User:R. fiend

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Hello. My name is R. fiend. Actually, in case you couldn't guess, it isn't. But that's my moniker here, so it'll have to do.

See my subpages for Deep Thoughts...by R. fiend.......

Latest one (3/4/07): User:R. fiend/The Essjay controversy

These are generally very dated by now

My random pages tests:

As of September 20, 2005, I am now an administrator. Consequently, I've been spending less time editing and more going over Category:Candidates for speedy deletion. Don't let the "speedy" fool you, it takes a long time; there's usually a lot of them. Any admins who usually don't help taking care of them are welcome (encouraged even) to start. A sizeable group each doing just a handful a day could make it much easier for us who sometimes spend hours going through them. If I have to bribe people with barnstars I might just start.


Contents

[edit] R. fiend's Commandments

I have come up with a few pieces of wisdom. Right now I have only 6, though it would be sort of nice to get to 10:

  1. If you have nothing to say about something, do not write an encyclopedia article on it
  2. For an encyclopedia as much as anything, if you cannot do it well, do not do it at all.
  3. Learn the difference between a short article and a stub (two paragraphs on Mussolini would be a stub, two paragraphs on a character about whom almost nothing has been written is a short article. If it's four solid paragraphs, don't call it a stub.
  4. Do not put excessive visible stub templates on an article, especially if they make the stub notices longer than the article itself. #Eschew "Trivia" sections in articles (If you can't work the fact into the context of the body of the article, seriously ask yourself if it really belongs at all)
  5. Do not insist on putting entries in disambiguation pages in alphabetical order; they should be ordered more or less by significance and frequency of usage.

On to other things...

For those who care, these are pages I started or wrote most of (more for my own purposes than anyone else's) (Okay at one point most of the content may have been mine, after a few years I'm glad to see many have been greatly expanded by others):

[edit] Irish topics (no, I'm not Irish)

[edit] Music topics

[edit] A few topics I'm a bit surprised no one got to before me

(OK, not too surprised about a bunch of them)

[edit] Some films

I guess I can take credit for the Dolemite article too, not that there's much credit to be given.

[edit] Peanuts

Actually I think there are a few of these I had little to do with.

[edit] Other stuff

[edit] And my only article ever to appear on VfD

Not the most useful article, but you can't make a redirect to 2 separate pages.
R. fiend, I do hereby award you with a Working Man's Barnstar for your work on the deletion policy page, concerning episode guides and lists. It remains a serious issue, but while I created it, I soon gave up on it, fearing lack of consensus. However, you kept going on with long, intelligent discussion to work for a better WikiTomorrow. Whether or not it is accomplished, that deserves mention and awarding. -- Ian Pugh
R. fiend, I do hereby award you with a Working Man's Barnstar for your work on the deletion policy page, concerning episode guides and lists. It remains a serious issue, but while I created it, I soon gave up on it, fearing lack of consensus. However, you kept going on with long, intelligent discussion to work for a better WikiTomorrow. Whether or not it is accomplished, that deserves mention and awarding. -- Ian Pugh

Look! My verbosity actually got me a barnstar!--->

[edit] shorter articles and stubs; some could be expanded

...a bunch of others too, I'm sure.


This user prefers urinals to standard toilets when taking a piss (though piss-troughs are superior to either).

Ain't userboxes stupid?

[edit] Other articles I've added a lot to

The number of articles I've contributed to in less significant ways is too numerous to list.

I've also been attempting to make helpful redirect pages for articles that are otherwise somewhat difficult to find.

[edit] To do

A project I will hopefully soon be starting is seeing that Wikipedia has coverage of the subjects in various reference books I have. Particularly:

  • The Encyclopedia of the 20th Century (starting to add a list of missing articles here. Halfway through the B's.
  • The Reader's Encyclopedia
  • The Dictionary of Wars
  • Cassell's Encyclopedia of World Literature

Note that although I own 3 or so Middle Earth reference works, they did not make the above list.

[edit] F.E.C.E.S.

With people constantly complaining about the use of the word "fancruft" as belittling, I have come up with a new term. Fiction and Entertainment Compiled with Extreme Specificty (not the best acronym, but it'll do). If people think this is worse, well, I guess that's the point. I call it as I see it.


Wikipedia is not paper. But that doesn't stop people from wiping their asses with it.

[edit] A note on deletion

I'm sure many people have noticed that I tend to vote "delete" considerably more often than "keep" on VfD. Some might be inclined to call me a "deletionist" for this, but I'd consider that somewhat misleading. While I tend to vote delete more often on VfD, if one were to put all articles on wikipedia up for deletion, I'd vote overwhelmingly for keep. Most (but certainly not all) entries that appear on VfD are legitimately posted as being of dubious value; pigeonholing someone as a deletionist because they tend to vote to delete many of this minute fraction of wikipedia articles is ridiculous. Last count shows something like three quaters of a million articles in wikipedia. I've voted to delete...maybe 800(?). You do the math. It's true I tend to have a slightly higher bar for what should be in an encyclopedia than many, but it is still substantially lower than the bar for inclusion in probably any other encyclopedia. Also, with so many people having lower inclusion standards, and with the deletion process being weighted towards inclusion anyway, most articles I would vote to keep would stand little chance of deletion whether I vote or not. Since I cannot vote on every article, I tend to skip over these, unless it's something I have a particular interest in, or requires comment. With many users pa-trolling VfD voting keep on just about anything that appears to contain real words, deleting all but the most egregious of vanity and nonsense can be difficult. Some wonder why we "deletionists" don't work to improve wikipedia, rather than working to delete articles, and to them I can only say that flushing the toilet when necessary will certainly only improve the value of one's house, considering the alternative. Such is true of wikipedia. Besides, I think I have a pretty decent output of articles under my belt, which have worked to "improve" wikipedia. Add to this the hundreds of articles I've done both major and minor work on and I'd like to think my presence here has been beneficial. You are, however, prefectly free to disagree.

[edit] Smerge

So I've invented a new term I will start to use in VfD's: "smerge". This is a portmanteau of "slight" (or maybe "small" or something) and "merge". This is for when a topic deserves mention in another article, but not to the extent and detail that is already included. Too often a "merge and redirect" becomes a cut-and-paste job of the entire contents of one article very inelegantly tossed at the end of another. A smerge involves the inclusion of only the most important information when merged, not every insignificant detail. Of course, what is "the most important" is open to interpretation, but it can usually be discerned through the practice of common sense, if that exists in wikipedia anymore.

[edit] Critical response

See what the critics have to say about User:R. fiend!

  • "A "fiend," by the way, according to my dictionary is, "an evil spirit," a demon", "the devil" or "a very wicked or cruel person," how fitting."
  • "Deletionist who deletes articles without understanding how 'notable' a person is in a different country."
  • "... a self serving ass."
  • "Editors like [R. fiend] make it unpleasant to edit here..."
  • "...irresponsible and should have [his] power stripped away"
    • User:64.132.59.83, Note left on R. fiend's user page
  • "...would vote to delete his own user page if it were nominated for deletion."
  • "... may u die the most horrid way possible! you have deleted a dead army officer's band page! "

Someone did once refer to him as "brilliant", but crossed it out less than a minute later.
















Nothing to see here

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