User talk:Pointe LaRoche

hi

Hi LaRoche, you left me a message on my talk page. NoT sure if it was automated or if you really typed it, regardless thanks! I have two questions ( you seem like you know a lot)1. i've been haveing some trouble finding how you turn a word blue so that it links to other sources. If you know, it would be nice if you coud tell me. 2. You said that I should sign my name on talk pages with 4 tildas. What talk pages were you talking about? Did you mean just say hi to other members, or talk pages about articles +categorys? If you could send me a message back, that would be great. Thanks for your time! Docter Jam 14:28, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi again. Just wanted to say thanks for the advice. It really is a HUGE help. Not sure how much you know about tarot, but right now I'm in the middle of researching it's conncections with astrology. You seem like you're experienced. So when I'm finished, I'll tell you and if you want (don't feel you have to just 'cause I asked), it'd be nice if you could edit it+ give suggestions on makeing it better. Thank you so much for everything! Docter Jam 14:40, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the welcome
Thank you, LaRoche. It's nice to immediately feel and meet the people behind the project. A wonderful project in which I'm very proud to take part. Knowledge is perhaps Humankind's greatest treasure.

After a long period of wasting my time with search engines, I was immensely happy to find with Wikipedia the best known source for vast encyclopedic knowledge. It is so much "more than the sum of its parts". :-)

This is my way of repaying a moral debt for a free service. I'll try to be a worthy contributor. Issar El-Aksab 00:40, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Hi, me again. Your probably sick of me by now but anyways. Since I have a good knowlege of tarot, I noticed that a lot of the articles on it are stubs so I decided to expand on them a little first. If you could, check out King of Wands, the tarot card. I redid the section on divination. If you could give me some feedback, that would be nice. I'll tell you when I finish my big article that I'm starting. Thank you soo much again! Docter Jam 02:38, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank You
Just a note to say thank you for the welcome. I'm fumbling my way around, getting a feel for the interface. Douglasmtaylor 14:05, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks for the welcome bitch. --Daasmieeraatz-Sud-Afrikaans 14:55, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks!!
Hi Pointe LaRoche! Thank you very much for welcoming me to Wikipedia and for the tips. As a translator, I have found Wikipedia (and all the Wiki projects) very useful indeed. Furthermore, I think this is a revolutionary way of sharing knowledge with people. I'm very excited with the Wiki existence and I'm very happy to be able to contribute, albeit a little, to its development. --Marinatorres 15:16, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

How many out there like me in silence?
Thank you for the warm welcome 6 years ago, but I'm afraid not everybody here feels the same way you do. I've had the great sadness to discover that for some people the Fourth Pillar doesn't exist, and the Fifth is a paper-mâché fake. Any good engineer will tell you this seriously undermines the lasting stability of a support polygon. Although so far there have only been two instances, it's so bad that I've given up on contributing anything more than minor edits and reverting the occasionally-noticed vandalism. Some people around here care only about being bossy bureaucratic jerks, and apparently the System encourages them because nobody cares to really object. I'd spend a great deal of time and effort making a properly written addition on what seemed like relevant encyclopedic material, weighing each word like a perfectionist and checking details, and some who don't fully agree with it will automatically denigrate, revert in one casual click with a gruff put-down, readily going to an edit war instead of showing a modicum of open-mindedness or helpfulness. It is always so much easier (and faster!) to destroy than to build...

For the precise situations, you can waste your time examining the history and talk pages of Stand on Zanzibar and Swagman, if you so feel inclined. First one could've brought a highly valuable addition to the article if, instead of destructive criticism, the "comrades" had given a chance to the contribution by searching news article's original sources and improving what was admittedly the mere start of something worth retaining. Second incident is about a guy who considers that page his own private territory. No matter that he didn't create it. All he has to say is "take your material elsewhere, it's worthless" (in slightly less direct terms). He certainly couldn't be bothered to create a disambiguation page and specific new one... something which I lack the skill for, but never had a chance to explain. A counter-example to these was my contribution to Lolicon, where some very nice fellas discussed, cleaned up, enriched, referenced, leading to a final result I was happy to have amateurishly initiated. My strongest suit has always been thinking outside the box, and spotting connections the majority wouldn't notice. But perhaps this draws a reflex resentment from the few ones who hate seeing their intellectual comfort disturbed?

In both instances, users Beyond My Ken and HappyWaldo (master of shifting excuses) don't give a four-letter-word about my repeated calls to discussion, and nobody seems to really object at their crude disregard for another user's hard efforts and their curt attitude. No apologies, no peacemaking proposals, no friendly constructive criticism, not even a "I might have overreacted a bit", just insistence that apparently I'm a complete bumbling boorish ignorant who would be better off leaving this place altogether because I annoy the really smart people in their very serious work.

I originally registered because, having no financial means to donate, and having extensively used Wikipedia's free bounty of knowledge and documentation, it only felt right to give something back. You know, like shareware. And this, in spite of having precious little time left from making a living. But I've felt way too unwelcome by passive-aggressive bullies. People expert at making others look bad to themselves look good. It's been scientifically proven in corporative sociology, and, unfortunately, studies have also shown that it usually works. Sometimes evolution is a she-dog.

As for the effort of contributing to WP, I live in Lebanon, with atrociously slow and intermittent internet, and only have electrical power every other day in average. Every time I make a contribution, I really have to weigh the worth of its while. I just can't afford the luxury of adding, to an hour-long edit, countless extra hours of carefully phrasing arguments in byzantine discussions where the original contradictor seldom even listens to any voice other than his own and its occasional echoes in others' opinions. And I bet they're counting exactly on that : classic lassitude against the inertia of a rigid bureaucracy.

Just for the record, and I've never bothered to brag about qualifications that shouldn't be necessary to display, here are my credentials: Medical Doctor with 9½ years of studies in the country's top University, including top grades in Anatomy, Ethics, Psychology and Psychiatry ; two years of teaching medical students myself ; TOEFL level in English, which is only my 3rd language ; expertise level in French language and literature ; top essay grades in both of these ; and a vast, constantly enriched general culture.

Why am I bothering, only now, to tell someone (you) how much I'm NOT an educated hillbilly? Well, while it would have seemed like gratuitous bragging in editorial disputes, I feel you deserve to know just what sort of valuable contributors the monolithism of WP's system is forever driving away.

This is not a request for arbitration, or for you to go have a few words with those two about etiquette, manners and assuming good faith. This is just in hopes that you'll reflect with the other admins and find a way to correct the System. To perhaps limit the sad waste of talents, potential and sincere good wills. As for me, it's too late. Per recent changes, starting next week I'll be impossibly busy anyway, with more work than ever. Spending my limited life time –the only, precious possession one truly owns– saving people's lives, because you wouldn't believe how few proper Doctors there are in this country. The significant time I'me spending telling you this in detail is out of consideration for the good ones out there, but it's the last time I ever care to bother. As far as I'm concerned, the damage is done, and the trust is broken like a lost innocence.

Had I felt the atmosphere of ideal and love for Knowledge which I naively assumed at first, I might very well have continued giving back to the world, because free knowledge accessible to all is one of the most noble endeavours in the Universe, let alone this solar system. But it's the same as with religion: a minority of fanatics will unfailingly ruin even the best and most sublime ideals. Unrepentingly returning to being a selfish liberal leecher of free quality content, I wish you good courage for tackling that petrified mastodon.

P.S.: I seem to have noticed this phenomenon typically arises in fringe culture articles. Perhaps because they only draw the attention of a small number, and some of those might take excessive pride in their knowledge of the topic? Just a thought. Clearly this seldom happens on widely-monitored articles or those retelling the plot of comics in ridiculous detail and shaky grammar. But I'm at a loss as to suggestions for specific solutions. It might be an unavoidable flaw in an otherwise excellent System... Still, I really, honestly, cannot recover my lost incentive. Call me a hopeless idealist. Issar El-Aksab (talk) 01:06, 28 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Check swagman again. Click the red linked "Swagman (video game)" and add your info there. - HappyWaldo (talk) 08:20, 28 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Hunh? Was there a blue moon on Wednesday? I must've missed it. (sigh) Ah well, better late than post-mortem. I'll see what I can do, and when I can do it. If at all. Ad augusta, per angusta. Issar El-Aksab (talk) 01:43, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Problem with very slow navigation!
Contributing to Wikipedia is made a lot more complicated for me by page scripts that dramatically slow down my browser (Firefox), encountered in about 35% of pages. Any pointers on how I can report this to the technical admins? It really doesn't help a man's patience when a page arbitrarily takes up to a full minute to load. I think there might be a simple gesture that would let you fix this for all users in my case. I can't deactivate ALL scripts (too many new problems would arise), and when I click "Stop script" when prompted for a specific one, sometimes editing a mere typo on a WP page brings about a NEW problem script, and sometimes on a page that had none. Hugely annoying. Here's an example I just got: Script: https://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=jquery%2Cmediawiki%2CSpinner%7Cjquery.triggerQueueCallback%2CloadingSpinner%2CmwEmbedUtil%7Cmw.MwEmbedSupport&only=scripts&skin=monobook&version=20130920T022943Z:73 Issar El-Aksab (talk) 23:51, 24 September 2013 (UTC)