User:JzG

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
This is a Wikipedia user page.

If you were looking for Zaphod Beeblebrox, you want this article: Zaphod Beeblebrox.

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 Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user this page belongs to may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia itself.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:JzG.
This user is an administrator
This user is an administrator.
Beware of the tigers!
This page may contain strong opinions. You have been warned.
This user is a member of WikiProject Cycling, a WikiProject which aims to expand coverage of cycling on Wikipedia.

Please feel free to join us.
en This user is a native speaker of English.
This user [1] an administrator on the English Wikipedia.
This user advocates the use of more cowbell.
he This user prefers to be referred to using masculine gender pronouns.

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia that is ruled by the naysayers


This user is a rouge admin
Image:Anti-Star Trek Cabal logo.png
There is no anti-Star Trek cabal. Yet. But if our logo gets deleted, there will be! :o)

The Wikipedian Formally[1] Known As Just zis Guy, you know?

Thanks to a rare outbreak of consensus, I am an admin. Having the tools meant I could write up the Wessely affair in some detail using the deleted edits as a source.

Are you a user page design guru? Have at my page, please! It's a mess.

Apparently I have now been added to Daniel Brandt's Hivemind page, which exists to "out" the real identities of Wikipedia editors and admins. I congratulate them on the several seconds of patient research which must have been done to establish this closely guarded secret, involving as it does both reading the first paragraph of my Talk page (which is in my Wikisig) and either clicking the link or perhaps reading the first couple of paras of my userpage. With search skills as advanced as those, surely no admin is safe.

If you need access to a Wikipedia article that has been deleted, ask me. If it's not a copyright violation, personal information, libel or similar, I will make the text available to you.

Note that using the text to recreate the deleted content may be speedily deleted, and using it to keep it hanging around in your userspace has gotten editors penalized before. But that's your problem.

Contents

About Me

I sometimes work near here
I sometimes work near here
And I sometimes work near here
And I sometimes work near here

Here I am, take me as you find me. I am English, I work in information technology, I was born in 1964. I am married, have two children, five bicycles, one Volvo and more computers than I care to count. I have a French middle name and a famous ancestor (sort of; I believe I'm actually descended from his brother).

I am a long-time user of Usenet, I'm an enthusiast for the Apple Macintosh, although my old beige G3 is now retired and I'm using all Intel boxes. I am pretty handy with Lotus Domino (there are some fixes in 6 and 6.5 with my name on them), and not too bad with Microsoft Windows, which is how I earn my living.

My hobbies (outside Wikipedia and Usenet) are singing (I am a baritone), cycling and railway modelling. I am a Christian, a member of the Anglican communion, a member of my Parochial Church Council, and through this a school governor.

I also have anxiety depression, asthma, tinnitus, hyperacusis, migraines and bone-deep burn scars across the fingers of my left hand, which lead to characteristic typing errors (right-hand letter before left-hand letter).

Depression makes me bad tempered some days. Windows makes me bad tempered most days. A glass of wine calms me down a bit but I prefer beer (although it's bad for the waistline). I have a particular fondness for Flanders. And for Flanders and Swann. I recommend The Weekly for improving information about the BRITONS' Britain.

My spelling sometimes appears bad. This is a false impression: I spell very well, but I type appallingly, due to burn scars across the backs of the fingers on my left hand. This leads to characteristic errors like form instead of from and so on. Either the right hand comes down before the left has finished typing a letter, reversing them, or the left-hand finger doesn't move quite far enough to hit the target letter.

My father used to work for Handley Page and I have some material on H.P. that I am working into related articles. I also have Robert Gunther's biography and reprinted papers of Robert Hooke, feel free to ask me questions about these.

I am a member of the Spam wikiproject

Guy Chapman? He's just zis Guy, you know?

"What is this real life of which you speak, and where can I download it?"

On POV-pushing

I can NOT emphasize this enough.

There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative "I heard it somewhere" pseudo information is to be tagged with a "needs a cite" tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons.

Jimmy Wales, Tue, 16 May 2006 16:30:15 -0400

Hopelessly incomplete and out of date Wiki interest section

Me being lapped in my first and only HPV race
Me being lapped in my first and only HPV race
A mobile death greenhouse. Mine, in fact.
A mobile death greenhouse. Mine, in fact.

Involved in:

lesser edits:

See also my h2g2 page

Beware of the Tigers!

I was involved recently with a debate over my attempts to WP:NPOV Simon Wessely, and first Martin Osterman and then Jimbo Wales stepped in to sort things out. After one of the repeat editors had been blocked, William Pietri left a message to greet them on their return. I want to share one paragraph with you because I like it a lot:

Wikipedia's articles are no place for strong views. Or rather, we feel about them the way that a natural history museum feels about tigers. We admire them and want our visitors to see how fierce and clever they are, so we stuff them and mount them for close inspection, with all sorts of carefully worded signs to get people to appreciate them as much as we do. But however much we adore tigers, a live tiger loose in the museum is seen as an urgent problem.

So, beware of the tigers! (Yes, I know, it should be the leopard. Take it up with William).

Musings on Wikipedia

This project is becoming, in places, incredibly toxic. Articles for deletion is inclined to be a cesspit, and that's hard to avoid as some people go there mainly to raise their deletionist flag for future consideration as admins while others go there in response to solicitation to argue for keeping their pet content. Debates are acrimonious and often not at all based on actual policy. We also have a tendency to obsess over living individuals who are not, by any rational definition, notable. No print encyclopaedia would have an article on Brian Peppers, however low it set its inclusion threshold, and no print encyclopaedia would have an article on Essjay either. We already have the low-hanging fruit, articles on Mozart and Ford and France and other high-profile, high-importance subjects. What is being added is, to a great extent, vanity spam. Preventing anonymous article creation has slowed down but emphatically not stopped the firehose of crap. Notability is equated with noise—ten thousand blog entries means "it's notable" even though it's not, and even though not one decent source exists. We can work to hold the project to standards, first among which is that we ensure there are enough reliable independent sources on which we can base a verifiably neutral article, but really we need to start thinking about the project in a different way. Do we aspire to be a respectable and reespected repository of knowledge, or do we aspire to be a mirror of Teh Internets? To my mind the great and unique value of Wikipedia is precisely that we are not yet another site repeating ad nauseam the same crap that you get everywhere else.

Of course others disagree. Part of that is down to a fundamental difference between how the project is viewed. I think of it like this: if there are a meaningful number of people who are going to come along saying "who is so-and-so" or the equivalent, and if there are enough external sources discussing so-and-so, in detail (not just reporting that so-and-so did such-and-such and thus caused a minor sensation forgotten within a week), then covering so-and-so is justly the work of an encyclopaedia. If, on the other hand, the reasoning is more along the lines of "we want people to know about so-and-so, and there aren't many resources out there so we need this one", then covering so-and-so is the job of so-and-so's PR, not an encyclopaedia.

But even that's not the whole story. Take, for example, the issue of reality show contestants. They are the focus of obsessive coverage during the show, one of the channels' main aims is to whip up as much noise as they possibly can, but the sources are all one source: the channel, or maybe those promoting the individual. Notability comes if they are still remembered a year after the show. Same with politicians and other people who flash into the limelight and thendrop out again. John Doe is a failed politician who ran for mayor of Mudhole Flats, Idaho and polled three votes. He was last heard of selling insurance.

But all this is really fiddling round the edges, because the real problem is that we have (or had or have depending on the current status) an article on User:Essjay. Think for a moment: how would you like to be dogged for the rest of your life by a silly lie you told when you were very young, and got too boxed in to correct? When that lie has no actual relevance outside of some website? Seems harsh. One of those long-standing editors commented once that anythign that vanishes when the power goes out is probably not that significant, in the global scheme of things. Come on, people! We know what the inside of our navel looks like, we don't need an article on our own navel lint.

Shameless self-congratulation

I'm archiving my talk page, so I am moving some stuff to my user page:

The Minor Barnstar
You edited my page, now I'm editing yours! I really really REALLY appreciate the minor edit you did to my page. I couldn't spot the change even when I was looking at it. And for a minor edit, it sure had some impact. On top of everything else, you took the time and trouble to explain and teach me what a four-byte edit can DO! For that minor edit, and all the others you have done, and for defending the reichtstag from ascending arachnids, I award you this "Minor Barnstar for Minor Edits' peace to you, and be well. Sue Rangell[citation needed] 00:42, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
The Resilient Barnstar
You are doing good work, keep it up! The skeptical optimist 22:14, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Awarded by User:PDParker: For your careful attention to the most crucial problems of the day facing Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation projects, and your clear and brilliant prose crafted as solutions to said problems, and for your longsuffering care in clicking the "preview" button when substing templates, and then realizing that doesn't do any good if you were trying to get at the template, and for not telling my sister about that one time when we were house-sitting, I bestow upon you the first (and in hope, the only, or may God help us all) Reichstag building climbing dressed as Spiderman barnstar.
Image:Barnstar2.png Awarded by User:Molotov for work on WP:AFD
Image:Barnstar-rotating.gif Awarded by JFW for work on Simon Wessely (which also prompted an email from Jimmy Wales with the single line "Wow. You rock." So maybe I can be a proper Wikipedian if I try, even though I much more often fall down :-)
Image:Barnstar.png Awarded by User:The_Neokid for outstanding contributions.

Working Man's Barnstar

The Working Man's Barnstar
For surprisingly reasonable and consistent contributions to AfD. Brian G. Crawford 03:18, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
The RickK Anti-Vandalism Barnstar
This RickK anti-vandalism barnstar is awarded for persistently helping to block and revert Jason Gastrich's ever-increasing legion of sockpuppets. Stifle (talk) 23:36, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Raul's Common Sense Brick
=This Raul654's Brick of Common Sense was awarded for this edit on May 18th, 2006 on how the allocation of power works here.
The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
For checking up on me after my rash of nasty outbursts and taking the time to understand rather than punish. Brian G. Crawford 00:55, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
The Barnstar of Diligence
In recognition of your work in helping to keep Wikipedia free of original research, POV-pushing and vandalism, I award you this Barnstar of Diligence. OzLawyer 16:18, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
The Working Man's Barnstar
For being a fair and fearless admin, one of Wikipedia's best and a role model as far as I am concerned. --kingboyk 15:15, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Ascii Vandalism

Forgot to leave this for you when you got your adminship:

     _
    (_) 
   <___>
    | |___________________________________________
    | |`-._`-._         :|    |:         _.-'_.-'|
    | |`-._`-._`-._     :|    |:     _.-'_.-'_.-'|
    | |    `-._`-._`-._ :|    |: _.-'_.-'_.-'    |
    | | _ _ _ _`-._`-._`:|    |:`_.-'_.-' _ _ _ _|
    | |------------------      ------------------|
    | |                                          |
    | |__________________      __________________|
    | |- - - - -_.--_.--:|    |:--._--._- - - - -|
    | |     _.-'_.-'_.-':|    |:`-._`-._`-._     |
    | | _.-'_.-'_.-'    :|    |:    `-._`-._`-._ |
    | |'_.-'_.-'        :|    |:        `-._`-._`|
    | |-------------------------------------------
    | |
    | |
    | |
    | |
    | |
    | |

Mike (T C) 23:44, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Quality vandalism! I like :-) Just zis Guy, you know? [T]/[C] 13:22, 3 February 2006 (UTC)


    (_) 
   <___>
    | |___________________________________________
    | |***************                            |
    | |···············----------------------------|
    | |***************                            |
    | |···············----------------------------|
    | |***************                            |
    | |-------------------------------------------|
    | |                                           |
    | |-------------------------------------------|
    | |                                           |
    | |-------------------------------------------|
    | |                                           |
    | |-------------------------------------------|
    | |
    | |
    | |
    | |
    | |
    | |

Anoter flag—a horrible rendition of an American flag. (Can you tell I'm not an artist?) ;) —$ΡЯΙNGεrαgђ (-¢|ε|Ŀ|T|♪-) 23:08, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

  1. ^ Yes, I do know it says "formally" - formally, my handle is Just zis Guy, you know?, and also formerly that was my account name, but it takes up too much space in edit summaries!
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../j/z/g/User%7EJzG_75dc.html"