User:Jdavidb/blog
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This is my wiki blog. It's a bit like a blog in that it has dated entries and sporadic writing. You can also comment if you like. If you do so, please comment under the appropriate entry with appropriate indentation (use colon) and sign your post. I'll evolve procedures for this as I go.
You can now subscribe to this blog in RSS or Atom.
[edit] Slashdot knows, again 19:03, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
Look, the rest of the world knows by now that Wikipedia has developed a serious problem: [1] It's time to admit and fix it, or time for somebody to demonstrate with a fork. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 19:03, 31 October 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Don't take my word for it 20:59, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
Don't take my word for it. Slashdot knows. One reason Wikipedia sucks now is that the notability standards have gotten too narrow. Another is that they are enforced unevenly. Another is that you have to be friends with somebody or most of your work will be undone. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 20:59, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Recent deaths feed fixed 13:40, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Parsing for my recent deaths newsfeed broke because of this edit. It's been fixed and all the August deaths should show up now. Amazingly enough, nobody seems to have died on the 22, yet. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 13:40, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Recent deaths feed 21:00, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm now scraping Wikipedia's Recent deaths page to provide a Recent deaths newsfeed. I've been quite happy with it, although it's a little rough. You get duplicates when spelling (or punctuation) changes on a name, as happens often with some foreign names which are initially entered with the pure latin alphabet. And so far I've picked up at least one vandalism. I have a couple of checks I could add for that.
Overall I'm getting a lot more names than I care about, but I'd rather err on the side of more than less. However, my newsreader has no idea of knowing when I click on a subject's name if the link leads to an existing Wikipedia article or an empty page for me to edit, and I keep thinking it might be nice to filter out people who don't yet have an article. If they are significant enough for an article to be added, later pings of the feed would pick them up at that time. But then, what if I miss a name which is notable to me but not to Wikipedia's other editors?
Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 21:00, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Another reason Wikipedia sucks 15:12, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
Today I needed to know who Javier Solana is, and why some people think he is "the" anti-Christ. I never heard of him. (Or at least if I did I never looked him up.) So what's the big fuss? Why do some people accuse this man of being evil incarnate?
I checked his biography, and I can see that he's some UN official. I guess that's enough charge for being "the" AntiChrist for some people, but I still don't have a clue what the argument is. And I won't find out from here: Wikipedia sucks because in our zealousness to make sure Wikipedia doesn't lend undue air time to any religious beliefs, we have completely censored this subject out of Wikipedia. There was an article on it, but people voted to delete it "with extreme prejudice." Anything about the subject has been removed from the main article. Somebody made a comment to the effect of "couldn't we NPOV this and just accurately report what people believe, without that being seen as endorsing it?" Of course not. This is Wikipedia, where we decide what views are or are not important. If we included every hairbrained viewpoint, we'd run out of space. Think of the forests that would be killed. Besides, that might encourage even more icky fundamentalists to participate, and the main reason for Wikipedia is to get the truth out there and defeat the fundies, right?
Who is Javier Solana and why do some people think he is "the Antichrist"? You won't find out at Wikipedia, and so Wikipedia sucks in that respect.
(BTW, for anyone who cares, I don't believe the Bible predicts the rise of a single person called "the Antichrist." It specifically refers to "many Antichrists" as well as saying that they existed at the time the Bible was written. I think Antichrists are a dime a dozen, not the big world conquering demonic-possessed neo-Caesar most people are predicting. But I'd still like to know why some people think this guy is "the one.")
Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 15:12, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] One reason Wikipedia sucks 06:40, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
One reason Wikipedia sucks right now is that you can't do this. We're too busy being scared by legal threats. You can't post the truth, even if you can back it up with references (hint: stop using a sliding scale for the quality of references required for a subject. Or, at least slide it with the type of subject (net interest versus textbook interest) rather than the likelihood of a legal threat.
Oh, but we have to keep Wikipedia alive, right? It's better to subject to a little bit of censorship in order to keep the site alive, right? I love, love, loved Digg's response to this: "We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code. ... But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. ... We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t [censor] and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. ... If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying."
Hey! Wikipedians! There's more to standing against censorship than just looking for a chance to see boobies.
This crap is one reason I'm not very active editing Wikipedia any more. It just took out a lot of the fun.
I guess the right answer is that if I don't like it, I can fork Wikipedia and prove that the truly noncensored approach works better. Or go down trying. :)
Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 06:40, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Linkspam only needs a few hours 16:37, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
At 2006-02-11 05:39:22, somebody added useless fanlisting linkspam to the Siryn article [2]. This was reverted less than ten hours later, at 2006-02-11 15:10:03. Unfortunately, during that time, Google picked it up, so now this link has affected PageRank, at least for a while.
Sad. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 16:37, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Nothanks-vanity 16:46, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Just discovered the "nothanks-vanity" template: ({{nothanks-vanity}})
[edit] [[{{{1}}}]]
Hello! I'm glad you are interested in contributing to Wikipedia. We welcome new articles. However, the article you created, [[{{{1}}}]], appears to be primarily about yourself, people you know, or your own ideas, and appears to contain material that has not previously been published. As Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, we are not qualified to evaluate new, unpublished information, only to report on information in existing sources. Therefore, this article has been marked for deletion. If I've misunderstood the article, please [[{{{1}}}|go to the article]] and follow the instructions in the banner to respond.
For a quick overview of Wikipedia's policies, see the five pillars of Wikipedia. You can still create other articles about encyclopedic subjects. If you can't think of a subject, you can check the recent requests or improve an existing article.
Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 16:46, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Fanlistings 19:28, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
I have never been able to figure out what a "fanlisting" is. (Perhaps I'll link to it and see if anything turns up.) As near as I can tell, it's a page for people to say, "This is cool; I love it." I have, however, often been disappointed to search for information about something only to find fanlistings, which appear to provide no information at all.
So, as I see it, fanlistings have absolutely zero purpose in Wikipedia. They do not ever belong in external links sections. So I just removed one. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 19:28, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Are admin standards too loose? 22:08, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
Recent discussions show admins engaging in wheel wars, admins insisting they are in the right and are entitled to act unilaterally — even when corrected by community consensus —, admins abusing their power, and on and on. I read WP:POST every week, and it is telling that there are on average (rough guestimate) about twelve new admins per week. TWELVE? That seems like an awfully fast rate of advancement.
Persons are regularly promoted to admin who have been with Wikipedia less than three months. This has disturbed me for a long time. My edit count was a minor issue in my own WP:RFA; what was hidden by the edit count discussion was the fact that I had been around longer than most of the people involved in voting (and indeed longer than some members of the ArbCom), and what was even more hidden was the extensive amount of Wikipedia reading I do. There aren't any "article read count" features in MediaWiki that I am aware of.
Yet these -- trying to be funny and for lack of a better term -- "whippersnappers" presumed to admonish me in some cases about what I could do to become a better candidate for adminship, etc. Less than three months. It would be overgeneralizing to assume that these same folks are the ones causing the wheel wars and taking other actions showing such clear misunderstandings of Wikipedia. But the fact remains that my personal gut instinct called not for a high edit count but for a 'twelve month track record standard for adminship.
Apparently expecting people to use and edit Wikipedia for at least a year (in general — no hard and fast rules, here) before being given administrator status on one of the top 20 websites on the entire Internet is gallingly over the top for most Wikipedians, whose standards seem to hover around three months, often because many of them were themselves promoted after less than three months. (Or hope to be promoted when they hit that mark...)
Even more important than my time constraint is my attitude criterion: an admin must be someone who has shown a demonstrated commitment to the principles of consensus and NPOV, believing that these will eventually result in a high-quality encyclopedia.
Most admins pass in underwatched RFAs. I'm seriously thinking of becoming a regular in the RFA discussion. I'm seriously thinking of beginning to vote "oppose" in all RFAs where my criterion are not met. I think we need to raise the bar for adminship to calm down some of the rioting that has been happening. "Adminship should be no big deal" — that's not (or at least no longer) an admonishment to hand out adminship to everybody who asks; it's an explanation of why people should not seek it as if it is.
I'm thinking I might do the following: for any RFA, post questions asking for diffs demonstrating the commitment to principles that I am looking for. Vote oppose in any RFA where such diffs cannot be produced and/or editor has not been around for a year. Vote support in cases where the demonstrated commitment overwhelms the lack of fulfilling the time criteria. Reserve the right to vote support or neutral in any special cases.
How much will this help? I dunno. Even raising the time standard wouldn't rule out some of the people I'm seeing overdo it on WP:IAR. But it might prompt people to think about raising their standards, and consensus might find the sweet spot for good adminship. It's not really about time or edit counts. But more filtering and raising awareness of the issue might help.
[edit] Laws of Wikipedia 14:54, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
If you've never seen Raul's laws, there's some good thoughts there. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 14:54, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Shortcut 21:40, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Oh, wow! I have a shortcut. (I don't think that fits policy.) Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 21:40, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Wikipedia Signpost 19:34, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
If you don't already, you really should read the Wikipedia signpost (shortcut: WP:POST) each week. The only thing that bugs me about it is waiting for Monday's issue each week. :)
Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 19:34, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Other people's actions are not evidence 19:16, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
Speaking of evidence, linking to a diff where another party said something to or about a person is not evidence. Evidence consists of a link to a diff where an accused party made an edit that was in violation of a stated Wikipedia policy. Nothing else. Linking to a place where somebody else told that user he was doing something wrong, told somebody else he was doing something wrong, or warned him doesn't prove anything at all. All it proves is what (some) people think about the accused user, and not what the accused user actually did.
BTW, there's one exceptional circumstance where diffs cannot be posted, and that is the case where articles or edits have been deleted. But these versions are still available in the undelete history for admins, and so in that case this is what you post in such a case. But I imagine it would be hard to use that kind of evidence in a case if you're not an admin and can't view it yourself. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 19:16, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Deceptive diffs 19:04, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
I've just concluded presenting a case in an arbitration dispute, for the first time. I tried to build the best case I possibly could, citing and quoting policy and linking to diffs showing violations of those policies. I also tried to stick to things that really mattered and concentrate on violations of the most important policies. For example, even though Wikipedia has a no personal attacks policy, it's useless to build a case primarily on a user's personal attacks against me when the user has committed more important and more universal violations of NPOV, 3RR, and so on. I'd be in favor of a Wikipedia:Ignore personal attacks advisory guideline, similar to the one-revert rule guideline of the harmonious editing club.
If you want to see the workpage where I built my evidence, it is here: User:Jdavidb/Johnski.
Anyway, that's not the real reason for this blog posting. The real reason is a thought about diffs.
The fundamental unit of evidence in a Wikipedia dispute is a diff. As I have observed before, nothing but a diff is sufficient to demonstrate what a user actually did.
Unfortunately, in building my case, I had a realization: because there is no visual indicator on a diff page to indicate whether or not the diff encompasses one edit or several, and because a diff only indicates the last editor it encompasses, it would be very easy to make a diff with the "compare selected edits" feature that would deceptively indicate a user was responsible for other people's comments.
Now, hopefully a user accused of such would point out the diff was wrong. But the potential for this still troubles me. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 19:04, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Part of the cabal 21:44, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
I never knew it before, but I am one of the "Elders of Wikipedia" and part of the Jewish cabal fulfilling Wikipedia's dire plot to subvert Wikipedia. Or something. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 21:44, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Learned: noinclude tag 15:54, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
If you put <noinclude> tags around text in a template (or any other transcluded page), the text will appear when someone views the actual template page but not be included into the place where the template is transcluded.
In other words: you can leave usage instructions or other comments on a template within <noinclude> tags and it won't mess up anything on the pages where the template is used. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 15:54, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Maturity 15:30, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Left unspoken in my previous post was that sometimes, when I see a flashy colored sig accompanied by certain other behaviors or the lack of certain other behaviors, I tend to think of the person as maybe not being so mature. I've been priviliged in my lifetime to know people nowhere near adulthood who were more mature than adults who were grandparents, so please note that I'm not talking about age.
It was kind of telling yesterday to see multiple people loudly proclaiming in many places, "There's nothing wrong with my signature because it has worked for months!!!" Well, yes, there is something wrong with your signature, and one of the signs of maturity is that when a large number of people start telling you that you're doing something wrong you come to consider the fact that there might be at least a possibility that you are actually wrong. Sure enough, folks, making imbalanced tags in your signature (or anywhere else on the web) is wrong. It probably won't kill anybody, and it's probably not the most serious thing in the world, but claiming that you are correct in this case is manifestly not so and sure makes you look whiny and immature. Nice people come around saying, "Would you fix this?" and you bite them.
I'm glad I didn't try to help anyone fix their sig. I'm not in the mood to get bitten.
While we're on the subject, another thing that sometimes makes me wonder about people is signatures that render with no connection at all to a person's username. It's one thing for a user to make his signature give his real name or something instead of his username. It's completely different when your sig gives the impression that your username is something else entirely, something that cannot even be looked up in the User: namespace to find you. I can't fathom why people would want to do this. In fact, for a long time I didn't understand just how powerful the signature feature is and thought that people were going out of their way to paste in something completely different every time they signed a comment.
I really think that policy should forbid making a signature that completely obfuscates your username.
Incidentally, I was distressed when I first signed up here and my "jdavidb" username was converted to "Jdavidb." Everywhere else on the web, I have a lowercase userid. For a time I was under the impression that I could get this changed, but I never acted. Then I became vaguely aware I could fix it with the signature feature. Finally, when I got around to customizing my signature, I tried changing it. Guess what? It was so unusual to see my name lowercased in a signature that I changed it right back. Not only was I used to "Jdavidb" as being my username here on Wikipedia, it made me feel like my name was minimized compared to all the other standard sigs.
I run a webboard using software that allows users to customize their display name into something completely different, a feature which has caused me no end of frustration and which I will some day remove, Lord willing. I can't understand why this would be wanted. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 15:30, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Signatures 23:59, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
So now the fancy signatures are breaking everything!
These sigs have bugged me, just a little bit, for a while. I don't like all the flashy colors and superscripts and stuff, but it's not a big deal to me, and I also think we should be able to personalize our experience here to some extent and "leave our mark." Without the ability to do that in some way (though I'm not personally sure that illegible colors in a signature is the way to do it) the fun of Wikipedia could dry up and we'd lose our source of contributions. So I've never expressed my feelings on it. (I also do like adding features to signatures, such as links to contribution pages, talk pages, or important projects.)
But I am one to never generate invalid HTML. I have been closing the <p> tags on my slashdot posts since 2000, for example. Only this year did Chris Nandor update the code on slashdot to do this automatically. I don't usually go out and W3C validate pages I write, but I do in general try to make them comply to some standard of XHTML, or at least HTML with closed, lowercase tags and quotes around all tag attribute parameters.
Silly me, I assumed lots of people do this. Whereas I would have found the idea of putting malformed HTML into my signature to be unconscionable, apparently this is par for the course for a lot of folks. Really, it's not that much extra effort to balance your tags, and when you consider that this is one piece of text that will be copied over and over and over and over again, it seems to me it should've been obvious it was critical to give it the once over. Apparently the majority of people really do still just punch something in and see if it works, rather than think it through (and grab or google a reference if necessary) to make sure it gets done right. This is the same thing that gave us the 19100 problem in Perl (and made me the sole employee in my very large company who was called in on 1999-12-31 at the last minute to fix a bunch of contractor code.
While we're on the subject, I have another value I hold to that would've helped to prevent this. I try to never, ever use HTML in mediawiki unless I absolutely have to. And on the rare occasions when I have to, I prefer for it to be put in a template, which is more like building a new piece of Wiki-syntax on the fly than actually using HTML, and gives you a single place to fix it if something goes wrong, anyhow. (And further gives you a single place to make the change if Mediawiki is later enhanced to have a new syntax to cover that feature, which is exactly what happened in the case of tables.) I guess templates in signatures would never fly, but I do honestly believe that Mediawiki should never have allowed HTML into Wiki pages. Anything that needs to be done ought to have been done with a special Wiki syntax. Understandably, we didn't have time to wait for that syntax to evolve, and so we have the present situation. I think I'll look into disallowing HTML on the small wiki I run elsewhere. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 23:59, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Always redeemable 20:12, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
One maxim that seems to be woven into the core of our collective moral fabric here at Wikipedia is the belief that a problem editor is always redeemable. Though the system allows the human element to override it to handle true problems, policies are all written with a view toward giving problem editors chance after chance after chance to reform. And in fact this has happened sometimes.
I guess it just really came home to me when I saw the following suggestions for ways in which a completely banned user may still contribute to the effort to disseminate the sum total of human knowledge to the entire world:
- If you are banned, please respect your ban and do not edit Wikipedia while it applies. You can still contribute indirectly by publishing GFDL or public domain articles and images elsewhere on the web that Wikipedians can use as resources. Alternatively, you may contribute to one of our forks.
-- From Wikipedia:Banning policy Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 20:12, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Criteria for Speedy Deletion 17:37, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
The criteria for speedy deletion are intentionally very narrow. Anything that does not fit within them should actually be listed at WP:AFD. It's not a lot of extra work for three editors to concur on AFD that the article doesn't belong and for it to be deleted 5+ days later. Yet people continue to list items for speedy deletion that don't fit, even though perhaps they should be deleted with consensus on AFD. I'm sure admins continue to delete them. I know I have, both knowingly and unknowingly.
Should I take the time to put inappropriate speedies up on AFD? Half the time somebody jumps in, says, "Speedy!" and short-circuits the process. Is it worth the trouble to make sure we follow the rules? I feel like if the rules aren't appropriate we should change the rules. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 17:37, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Demi's admin guidelines 17:08, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
There are some good things to think about at User:Demi/Admin_guidelines. Jdavidb (talk • contribs) 17:08, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Vanity warning 23:29, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
Wikipedia should display the following warning any time somebody tries to edit or create a page:
- Please do not create an article or provide material about yourself, your business, or your website. Please also do not create an article or provide material about your favorite person, favorite business, or favorite website unless it is also the favorite of thousands and thousands of other people. Violation of this standard will likely result in your article or material being deleted. Complaining about deletions due to this standard will likely result in your being laughed at. Jdavidb [[talk • contribs]] 23:29, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Gasp! 23:07, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
I remember a time years ago, in life science class in the seventh grade, when we were grading each other's papers as the teacher called out the answer. Every so often a grading student would have to ask a question of the teacher for clarification as to whether an answer was right or wrong (or partially right, or whatever). Suddenly an outraged girl's voice shouted, "Miss Reeves! He put, 'Who cares?'" The girl was indignant and outraged. Nonplussed, the teacher said, "Well, that's not the right answer, is it? So it's wrong. Mark it wrong." I don't know exactly what the girl was expecting the teacher to say. I guess she wanted extra punishment for this horrible student (who happened to be my best friend) or something. Instead she came off as looking more than a little silly for getting so excited about something that had an obvious answer.
Similarly, it's interesting to me to see the way people use WP:VIP. This is not Wikipedia:All vandalism that has ever occurred, ever, so we can collectively gasp in shock and attempt to exterminate such people from the human race. The instructions clearly say to only report vandalism if it continues after a warning. (They say so even more clearly since I've edited them today.) Yet newbies persist in reporting users that have vandalized once and been promptly reverted (without being warned) and never heard from again. Why? All that does is make more work for the poor sap (me) monitoring the vandalism page. (Or makes it so useless and hard to wade through that said monitorers give up and leave.)
It's no news at all to me that stupid little boys like to shout "penis" and other such crap. But apparently some newbies take it very, very hard. To them, "serious" vandalism does not mean, "he's been blocked once a month for the past year, warned through {{test5}}, and he's vandalizing 20 pages a minute," but means, "Oh noooooooo! He put up something really offensive!!!!!!" The vandal who changes a number on an article once per day is, to them, not near as worthy of watching as the guy who put "penis" in the teddy bear article a month ago and who has never been heard from again.
News flash to some people: we don't actually dole out any punishment to vandals. All we do is protect the encyclopedia. Even blocking is not an actual punishment. Jdavidb [[talk • contribs]] 23:07, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Going on UTC time 19:29, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
I've altered my preferences to use UTC time. There's just too much disconnect in my brain when I try to compare watch lists, recent changes, and user contribution pages in my time with comments signed in UTC time. This'll make life easier, especially when I'm looking at repeat vandalism by persons who have already been warned.
I've actually designed my own calendar and time system which I would love to use, but I guess that'll never work. :) Jdavidb (talk) 19:29, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Wiki-links to nonexistent articles 22:09, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
Why in the world am I seeing links to articles that haven't been written yet as names with red question mark links after them rather than simply red linked names? I have never used this archaic wiki-syntax. I have definitely not changed my preferences. Why do people insist on editing whatever it is that they can edit that does this in such a way as to change other people's interface? Jdavidb (talk) 22:09, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] DVD covers 15:05, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
Whose idea was it that all articles on movies or television shows should be illustrated with the most recent DVD cover image? This looks horrible in some cases: for example, the DVD cover for Charlotte's Web looks nothing like the characters in the movie. I've also seen better illustrations, such as original movie posters, removed in favor of these more recent and less accurate abominations. At the least we could use both in the cases where we have them. Really I think illustrating with the movie poster is a better idea. (Sometimes screenshots are a better idea.)
Given that so many of these DVD covers were made decades after the film in question, this is a bad case of Wikipedia:Recentism if you ask me.
Of course, most of the time none of these images (either the ones we're using or the ones I want) would really be available under GNU FDL. 15:05, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Single login 18:48, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
One thing that stops me from contributing more on other Wikimedia projects is the fact that when I go to those sites I am only an anonymous user. I don't feel as much urge to contribute, and this has actually stopped me from making edits I might have made otherwise. There are some proposals for a single login system but it looks like the political hurdles (they call them technical hurdles there, but they are really political: the whole thing could be solved by making some very not nice decisions, but those decisions honestly are not nice and probably would not be supportable) are such that this will not be overcome any time in the near future. It's about like the fact that we have the GNU FDL instead of a Creative Commons license: we're pretty much stuck with it unless someone wants to start over.
Now, I personally have no desire to ever contribute to a foreign-language Wikipedia. That's not entirely true: I would love to do so if I could, but I will never be able to do so. But I do want to do stuff at Wikinews and Wiktionary and such.
Meanwhile, Wikicities has some sites that interest me. And they have a single login system.
So today I went out and made myself accounts on every Wikimedia project: Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikisource, meta, Wikispecies (okay, honestly I may never contribute there), and commons. I also set up a Wikicities account.
Now I'm logged in at all those sites (or able to log in quickly) and won't feel discouraged from contributing the next time I think about it. I really just had to finally get down to business and do it.
Then I set up this blog so I could talk about it. Jdavidb (talk) 18:48, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Start of blog 18:38, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
A couple of weeks ago I had the idea of keeping a "blog" here. The idea was that when I learn something new (say, how to properly format lists), I'd like to put it up and say, "Hey, I learned how to do this." Or when I have a thought, such as "here are the criteria I personally use to decide on something" or "here are my thoughts about how edit summaries should be used," I want a place to put it. I don't want to just throw such things on my user page, and I don't anticipate all of these being significant enough or large enough to create a separate subpage in my userspace for. So, here's my wiki blog. Jdavidb (talk) 18:38, 19 October 2005 (UTC)
