talk page).

=Chicken aficionados unite=
 * Brain Farts

Collection of Randomly Discovered Humourous Articles

 * Administratium

Debates I've Lost

 * 1) David Tench AFD - July 17 2006 . It didn't help that the only people supporting my keep all lacked accounts or were seemingly sockpuppets / new accounts with no interest in editing anything other than the David Tench AFD page. I also got accused of being a sockpuppet.

July 4th 2006
Complete - 5; Stub - 5;
 * 1) Sea lamprey (Complete)
 * 2) Marika Rökk (Requires a bit more information I reckon?)
 * 3) Tetsuya Nomura (Complete - 1st link from Nomura Disambiguation Page)
 * 4) Optical coating (Complete)
 * 5) Aonix (Stub)
 * 6) I Am a Bird Now (Complete)
 * 7) Porphobilinogen deaminase (Stub)
 * 8) Clyde River (Ontario) (Stub)
 * 9) Brian Moehler (Stub)
 * 10) Hyperpolarization (biology) (Complete)

Result: 50%

We Play with the Signature Feature
~ Yay unto the Chicken Wikipedia is People!

Citations or Refererences for Illustration or Proof
...And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, "O Lord, bless this, Thy hand grenade, that with it, Thou mayest blow Thine enemies to tiny bits... in Thy mercy." And the Lord did grin, and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals, and fruit bats and large chu... [Whereupon the friar is urged, "skip ahead a bit, brother"]... And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then, shalt thou count to three. No more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it." Amen.
 * That'll teach you guys not to mess with Boston Low, SPACE COMMANDER! ~ Boston Low, Space Commander, The Dig.
 * Come here, you phlegm-carapaced, slime-faced, mucus-brained, furry legged abductor of luminously intelligent but pulchritudinous Earth women! ~ Ludger Brink, The Dig.
 * So, you think you could out-clever us French folk with your silly knees-bent running about advancing behavior?! I wave my private parts at your aunties, you cheesy lot of second hand electric donkey-bottom biters. ~ French Guard, Monty Python and the Holy Grail
 * ~ Franciscan monk Brother Maynard, Monty Python and the Holy Grail.


 * The internet, "It's a series of tubes." ~ Senator Ted Stevens