User talk:Jeb54321

I (JB) am not an avid Wiki editor (well, not Wikipedia, anyway. I am an obsessive editor of my  employer's internal Wiki on work-related topics, but that's not relevant).

I registered with Wikipedia in 2014. I figured that, sooner or later, I'd find an article I felt needed correcting, or perhaps even find a topic I felt deserved to have an article written about it that didn't have one already.

So far, so good, though. True to its mission, I've yet to find an uncovered topic or one so egregiously written that I felt the need to exercise my skill with a pen (or rather, a keyboard).

However, in a routine audit of my accounts, I noticed that my user ID, JEB54321, is actually attributed with some editing activity, specifically from 2004. I examined the edits, and besides a style that strikes me as European (I'm American), I didn't have even a clue about the topics on which the comments were made, or what the comments even meant.

I assume that perhaps someone registered back then using the ID I chose, but perhaps never password protected it. Or perhaps my assigned internal ID was recycled. But I didn't register until 10 years after those comments, as my profile page confirms.

Who knows. Wikipedia was only a few years old then. Anything is possible. I'm not sure how I got associated with those comments, or whether it really matters in the greater scheme of things.

I also noticed my registration was "reviewed" (2 years ago), and it appears to have tentatively been assigned "sock puppet" status.

Even though removing the above mentioned attributions brings my number of contributions to zero, I am not a sock puppet - I'm just not an active contributor.

Not sure if those accused of sock-puppetry lose their registration, or if that's just a part of the Wikipedia initiation rites to inform quiescent members to be cautious about taking a sudden interest in a particular topic.

If so, I stand informed, and accept that without a higher participation level, then anything I say here may be discounted, deleted, or result in being banned.

Fair enough. I assume a sudden interest in one's own account is acceptable. Beyond that, I'll try to keep quiet, or take care to be diverse and to carefully pace my entry into the repository of the world's combined knowledge-base.

Jim Bay (talk) 01:17, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

P.S. Also don't confuse me with the musician, James Bay. I'm not a musician, my middle initial is not "M", and I laid claim to the first and last names more than three decades before the "other guy". But his music isn't bad (am I allowed to say that?).