User talk:92.17.5.119

Moving forward
Hello,. I'm letting you know I've just been alerted to your edits on 2 August 2021 (probably enacted on other days too) and, while I was initially a bit annoyed, I soon saw the funny side of it because the person who alerted me is a long-time member of the ACS and he is furious about them being implicated in a Wikipedia feud!

I think you need to understand, about me, that I am not a vindictive person. I have a short fuse and am prone to the old red mist, but they always burn out soon after I've exploded. One of my mates calls me Roy (as per NGS) because he says I'm just like Roy Keane, even though I don't much like Keane or Ferguson or ManU! I do support Bury, btw, my home town team although I have lived mostly in Manchester and Yorkshire. Football is actually my favourite sport as a spectator but I prefer to write about cricket because of its long history.

To give you some facts, I first joined the ACS back in the eighties when it was still new but I left after a few years because my career left me with little time for it. I returned to it in the 2000s and I wrote "From Lads to Lord's" as an e-book (still a fairly new concept then). The ACS were interested in what I was doing and they serialised it in the form of about half a dozen adapted excerpts in 2006/07. Around the same time, I was invited to submit one its essays, the 1771 Monster Bat Incident, to the Cricket Society and they published that in their journal. For various reasons, particularly a long battle against cancer, I was unable to pursue a serious writing career so I amused myself by writing for Wikipedia. I eventually got sick and tired of all the crap on the site and the red mist rose again. I'm afraid you were one of the victims and I apologise for having a go at you because you do your best, unlike some people I could name (especially one so-called sysop). By the way, I'm in remission from cancer, but minus one kidney and my prostate gland (better than the alternative, of course).

I don't give a shit about being blocked and I am not going to submit to stupid rules concocted by stupid people like the quacking vertebrate and its clique. If I want to change my username, I will change it. The name does not matter in the least unless we all use our real names only. Unless I forget I've already been there, I don't use two IDs in one discussion, so it doesn't matter in the least what name I might be using at any one time. Only ruleswankers care. What does matter is the creation and development of articles that people can read and, hopefully, learn something from.

So, I'm not going away but I edit Wikipedia on my own terms. The thing is that the site has evolved over the years since I first tried it in 2004/05. I created a heap of short placeholder articles in the 2000s when there was no inline citation functionality. Those early articles need citations, of course, and I could probably source most of it although, as you have pointed out, some of the POV was okay then but not now, ha! Much later, I decided to expand and source them but there are so many it would take years. I'm actually relieved, in one sense, that SIGCOV has been prioritised but, on the other hand, I don't think it should apply to articles (stubs) that were created years ago when the goalposts were in a different place. It's a difficult one and I can see both sides of the big RFC bunfight. Btw, I don't think Lugnuts should have gone. I would have sacked Lambert if one of them had to go but, ideally, they should both be here and subject to an IBAN, plus an AFD TBAN.

As for "Lads to Lord's", PWT reviewed it at the ACS but he made a rare old song-and-dance about it because it was online and he insisted on it being fully printed before he would look at it! As you will appreciate, he lost all the benefits of online functionality like navigation. Anyway, he suggested a couple of extra sources I could use (except that they are rare and virtually unobtainable) and he complained about the cultural, geopolitical and social content that I included as background. However, he was happy with the cricket match and event info although, as I've admitted myself many times, the biographies are incomplete. A few years later, a publishing company offered to release it in limited edition book form but I couldn't let them do that with incomplete biographies. I think their offer still stands but the biographies are still incomplete. I received numerous testimonies which mainly thanked me for consolidating the findings of the earlier sources, although Ian Maun has since taken that to a comprehensive level. I don't claim it is a masterpiece or even 100% accurate, but it is reliable except where typos or oversights have occurred, and few of those have been found. I know and accept that some people disagree with some of my opinions and analyses. Those things are inevitable. So, there you go. I have no problem with self-published sources being barred by WP, and I will happily remove mine myself (I have done), but only for the right reasons.

By the way, there was a school of thought in the 2000s (led by Keith Warsop) that the ACS' "Important Matches" should be considered the equivalent of first-class but we had the problem of statistical evidence if there was no scorecard. I did the same as other writers by creating my own list of matches I thought were probably top-class. CricketArchive does NOT have the final word as you and others seem to think, especially as it is so often wrong and, I increasingly believe, is borderline WP:RS. At the end of the day, we have to accept the MCC/ICC rulings on official first-class. WG was nearly 47 when he finally became an official first-class player!

I don't think there is any need for a voluntary IBAN or whatever between us. If you spot an error of mine, by all means correct it but please just describe it as a typo or a wrong date or an ambiguous phrase or whatever. I will do the same. I suggest we both ignore and forget past remarks (water under the bridge) and move forward. There aren't many people left in CRIC now, remember, and I am able to write articles of GA standard so you need my input. I can't be bothered with FAC which is a waste of time with pedants discussing the difference between a comma and a semi-colon (yes, really!). A good article (GA) is a good article.

Okay? Live and Let Live is a good principle. I'll do what I can to help keep CRIC afloat but I do have other interests and commitments so don't expect to see me every day or even every week. As for who I will be, I'm sure you'll soon suss that out. See you around and all the best. And I'm glad you recovered from Covid.

92.17.5.119 (talk) 19:39, 23 August 2022 (UTC)