User:Zeke, the Mad Horrorist

Does this userpage make my butt look too big?

For my convenience

 * User:Zeke, the Mad Horrorist/Test tube

Notes to self

 * When using WP:XFDCloser, the "result of the discussion" bit always ends with a period by default. There is a box I can tick in case I don't want that to happen.
 * For User:Qwertyytrewqqwerty/DisamAssist: If a link already says "Foo (disambiguation)", hit Skip. Don't press "Intentional link to DAB"; that inserts a redundant (disambiguation) tag that breaks the wikilink by making it lead to a page that does not exist.
 * If the link needs fixing, you can do it through DisamAssist. You do not have to open a new page to edit anything. This is what the "Different target" button is for. This does not appear to work for linking to sections a disambiguation page for some reason, so those edits will still have to be done manually.

My editing style
I've taken to using the m-dash in my private writings. Regardless, I do not use the other two, the regular hyphen or the n-dash, so I still feel only one should be in use at any given time with the other two promptly shown the door. Still a Hyphen Luddite, though.

What do I like to do here?
I like to help build the encyclopedia. By that, I mean I like to make edits that I feel help the encyclopedia to grow, and that means to add actual content to the encyclopedia. Content-adding edits include the following: Edits that do not build the encyclopedia but are nevertheless helpful include the following:
 * Adding categories to article pages
 * Creating categories and new category hierarchies
 * Copying and pasting relevant information from one article into another
 * Brand new content with new sources never before seen on Wikipedia
 * Splitting articles where appropriate and adding to the resulting pages separately
 * Adding templates to help organize or clearly demarcate information
 * New redirects to existing pages
 * Creating and adding to disambiguation pages
 * Copyediting
 * Tweaking sentence structure to make ideas clearer
 * Communicating on talk pages regarding issues
 * Templating pages to bring issues to the attention of the community (used judiciously, of course)
 * Creating redirects to pages in spaces other than article space
 * Reversion of edits, even those in good faith, unless this actively restores content to the page
 * Deleting pages identified as being actively harmful to the project
 * Writing on Wikipedia-space pages (e.g. Ignore all rules — it can be kind of confusing but hang around awhile and you'll get the hang of it)

Since this always takes more time and effort, I generally have a lower edit rate than most who have been here for the time that I have. I don't mind. Edit counts will always fascinate me, but I can never quite glom onto something that others can do frequently and in bunches; generally, I get bored of it and walk away. Upon realizing this, I decided to shift my attention to building the encyclopedia: adding references, adding new information, and so on like I just described above.

After all, the idea behind this whole thing is it'll still be here after the rest of us are long gone. Isn't it kind of cool that we're making something that future generations will use? Just think of it — something you wrote will still be there a hundred years from now in some form or another. Even if it changes forms, the you conveyed will still be there. Sometimes you may have even been the first person to write of it here.

You should be proud of that — not unduly so, of course, but still, pat yourself on the back every once in awhile for it. Very often, this place is its own reward.

What building the encyclopedia is not
It is not enough to merely make the article bigger in terms of sheer size. More pages, more data, more edits, none of that means anything to us if it's not helpful to our audience. That little green number means nothing if it isn't making the encyclopedia more useful to the average reader. Encyclopedia-building edits not only make the encyclopedia bigger, they make it than it would be without these edits being performed. They make relevant information more accessible and visible. They allow editors to better navigate the encyclopedia and more likely to find their way to areas that need help. They allow readers greater navigability over the encyclopedia as well. They enhance understanding of the material. They help people walk away feeling more informed than they were when they started. Above all, they add more truth to the encyclopedia.

Any vandal can make the encyclopedia arbitrarily bigger with reckless, destructive editing. Don't be one of those people.

Language and dialect jingoism
While I'm here, I would like to make my own contribution to the apparent passive-aggressive slapfest occurring via unnecessarily confrontational userboxes over at Userboxes/Grammar.

To be quite frank, it doesn't matter which style of English you jingoistically support and proclaim as superior. And if you feel the need to do so, no matter how humorously, that just shows you're insecure about whether the culture of which you are part still has a relevant place in the world. Userboxes are meant to facilitate understanding between editors, not hostility. WP:CIVIL seems to have less and less of a place in this community by the day, because people are always finding less and less subtle ways of getting around it since reporting such violations of it is a waste of everyone's time and cannot be punished. These userboxes are designed to make others walk away from your page feeling bad that they use the "wrong" variety of English, perhaps even to force others to accept your point of view without complaint and start doing things your way.

Userboxes are just meant to show people how you speak and write so they can understand you better, not to extol your insecurities in a confrontational but passive way.

So, you can take your insecure userboxes and shove 'em. If other users can write seemingly inflammatory statements on their userpages and completely evade community scrutiny simply by virtue of the namespace they used, so can I. If you don't like it, you can do what I do — leave.

My citation philosophy
Cite on a part-by-part basis. Assume that a citation only supports the part (punctuated by a comma, semicolon or period) on which it appears. If citations appear only at the end of the sentence, assume they support the entire sentence.

My soapbox
Things that irritate me about Wikipedia but I can't do anything about them:
 * Template:Update after Apparently the replacement for "dated info". Regardless, there is absolutely no excuse for using this template. If you can add it, you can update what it's being added to - even if that just amounts to adjusting verb tense. You might consider searching for the information and resources necessary to update the situation. Besides, this is often the only thing added to pages that are seldom even seen, let alone edited, anyway. This tag is just a means to dump the workload onto someone else. Thanks for being considerate.
 * Bot generated title This useless piece of flotsam shows up in a lot of citations. I've been seeing it for years and it drives me crazy. It adds absolutely nothing of value to anything - it's a hidden note showing that a bot created a citation. It's such a small piece of code, but it shows up so often you'd probably be surprised at how much it's inflated Wikipedia's database. How is its presence any better than its absence? Allegedly, it's for citations that haven't been reviewed by human editors yet, but plenty of human-reviewed citations don't have this and still suck. Hidden notes indicating things were created by automated processes are basically the cancer on Wikipedia's soul.
 * The "Don't you DARE touch my article" types Don't you just love it when someone watches an article like a hawk and won't hesitate to revert you but does to improve the article themselves? And not even on articles rated at least B-class either. I guess it IS a lot easier to nitpick others' contributions instead of, y'know,  If you can go to the trouble to revert me within three minutes of editing the damn thing, you can put some elbow into it and at least make the article GA quality. Don't just sit there and keep the gate. Who died and made you the authority on what doesn't belong anyway?
 * "Even if it's wrong, if sources we rely on say it, we have to repeat it as true" It's sad to see that there is little to no attempt to vet information. If a source we normally like says it, it must be true, even if there is ample reason to suspect otherwise. There may not even be "XYZ source reported" or some such to clarify we're just going by what others say. This is especially applicable to controversial topic areas like politics or others where discretionary sanctions are in play. Really, it's not worth going over there to even see what's going on; if you value your sanity, you should stay away and just do what I do — edit articles where nobody's going to give a damn what the message is. I prefer smaller fry topics like albums. It's hard to get into murky editorial territory with those. I won't name any articles or individuals involved therewith, but I can assure you, some articles on here are indeed flat-out wrong, and it will ever be Wikipedia's greatest, most glaring weakness, the one thing that keeps it from the greatness to which it clearly aspires, as well as the cause of its eventual downfall, a calamity made all the more likely by stubborn refusal to get the facts right. Such a shame for a project that prides itself on its standard of absolute truth. I understand this largely comes about as a result of our policies on what we can and cannot say here, but the refusal to budge even a bit on this position will surely prove to be our undoing. It is also deliciously ironic — after all, why can't a consensus of users who know how to interpret data determine what should be said here, but one Joe Schmoe writing one weaksauce article in a reliable source is sufficient to move forward, even if ol' Joe's info is at odds with observed trends? Simply put, we have made this mess for ourselves, and it only gets worse once one factors in a very clear and obvious agenda to push a certain point of view, a risk apparent in the beginning that has become reality in the years since. Have we forgotten the mainstream media can itself completely lack objectivity? Is the news media not, after all, the result of what someone somewhere decided you should know about what's going on? One wonders if Wikipedia would declare grass is always and forever neon pink if absolutely no sources ever once said it was green. It ironically puts us closer to the Orwellian ideal of trusting completely in media, which can be told what to say or not say, regardless of the truth. If you have to, re-read that bit as you keep in mind Wikipedia, and by extension the whole of Wikimedia, fancies itself the gateway to a freer future.

Some advice for participating in discussions
At some point, you're going to say everything you were going to say. You'll present all the rationales you were going to present in the first place, and at some point in responding to others you'll just end up restating your arguments over and over again with slight tweaks.

You can absolutely contribute to any discussion you dern well please. But remember that the validity of your arguments is roughly inversely proportional to the number of times you have to indent using the colon character. Doubly so if you have to use an outdentation.

If you find yourself responding to and being REALLY preoccupied with a thread, here's a nickel's worth of free advice: Just stop talking. Seriously. Sooner or later the discussion will close, and whoever closes it will have to take into account everything that was said — including what said, whether you said it once or a thousand times.

I myself have been trying to reel myself in and just let someone else have the last word if the editor I'm talking to chooses to respond. I've been bad about it over the years; chances are you found your way here from some discussion where I just wouldn't shut the hell up. But letting someone else have the last word doesn't make my own voice any less heard. And if you're really that passionate about an argument with other Wikipedians, it says a lot more about you than the topic at hand.

Post a few times, say your piece, and get the hell out of there. Consensus may go your way, or it may not. Regardless, while you are not obligated to like it, you obligated to abide by it, no matter how it turns out.

If it's honestly too much for you, you might be better off walking away from the article or even the topic area in question altogether. If they aren't doing things YOUR way, maybe you aren't really needed there after all.

In the end, I'm just restating things like WP:STICK, WP:BLUDGEON, WP:DROPIT, and many other essays or guidelines we have lying around. If it makes you feel any better, this applies to all Wikipedians involved in the discussion.

No matter who you are, no matter how much the other person wants to carry on the discussion too, and no matter how valid either of your cases are, eventually you'll have made as strong a case for your position as you were ever going to make.

No matter how tempted you are to respond, please don't. It won't make the outcome any different. Even if you have this totally awesome reply to all your opponent's points and you just KNOW anyone with half a brain stem couldn't NOT agree with you... just don't.

Chances are, it's not nearly as cool on paper as it is in your head.

My Wikilife so far
My 10,000th edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Deletion_sorting/Television&diff=prev&oldid=787915617

My most ironic edit and edit summary ever: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Redirect&diff=prev&oldid=1073444529

My favorite edit that I've made thus far: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion/Log/2022_February_15&diff=1072878482&oldid=1072876293

Also, I would like to voice my objection to the Fifteen Year Society and other possible benchmarks. I think in creating these, we're missing the point of the original, which is to say, "I've been around this long, and I'm feeling pretty comfortable, so I'm going to continue to stay." It's not just about how long you've been here, but also about sticking around — it's a "here's to many more" kind of thing. And there's no real prestige attached to it either, it's just about making your tenure here count for as much as possible and to reflect on how different this project might be if you hadn't come on board at all or stuck around for as long as you have. It's also a good place for new editors to consult advice.

There's also that nifty little X that stands for 10, making it the highest consecutive number in our system that can be represented by a single digit. And we in the West are just obsessed with decimal-related things, so it looks really pretty for us (it's why most Western nations use metric, you know?). Deep down, we Westerners just say to ourselves, "I wish there were ten of them."

Is there another benchmark to commemorate? I don't know, honestly. But I would imagine it would have to be done a different way, not going by ten, fifteen, twenty, or so on years. That just devalues the original and competes with Service awards, which already handles it quite nicely, thank you very much.

My current objectives
My goal - to create or at least significantly assist in making 100 GAs. (FAs/FLs count as GAs for the sake of my goal.)

This is a list of music artists whose articles I wish to improve here on Wikipedia. They are all among my top favorites, with Priestess being the absolute top. If you wish to give me a hand, I would greatly appreciate it. I am collecting resources and information on all of them and may flit between each of them before I consider myself truly done (as in they made it at least to GA). My muse is a chaotic one, I suppose. (List is incomplete as I sort out what I want to do next. Attached to each bullet is a series of directly-related topics; if a related topic does not appear here, check the next section as it may already be at least a GA - only articles not currently GAs at minimum are included here.)


 * 1) Priestess (band) &bull; Hello Master
 * 2) Scale the Summit &bull; Scale the Summit discography &bull; Chris Letchford
 * 3) Earthless &bull; Earthless discography

The things I'm involved with
This should give you an idea of what I'm into. Why would I tell anyone what I like if I'm not going to tie it into my editing proclivities in some way?

Stuff I might take up doing

 * I might do more regular WP:LEAD writing. I've always liked summarizing stuff, like you'd see on the backs of DVD cases. I like seeing how much important information you can convey while restricting yourself to as few sentences as possible. As a writer, I find it fascinating, and I practice it quite a lot in my spare time. Consistent with that, I have since joined the Lead Improvement Team.

My accomplishments
Not that any man should boast, but consider this more of a wikirésumé ;)

Good articles
From the Ages &bull; Prior to the Fire

These are articles I either created or adopted very early on in their development. Other articles with which I have merely assisted do not count.

Featured articles
None yet; check back soon!

These would be all the articles that used to be listed in the section just above; of course, the distinction is that these listed here are now Featured rather than merely Good. Alternatively, these include lists that I either created or adopted very early in their development, and helped escort to FL status.

These articles are also on my watchlist. Have a question about any of them? Just leave a post on the proper Talk page and I'll be right with you.

My awards
I'm here, there and everywhere, but here's some recognition I've gotten for my work:

A donut for you
Donuts for you, for passing [ The OF Tape Vol. 2 as a good article ]. I'll find you some free OF donuts if I can. Thanks a lot! 和DITOR E tails 22:51, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Barnstars & such
  Prior to the Fire
 * A barnstar I got for my old username
 * Everything else

Thank you, gnomish editor with a chaotic muse, for quality articles on songs and albums, such as Prior to the Fire, for edit summaries that are a pleasure to read and for, for , - you are an awesome Wikipedian!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:13, 3 March 2014 (UTC)