User:Chips Critic

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Interested in Film, Music (some), and various other things depending on mood.

Made significant additions to the Derek Jarman article. Created the Cy Endfield and Terence Davies articles, and the Frank Borzage stub, along with various more minor tidyings-up (of the Fritz Lang article, among others).

Didn't particularly like the new layout (introduced May 29, 2004) at first, but have grown used to it. I just hope it won't be changed again for no real reason at any time in the near future.

[edit] Some Thoughts On Wikipedia

Sometimes I feel a tad glum when I witness the amount of damage which has been done to this resource by priggish little bigots (and I make no apology for using such words), but these reactions pass when I see articles growing from stubs into wonderful testimonies to the validity of the idea of collective authorship within a matter of weeks.

The vital thing, as I see it, is for this resource to become one a scholar or journalist would not be ashamed of utilising. This requires as much attention to style as it does to the information covered. I would argue that the great enemy is not plain, clunky, telegraphic prose (though such prose is undoubtably to be avoided), but self-admiring, epicene but ultimately clumsy prose: bad writing which is clearly thought by its author to be good writing. I'm talking about sentences which include those dreaded words "somewhat of a", the bathetic introduction of slang in order to give an impression of nonchalant expertise, and the use of Biography Channel prose. Faults like these are more likely to turn people off Wikipedia than anything else.*

Another problem is the gradual emergence into the spotlight of the substructures which keep Wikipedia running. If Wikipedia is to become a resource people use unquestioningly (as they might use Britannica), then it's quite important that non-encyclopedic pages are only visible to those who are really interested. When I look at a page's categories, the phrase "Cleanup from August 2005" shouldn't come before anything related to the subject matter. Too often, however, such phrases do come first. This creates the impression that "Wikipedians" (a term about which I have reservations) are more interested in the administrative tasks associated with Wikipedia than the project itself. Of some of us this may be true, and there's nothing wrong with that: what's wrong is the implication that such tasks are the purpose of the project. The ultimate aim of Wikipedia should be to be a resource regularly used by those who aren't interested in the ideas behind its creation. A panoply of administrative references will mystify the new user.

It could, of course, be argued that these references will pique the interest of readers, leading them to become Wikipedians themselves. Although this is true, I don't think the aim of the Wikipedia should be to proselytise. If it does, then it is, as some commentators have accused it of being, a cult. Wikipedia, like it or not, is not for Wikipedians, but for everyone.

[edit] A Note on Sentence Structure

Putting "himself" after someone's name when referring to them doesn't work as well in print as it does in speech. For example: there are rather a lot of references on certain User Talk pages to comments made by "Jimbo Wales himself". This loses impact on the page - or rather, the screen.

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