Dr. Strangemoth

Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Wikipedia

Lately I've decided to stop fretting over political articles and not look at them (much) no less edit them until after the U.S. election. I sometimes break my vow to correct something I think egregious, especially pitching in on the George W. Bush military service controversy. I couldn't resist that one once Rathergate began, since I am in the unusual position of having served in that time frame (thereby familiar with military procedure) and being personally familiar with all the equipment described, due to my typesetting background.

Nevertheless, I am trying to convince myself of what I've been thinking for months now, that editing on contentious articles reduces the overall quality of Wikipedia when there are other things to be done. Whether or not I or anyone else get the last word on whether George Bush spent his National Guard career flying around drunk shouting "wheeeee, I'm a bird," or whether John Kerry got two of his three purple hearts from injuries sustained by being stabbed with a ball-point pen by Jane Fonda, it is not going to affect the outcome of the election one jot or tittle.

So though my edit history has been lean lately, I'm enjoying Wikipedia more, puttering around, doing some admin chores and (Lord love a duck) actually starting a few new articles. I hope I can keep it up. Wish me luck?

Wikipedia and Me

For extraordinary contributions and a calm independence, I hereby award Cecropia this barnstar. May the Way of the Wiki stay within you forever, and continue to guide you to new heights. Neutrality 23:21, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I had been accessing Wikipedia for a while, mostly for easy-to-convey tidbits about math, physics and other subjects while reviewing my elder daughter's schoolwork before I realized the nature of the project. I edited a few pieces before getting a username, then began editing as Cecropia at the end of December, 2003.

• I became a sysop on April 13, 2004.
• I became a bureaucrat on June 24, 2004.

I am happy to help editors in areas that sysops are charged with taking care of whenever I can, including page protection/unprotection in appropriate circumstances. Feel free to get in touch with if you need sysop help.

Bureaucrats are charged only to seeing to the promotion of editors to sysop status, and this responsibility is only performed on the basis of community consensus.

Except when performing the above specialized duties, I write, edit, and speak in my status as editor, like every other Wikipedian. Cheers! -- Cecropia | Talk

Articles I started

Here are the articles I began, best as I can figure out. I've tried to avoid stubs and redirects—i.e., these were started with at least some useful content, sometimes a lot, and sometimes I added to the articles later. I have not listed articles I didn't start but added to or edited significantly—at this time that seems a rather daunting task.

Useful links

• Wikipedia:Policy Library
• Wikipedia:Cite your sources
• Wikipedia:Verifiability
• Wikipedia:Wikiquette
• Wikipedia:Conflict resolution
• Wikipedia:Brilliant prose
• Wikipedia:Neutral point of view
• Wikipedia:Pages needing attention
• Wikipedia:Peer review
• Wikipedia:Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense
• Wikipedia:Village pump
• Wikipedia:Boilerplate text

Full disclosure: I cribbed these from Sam [Spade. Thanks, Sam!

Some thoughts on Wikipedia and Wikis

I'm fascinated by Wiki's ability to become a storehouse of knowledgeable arcana that usually receives short shrift in other encyclopedias. If arcana aren't exactly the bricks of the house of knowledge, they're at least the pebbles in the mortar.

I find this a wonderful experiment in establishing a free, useful resource for the wide world. Even edit wars and an overall bias that may be seen in certain articles can be useful for future scholars and historians (since the edit history is all archived) to see what arguments were raging at a given point in time and to try to assess the positions and biases of the (often faceless) protagonists for one view or another.

Some of personal curiosities for the future of Wikis include:

• will contentious articles even out in the end, or will they end up representing the POV of the most persistent?
• will the unspoken. even unconscious, biases of whoever constitutes the bulk of contributors eventually drive away honest contributors who adhere to a different view?
• will a valuing system eventually be placed on articles?
• will Wikis resist becoming hierarchial or "clubby"?
• will hard-and-fast rules begin to replace consensus?
• like other new and exciting ideas, like ... erm ... Marxism, will we one day see a WikiInc® keeping the framework but destroying the intent of Wikipedia? (eventually to be bought out by a Microsoft)?
• sort of like the above, will a wonderful and well-thought out experiment someday see its Jimbos replaced by its Josefs?

If anyone has thoughts on these issues, please place them in my Talk, not here.

Interests

I've been writing or editing on a wide if odd mix of subjects of interest, including (in no particular order) Great Expectations, Egg Creams, Coney Island Creek, Anti-semitism, Autism, Freedomland U.S.A., Dog catcher, Jukes and Kallikaks, Multiple-unit train control, Good (accounting), L. Sprague de Camp, Terrorism, Law of land warfare, Vietnam war, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Shining, Kristallnacht, Red herring, Yellow ribbon, Asymmetric warfare, Jane Fonda, John Kerry, Illegal combatant, Autistic savant, Political subdivisions of New York State, War crime, Wesley Clark, George W. Bush, Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation, New York subway, Fulton Fish Market, General Motors Streetcar Conspiracy, Malbone Street Wreck, Atlantic Avenue Tunnel, and others I'm too lazy to think of at the moment.

I have a POV about certain subjects which I try to be open about; no point really, people usually see through users who make obviously partisan changes under rubrics such as "the article is too big," "this belongs somewhere else," and my favorite: "I don't have a POV, everybody else has a POV." :) But I have been writing for a long time (my first paid article was written for the long-extinct New York Journal-American) and I make an effort for my edits and contributions to be NPOV or to balance existing POV, to be accurate and, if controversial, to be well-documented. At any rate, I stand behind the integrity of anything I write.

Personal stuff

Since I'm pushing social security age, I've worn a lot of hats in my lifetime. The only more or less common thread that's moved in and out of my life is programming and computers. When I began in the trade, COBOL and Fortran were the thing, and loading your program meant begging a cranky Univac not to chew your punch cards. Now I'm very next Tuesday with Linux and web services and all. Learning UNIX back when was a big help and I'm a Novell CNE, which I guess is also kind of dinosaurish now.

But I've also been:

• A typographer (set type by just about every means there is except Monotype)
• A printing foreman
• A military instructor in the U.S. Army
• A military policeman
• A technical writer
• A transportation analyst
• A writer of local social, physical and political history
• A rescuer of fair maidens
• A husband and father, unexpectedly perhaps my favorite role

Politically, my family was liberal/socialist. I was a lifetime Democrat, but dropped my registration in 1998 and am now officially an Independent. I am a 30-year plus labor union member and former union steward. I have libertarian leanings but am too libertarian to join that or any other party any more. I retain my liberal belief in the basic goodness of humans but also feel that people sometimes poison their minds when they adhere to groups instead of seeing others as individuals.

I have been involved in advocacy and public speaking on various topics across the political spectrum. I am the father of an autistic child and am interested in the science, education, and social treatment of those with different and altered abilities.

Some quotes I've long remembered

I'm afraid some of these are necessarily quite heavily paraphrased, where I don't have access to the original quote. Presented in no particular order.

• Bob Dylan, early in his career, commented on the bevy of pundits and critics who were trying to "expose" him: "Don't they understand? I expose myself every time I walk on the stage."
• William J. Ronan, once head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (New York): "What small bits of power people fight over."
• My dad, when I was about to pursue our family dog under the couch: "Don't follow him there. Even an animal needs a safe place."
• Also my dad, after I had lost a favorite toy: "Don't be too upset about something that can be replaced with only money. The most important things can't."

Favorite poem

The night has a thousand eyes,
     And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
     With the dying sun.

The mind has a thousand eyes,
     And the heart but one:
Yet the light of a whole life dies
     When love is done.

               —Francis William Bourdillon