User: Ian Pugh
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Dear friends,
It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that I will leaving the Wikipedia community. I spent a good two months in the state of Wikipedia addiction, but as my schedule becomes more and more hectic, I find it interfering with my time to more important priorities - 500 non-minor edits within that time span, sheesh! I had a message posted stating that I would take a Wikiholiday, later taken down, later put back up. If you follow my edit history, you'll see I constantly edited of all the little things I originally missed in my articles, and on VfD as well, as my mind better cultivates opinion.
Don't think that it's anything personal, however. Some of you may not bide too well of my various votes for deletion, mostly dealing with fancruft and other such stuff, but I did what I could there. Occasionally it got a little acidic, but for the most part, cooler heads prevailed on both sides, and I was happy to be a part of the quest to make Wikipedia more useful and respectable in that sense.
I will continue to use Wikipedia as the invaluable source of information it is. But I can't use all my time up here, sad as it is to say - if I try to go back to the community I'll just use up more of my time. Part of the addiction, I suppose you could say.
I might return one day. Sooner rather than later, later rather than sooner. Who knows? One thing I know is that I won't soon forget what Wikipedia has done for my ability to write, something that I hope to cultivate into a profession. Maybe not for goodbye letters, 'cause this one's pretty far down the ladder, but for other purposes, mostly dealing with film criticism and analysis.
Thanks to all of you for making this a great place to be.
Very sincerely,
Ian Pugh
| Contents |
Articles
Film
- Schizopolis, my first article. Great movie, by the way.
- Precious Images, great short film that is (unfortunately) illegal to sell to the public.
- Curly Joe DeRita, the sixth of the Three Stooges
Comics
- Vandal Savage, that evil supervillain. Another early article.
- The Death of Superman, which was later brilliantly expanded upon by User:DarkSoldier.
Video Games
Hoo boy, here's where it really expands. MAME has been invaluable when it comes to my WikiWork, because there are so many arcade games worthy of mention and nostalgia. Not to mention the WikiProject meant to organize these games.
- Paperboy, which used to be a description of the job and the video game; they've since been expanded and relocated. (Pretty well off, I'd say, since my original text kind of sucked.)
- Arcade games: Strider (arcade game), X-Men: Children of the Atom (video game), X-Men (arcade game), House of the Dead, Pac-Land, Ms. Pac Man, Bucky O'Hare (arcade game), The Simpsons (arcade game), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (arcade game),Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time.
- Continue (video games), 'cause someone's gotta write about it.
- Captain Commando, the arcade game and the mascot.
- Reworking the Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3 pages into current organization.
- Reworking Kefka, the eeee-vil villain from Final Fantasy VI.
Others
- Recess, which now has a nice international flavor! This article was featured as a Did you know... article on Wikipedia's Main Page on November 5th, 2004
- Frozen Peas, the infamous recording of Orson Welles. "In July. I'd love to know how you emphasize 'in' before 'July.' Impossible! Meaningless!"
- More to come, of course.
Stubs
Some stubs I've created or expanded from substubs. Maybe you can expand even further so they're no longer stubs:
- Mark S. Schweiker, former governor of Pennsylvania. PWNED! An anonymous user wrote a new article up quite nicely.
- Macbeth (1971 movie), Roman Polanski's version of Shakespeare
- Theo van Gogh (art dealer), art dealer and brother of Vincent van Gogh. Note: The vested interest in the unfortunate murder of Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker, has required that the old Theo van Gogh page to become a disambig page.
- Contempt (film), great film by Jean-Luc Godard, which I will extend as soon as I find the time. Can you beat me to it?
- The Pac-Man monsters: Inky (monster), Blinky (monster), Pinky (monster) and Clyde (monster). Frankly, short and uninteresting. Perhaps they need merging? I don't know.
Thanks to...
- DaveGorman, who frequently keeps my articles in check for organizational errors.
- Wikipedia itself! So much writing!
- And... you. Thank you for playing this game.
One more thing...
I am generally considered a deletionist, which I feel does not have negative connotations at all, just as the word inclusionist does not. I love Wikipedia; it's an invaluable resource, and I'm currently a Wikipediholic! But at the same time, I like contibuting to make Wikipedia cleaner, and more efficient with 25% less caffiene, so I often wander around to see if there's anything that needs editing or deleting.
I am highly opposed to fancruft, and am very vocal in this. I am a proponent for television series and major characters therein to receive articles, but strongly opposed to articles for minor characters and individual episodes. I still create new pages and such, but my current mission is to aid in the containment of fancruft, which, at present, makes little effort to be encyclopedic. Just because Wiki is not paper does not mean that it should be all-inclusive. Just because The Simpsons is notable doesn't mean that individual episodes are, because it is the series as a whole which makes it notable. That goes double for individual jokes in the series - if something gets five seconds mention in a 350-episode sixteen-year history, it is not encyclopedic.
Although we are often victims of vandals, we need to keep Wikipedia as a serious text of information, composed of articles that everyone can understand and can stand alone as entities within themselves. That goes for things that I love, too - all the extraneous articles on Futurama need to go. I briefly gave up on the issue when consensus seemed impossible, but then R. fiend wrote a well-thought-out essay/rant that brought me back into the fray.
Also, to defend my own seemingly inconsequential work, I cite Bucky O'Hare (arcade game). Not everyone cares about the game, but it is still a stand-alone work that does not require paragraphs and paragraphs of explanation as to who's who, and what's what.
Note: as a common courtesy, Meelar has requested that the word "fancruft" no longer be used within VfDs, in order to prevent them from discouraging contributors of such articles from working on others in Wikipedia, while at the same time making the same point in the VfD. I understand his point, and will attempt to heed his request. However, my feelings on the issue remain the same.
