From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I have no idea if anyone will read this but if they do, I've been thinking. What are we doing on Wikipedia? We purport to be writing an encyclopaedia. But we don't want just anything in it. And the more we do, the more we feel we need to constrain what's on the site. Notability is my main bugbear. What does that mean? An extremely small (compared to total Wikipedia users) have established "consensus" to decide what is notable. These criteria are arbitrary though, in many users eyes, absolute. We fling snippets of rules at each other "this fails that criteria", "that's not a reliable source" but have we ever stopped to think that we're building it for a purpose? To be a useful reference tool. Have we stopped to find out if what we're doing IS useful? Do we reject things as being not notable that people really need to be able to find?

This troubles me.

We delete that which offends the great God of notability. Is he really there or did we create him?

Toolbox

{{Infobox Film | name = | image = | caption = | director = | producer = | writer = | narrator = | starring = | music = | cinematography = | editing = | distributor = | released = | runtime = | country = | language = | budget = | preceded_by = | followed_by = | website = | amg_id = | imdb_id = }}

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Things to do

Relevant (?) facts

Mallanox is a native of England and was born in Salisbury.

A wide variety of interests may be reflected in the entries edited on Wikipedia.

So far, edits have been made in the areas of:

Marvel Comics - where many characters have been added/edited.

Transformers - Mallanox has followed the toy and cartoon series since they began.

Science Fiction - Mallanox has seen all or most episodes of Doctor Who, Blake's 7, Star Trek and many others. Mallanox has read many Doctor Who novels.

Cinema - Mallanox has a qualification in film study and is interested in a wide range of movies.

Salisbury and it's surroundings - as home city. Created the category Sarumites (re-named People from Salisbury) and found its first 20 articles.


Mallanox is an artist, musician and student of divination and is likely to make contributions in these areas also.

Mallanox is currently working on film articles, mainly sorting categorisation out.

Good advice

Quit being a delete-happy prick. Good advice from another Wikipedian's userpage. They deleted it for some reason. But I'm going to keep it for the moment.

Go to bed when you're tired! At the time of writing I have just reversed edits I made to 13 (how ironic) articles. At about 3.30 in the morning I misread the word pick for prick(!) and removed a users edits. I'm going to bed now. I will be back tomorrow with a fresh head!

Userboxes

♂This user is male.
This user identifies as gay.
This user is proud to be British.
8,000+This user has made more than 8,000 contributions to Wikipedia.
This user is a member of the
Counter-Vandalism Unit.
vn-7This user page has been vandalized 7 times.
...This user would like to be able to speak many more languages.
This user is a participant in the Thelema WikiProject.
This user is interested in astrology.
This user is a Piscean.
This user was born in the year of the Horse.
This user is for racial equality.
This user is interested in Wicca.
This user is interested in tarot reading.
This user enjoys reading science fiction.
FGThis user thinks Family Guy is freakin' sweet.
The TARDIS, from Doctor WhoThis user is a Doctor Who fan.
G This user's favorite color is green.
User:Pumapayam/Userboxes/User cub
This user is interested in painting.
This user is an evil Decepticon.
This user plays the synthesizer.
This user likes all types of music.
BOOK This user is working on publishing a book.
This user is owned by one or more cats.
M This user reads Marvel Comics.
CNThis user's alignment is Chaotic Neutral: the "Free Spirit."


People I have met who have Wikipedia articles

Performers or performances I have seen live