User:TheKaplan

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Hey Folks!

I'm TheKaplan.

I joined wikipedia with the intention of occupying myself primarily with corrections to grammar and style, with a general goal of improving the professional character of wikipedia articles and assisting in the cleaning up of the English in recently translated articles. However I have found increased involvement irresistible, and now engage in more general editing and contributing. Despite having increased the scope of my involvement, I still dedicate a significant amount of my editing time to my original goal, and to that end, I have joined WikiProject: Grammar. I also spend a lot of time on rc patrol.

While naturally possessed of a POV, I believe very strongly in maintaining the NPOV standards of wikipedia, and work to further that goal whenever and wherever I can. I envision a bright future where wikipedia will produce articles of such quality and credibility that it is readily accepted as an appropriate academic source.

My pet WikiPeeves are unsigned comments on talk pages and users without userpages, because I like to know who I'm talking to. I believe that the political stance type userboxes that are criticized by Jimbo (who I otherwise greatly respect) contribute to civil and effective communication and conflict resolution between users, because it helps you know where the other user is coming from. A wise man (cultural anthropology teacher) once said that you can never be effective at changing someone else's mind unless you know their worldview.

My greatest respect on wikipedia is reserved for those who are clearly opinionated but don't let it get in the way of their committment to NPOV, or allow it to poison interactions with other users. As I aspire to this myself, I greatly admire those who have achieved it.

[edit] You know you need to take a break from wikipedia when...

The other day I got into a bit of an argument with someone out in the real world. I started to tell them that they were going to be blocked for violating WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA. It was nagging at me that something wasn't quite right but I couldn't figure out what. I realized about halfway through the second sentence. It came out something like this: "You cannot talk anymore. You are in violation of...uh...the rules of the house. Nevermind." TheKaplan

have a story of your own? add it here! (maybe we can eventually make a whole subpage)

[edit] Humor on wikipedia

I actually think the funniest part of the humor section of the WP universe is the humor tag itself (example[1]). I can just imagine, in my best robot voice:

/Initializing search...

/Scanning...

-Page located

/Analyzing...

/Detecting humour

/Evaluating comedic value...

-Comedic value confirmed

/Tagging...

-Tagging complete