User:Andrew Hampe/Workshop/1

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MessedRocker's User Space User Page - Talk Page - Contributions - E-mail Me - Edit Count Scratchpad - MessedRobot edit this header

MessedRocker On-The-Fly! AIM: MessedRocker92 - Skype: messedrocker Google Talk and MSN: messedrocker [at] gmail.com IRC: irc.freenode.org #wikipedia as MessedRocker

This is a Wikipedia user page. This is not an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user this page belongs to may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia itself. The original page is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Andrew_Hampe/Workshop/1.

Did somebody say McDonalds? Generic Blunt 10:48, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

No, but somebody did say Good Article contest! —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 10:48, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Note: Please don't make your improvements on this page. Do it on User:Messedrocker/B

Contents 1 About Myself 2 Opinions 2.1 Fair Use 2.2 POV Pushing 2.3 Diversions 2.4 Citing Sources 3 Big Accomplishments 4 To-do list 5 Tidbits 5.1 Donate to Wikimedia! 5.2 Published #wikipedia logs 5.3 A poem by The Mekon 6 Leave comments here 7 Stuff

[edit] About Myself

Messedrocker has been a Wikipedian since November 26, 2004, and a Wikipedia administrator since September 14, 2006. His first edit was a new article: Amanda (name), which eventually became a redirect. This user has also been a contributor to Wikinews since September 2005, and an administrator since October of the same year. Messedrocker is a native speaker of English and has an elementary comprehension of the French language. A potentially out-of-date list of pages and categories he has created is available here.

On September 14, 2006, Messedrocker's second Request for Adminship succeeded, with a final count of 95 to 1. Messedrocker is not much of an admin but enjoys protecting articles and perhaps resolving disputes involving them.

Enough of writing about myself in the third person. The reason why I work on Wikipedia is because I love doing it. This is a very important project, and I love it very much. Because of how everything is arranged and set up, while the Wikipedia brand may not last forever, the fruit of its efforts will. It is a damn shame when people are chased away, because it means that they could not bear it any longer. Chances are they made the mistake of being very active on very controversial sides; I hear Jayjg is involved in the pseudoscience aspects of Wikipedia where he has to deal with people constantly.

I have earned some wikiaccolades over the years, however I don't keep track of them on my user page on Wikipedia for some reason. I have a large trophy case on my Wikinews user page, though.

Wikipolitically I consider myself an exopedian who believes certain metapedian aspects, such as WikiProjects, are necessary. I love WikiProjects, they're great! I have been a mergist, however lately I have become interesting in atomizing articles to the point they're short, punchy, and easy to read. I'm afraid of carrying this things out because apparently making articles large is the norm. I am envious of those who have written featured articles.

In December I attended a Wikipedia Meetup in New York City, where I met many great Wikipedians, such as Newyorkbrad, Robth, Mindspillage, Gmaxwell, Reagle, and Ed Poor. It was a huge meetup, and I definitely enjoyed it. I definitely trust these people to run Wikipedia! :D

The rest of this little description section will be used to describe various beliefs.

[edit] Opinions

[edit] Fair Use

They call it "fair use" for a reason: if we're not making money off of it (or doing any other dickery), it's irreplacable, and pictures are worth a thousand words, then it should be used. While I'm a bit strict about how the Fair Use clause should be applied, I'm not going to require that all uses of logos in articles must document how the letter "N" in that logo somewhat resembles a recently-deceased paramecium (you get what I mean, don't you?). Fair use images are, in my opinion, usable as long as it's for a good reason. As for pictures of living people being used under Fair Use, while I used to think that such big names worthy of Wikipedia don't have the time to have images taken of them for Wikipedia, apparently there's a copyleft photo of Paris Hilton. I've basically changed my mind to that respect.

I understand that our policies are stricter than law. That's because as an encyclopedia that can afford to be constantly updated, we don't need some of the protections the government has. I want to keep reminding people that this encyclopedia is blessed not to be Wikinews, where everything has to be perfect in ideally one day. That's why Wikinews has slightly looser fair use requirements. Wikipedia has all eternity to get free images. Take advantage of the time.

[edit] POV Pushing

Since some POV pushers are not aware of how we have a neutral point of view policy, we should take an effort to educate them, and ban them if they're not willing to listen. Don't worry, I have no intention on overusing my ability to block people — I'll stay within the lines.

[edit] Diversions

I am not a fan of things that deviate excessively from our ultimate primary goal: writing an encyclopedia. Everything, and I mean everything, on Wikipedia, should be a means from achieving that goal. That means the wiki, the community, and the democratic (and any other socioeconomic ideology you can think of) values are a means to this badass encyclopedia. Unfortunately, things get in the way.

I am talking about two things: DRAMA! and unnecessary things like userboxes and overdecorating pages. Drama is what happens when people can't learn to discuss the issues and get in petty squabbles over things that would be better if each party was a bit more rational. It's a shame things like this happen. That is why I believe in mediation in early stages involving a heavy-handed mediator that can control the situation and get people to speak. Here are my Laws of Intervention.

• Law the First: Since you are not able to solve this yourself, you must trust the mediator and do what they say.
  • Corollary: Do not ignore the mediator.
  • Exception: If all parties mutually agree that the mediator is wrong, then that is not only consensus but a SIGN that PARTIES ARE WORKING TOGETHER!
• Law the Second: To have non-trivial sanctions imposed against you by ArbCom is the equivalent of being convicted of a felony.
  • Corollary: You can't afford to mess up after ArbCom.

Those are my only laws for now.

Next on my list are unnecessary things, like userboxes and spending too much time on my user page (this includes me; I try to limit my editing of my own user page). Userboxes may prove useful, however they really should be limited to things that are useful, like perhaps languages and WikiProject membership. The categories involved in said userboxes are what especially make them useful. I personally prefer writing out my entire user page over having seven hundred fifty-nine billion userboxes because rather than hashing out what I need to say in a series of pre-formatted boxes not written by me, I'd rather use my own writing, which is truly mine and no one else's. If you want userboxes, knock yourself out, but don't waste your life over it. Likewise for super-pretty user pages: they're not really that necessary. I keep my user page rather bland looking in protest of these.

You are probably at this point expecting me to talk about Esperanza. Esperanza is inherently a good idea: an organization that promotes peace among all the editors of Wikipedia sounds like a great idea. However, the problem has been in implementation. Esperanza has had insular tendencies, with its Esperanza barnstar and its Esperanza collaboration and just about everything else branded with the Esperanza name. Not to mention I absolutely detest their antithetical bureaucracy. I have pointed out this and other things (such as their irrelevant things which have since been deleted) during their Overhaul. The important bits I said during the Overhaul were unheeded, such as my desire for them to rid themselves of their pointless bureaucracy.

Unfortunately, I believe at this point they are unsalvagable and should cease to exist. We can preserve the history for the future to prevent this mistake with what I termed the MessedRocker Solution: redirecting the subpages to the main EA page which is marked as historical. I have no objection to recycling certain Esperanza programs, or protecting the redirects, or if an essay goes in place. In fact, I would be pleased if some sort of successor could start up that is intentionally designed not to have the flaws of Esperanza.

Ironically, this super-essay on diversions is a big diversion itself from encyclopedia editing. At least I don't do this often...

[edit] Citing Sources

I refuse to add new information to an article unless there's a reference that it can be associated with. All editors should cite sources. I understand there was a time when citing sources wasn't as important, and it was more about the comprehension, but times have changed. Cite sources, or I'll assault your writing with my favorite template.

I am not a pacifist.

[edit] Big Accomplishments

Acamprosate

Expanded the article beyond the two-sentence stub it was, featuring information in regards to approval by governments, studies comparing Acamprosate with similar drugs, and other pieces of information. Promoted to Good Article status on December 8, 2006.

Endless Online

After noticing the article's very poor status (featuring an entire page of pastel-shaded boxes), the article had been blanked and started over. It is currently somewhat better than it was before.

History of the Papacy

The article had been started over from scratch; the eventual goal is a main article and a series of articles outline the 2000 year history of the papacy.

NicVax

Created article on September 19, 2006. A fact from the article was featured on the Main Page on September 20 in the Do You Know section.

Palindromes (film)

Rewrote what originally was a review of the film into an acceptable article.

Theobromine

Transformed article from a largely unsourced article to a fully-sourced article. The reference count has increase at least fivefold, pictures have been added, the prose improved, and the article was generally better. Unfortunately, it did not attain good article status.

United States at the 1912 Summer Olympics

The article was expanded beyond its original one sentence stub with a list of individuals from the US who had received medals. Additionally, inline citations have been added. The current goal is Featured List.

YTMND

The article was approached back in June, where much of the article was re-written, had sections removed, citations added, and had the Cite.php method of citation implemented.

"In Germany there is no ordinary Bachelor."

[edit] To-do list

Articles to write (higher priority):

• History of the Papacy (current goal: clean up the behemoth!)
• United States at the 1912 Summer Olympics (current goal: featured list)
• Compulsory castration in California (current goal: long enough so that it can be considered an article about law and not about medicine)
  • You know, this may be better off in an article called Compulsory castration in the United States. Oh man, that'd be cool. Like, there could be a US flag and an infobox, and info about how there used to be it until Nazis did it then it was considered uncool like communism and the article would be a bajillion pages long and it'd get FAed and Raul654 would give me a thumbs-up and I get an honorary degree from the University of Michigan for no reason... you know, I need sleep.
• Languages of Afghanistan
• Languages of Indonesia

Articles to write (lower priority):

• Work with the Paul McCartney editors to establish a good-lookin' spinoff at Paul McCartney's solo career
• Re-write Hydroponics and do SOURCES this time people!
• Acamprosate to Featured Article
• NicVax to Good Article
• Translation of Phalanx formation from French into English: see User:Messedrocker/Phalanx-fr2en

Not content development:

• User:Messedrocker/Stablepedia
• WP:ARD

The back of my mind:

• Write that article about Nachum Shifren
• Military history of Switzerland

[edit] Tidbits

[edit] Donate to Wikimedia! Quick! We need to bring in enough money to outweigh this girl! Break out the gold bars! <MessedRocker> why am i addicted to wikipe-tan <sean_black> because you're a pervert <sean_black> PERVERT

[edit] Published #wikipedia logs irc.freenode.org #wikipedia [07/08/2006|02:19:45 PM] <MessedRocker> omg published wikipedia logs * jwales (n=jwales@wikipedia/Jimbo-Wales) has joined #wikipedia <jwales> OMG WTF POLAR BEAR??? Please note that any and all IRC logs that appear on this page are used with the explicit consent of any involved parties. [edit] A poem by The Mekon Messedrocker, he knows the score, doesn't touch the crack or pay for whores. You can find him in your local bakery, eating iced buns and sipping iced tea. - The Mekon 22:14, 15 September 2006 (UTC)