User:Gronky

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[edit] About me

Note: I only rarely put effort into my user page, so the content of this page has probably not be reviewed or checked or updated recently.

Wikipedia contributor since 08:04, February 1, 2004 (as User:159.134.79.9).

If you see a typo or glitch, please feel free to fix it, and thanks to those who already have.

[edit] "Licence" is correct, for the noun

"Licence" is the noun, "license" is the verb. This is true for UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand (and India). In the USA, they use "license" for both (and the Philippines).

[edit] Wikipedia's challenges

As ideas go, Wikipedia's a winner, but there are still glitches to be worked out. Here're the biggest ones:

[edit] Widespread misbeliefs held as truths

If a misunderstanding is held by a large enough section of society, it will sometimes be in Wikipedia - and when someone tries to fix it, they may be out-numbered by people who are sure that their misunderstanding is correct.

One example that people talk about is that if Wikipedia was started hundreds of years ago, its article about Earth would say that the Earth is flat.

There are many modern-day examples related to the GNU operating system, the GNU project, and free software.

[edit] The burden of defense is on the attacked

If someone follows you around articles, applying ludicrous standards to your edits and making false accusations against you, you kinda have to respond each time. Silence is kinda interpreted as having no answer. This means that good Wikipedian's time can be consumed by people with bad intentions, and people who are so argumentative that they are not competent at the community-model work that is required to make Wikipedia great.

[edit] People expect standards of decency, but there are none

For this point I'll go straight to an example:

[edit] Posting other wikipedian's personal information on Wikipedia as revenge

If someone went looking for my identity and the address of where I sleep at night, and posted them on Wikipedia, I would hope that the wikipedia admins would consider banning that user. If that user admitted what they did, and said that it was not acceptable and that it should not happen again, maybe a fixed-term ban would be suitable instead.

No one has posted my home address, but User:Jtdirl, during a heated argument, has posted the "personal information" of User:Skyring. Jtdirl is better known as FearÉIREANNImage:Ireland coa.png, or FearÉIREANN\(caint), and similar.

The details are incomplete because the information has been deleted from the Wikipedia database, but there are still edit summaries that confirm that Jtdirl did post Skyring's personal information. At one point in my research on this case, I read that this information included the address of where Skyring lives - but I can't find that anymore.

Wikipedia admins are clearly aware of what Jtdirl has done, but they have done nothing. Jtdirl continues to edit Wikipedia even though there has been no acknowledgement by him of his actions, or whether or not he thinks they should be acceptable, or whether or not he has resolved not to do the same again.

User:Jtdirl contributes a lot to Wikipedia, and many people value his contributions. But should Wikipedia have a class that are above common standards of decency? User:Skyring is trying to raise this issue, but his posts are repeatedly reverted and blocked by other Wikipedians (including admins) [1]

I've had disagreements with Jtdirl before (see my Talk: page). Next time I disagree with him, will he try to find of where I live, and post my address on Wikipedia? Should I fear my anonymity being taken away by another wikipedian - and by this fear should I pander to and agree with Jtdirl from now on?

Gronky 19:05, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

I've just noticed that when another other admin told Jtdirl that he's abusing his admin power [2], he reverts them [3]! (and then he locked his own talk page - making it impossible for that admin, or anyone else, to re-raise the deleted issue.)

And he seems to be doing a "rollback" on new accounts which he suspects are created by Skyring. A roll back is where all contributions by a user during a certain period are reverted by a click of an admins-only button.

All very disappointing that this is being not only tolerated, but the cover-up is being assisted. Gronky 23:47, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Articles that seriously need help

  • Copyleft: this huge article is full of mostly irrelevent stuff. It attributes most of copyleft's history to the open source movement, even though that term didn't exist until 13 years after copyleft was popularised.
  • Shared_Source#Criticism: the criticism section of this article is very small for such a widely ridiculed project.
  • Public domain: like Copyleft, this is just a heap of information that keeps getting added to. I suspect this is a self-perpetuating problem - the bigger the article gets, the less anyone wants to take on the job of fixing it. I have these on my todo list, but I already do a lot of fixing needy articles.

[edit] Giz a hand

Please comment here if you know anything of the following:

  1. Why a toilet is called "The jacks" in Ireland (It may also be called that in the UK, the only reference I can turn up is "harington the jacks", but it could be false or unrelated)
Old enough, and not necessarily Irish: as "jakes", the word occurs in Shalespeare. Palmiro 14:39, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
Interesting to compare it with john for toilet, insofar as "Jack" is a common nickname for those named "John." --70.57.138.153 03:07, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
  1. Any info about Herminie Templeton Kavanagh, the author of "Darby O'Gill and the Good People", and "Ashes of Old Wishes"
See much information that I have added to your article. — Walloon 06:52, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
  1. more questions to come...

[edit] My Contributions

I created the following pages of decent size:

And I've done the majority of the work on:

But the majority of my contributions have been tweaks, and additions of sentences here and there.

Before being "Gronky", I had other usernames, but none lasted all that long.

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