User:Maxamegalon2000/Highlights

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I've gone ahead and created this page to highlight some of what I think are my most noteworthy edits to Wikipedia. Right now this is a work in progress.

[edit] Articles I've written

This certainly isn't my strongest area. Maybe someday when I have some free time I'll create Marquette University nickname controversy and William Shatner's performance of Rocketman.

I'm a fan of The Amazing Race, and I noticed somewhere that Tyler, a winner of The Amazing Race 9, had some press coverage outside of the show, which is generally held as the standard for determining if reality TV contestants deserver their own articles. So did some research and wrote the article, the current version of which is not substantially different from my original writing.[1]
I then noticed that someone had written an article on Tyler's partner in the race, B. J. Averell. The article didn't establish notability outside of the show, however, and was in danger of being deleted. I googled his name, however, and noticed that B.J. had some press coverage outside of the show as well. I then completely rewrote the article, which is why I take credit here for its creation.[2] The current article contains some changes from my original writing, an explanation of which can be found in a later section of this page.
Not much to see here. A music video was released for this "Weird Al" Yankovic song, and I figured it was getting enough coverage to merit an article. I mention it here only for the sake of completeness.
When I first discovered this article, I was a bit disappointed. Because articles on people like this are probably usually written by fans, it wasn't unexpected that the language was a bit flowery. Beyond that, however, I was a bit surprised to see a list of Crean's record against every school he's ever coached against while at Marquette. Anyway, when summer rolled around I suddenly found some free time and decided a rewrite of this article would be a worthwhile undertaking. I had a lot of fun writing this one, and I learned a lot. Now, to work on some photos.

[edit] People I've dealt with

I feel like I've been in more situations than most Wikipedians where the subjects of articles come around. In general, I'm pretty happy with how I've handled things.

I'd noticed that User:Hexadisc was making edits similar to those of an IP address from the Los Angeles area. Noting that Averell was from the area, I decided to be bold and ask if the editor was Averell himself. The editor disclosed that he was at least a representative for Averell. As is documented at User talk:Hexadisc and Talk:B. J. Averell, the editor was most concerned about Averell's academic problems and the inaccurate depiction of his family in an editorial by Howie Carr. The acadmemic issues are notable and verifiable, of course, and remain in the article. The Carr editorial is no longer mentioned; though I believe that the author's notability makes the passage relevent, I agree that the inability to counter Carr's claims (and the privacy concerns that would result) makes this an acceptable result.
  • Roger Ambrose
Though much of the discussion on this article has been deleted, and rightfully so, one can see from User talk:Roger ambrose and Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Roger Ambrose that this editor was both the author and the subject of the article in question. I attempted to guide him through the appropriate steps for this situation at his talk page. Though he did not seem to follow my advice, I do feel good about my contributions to the situation.
  • User:Dovetail
I had what I consider a pretty thorough discussion at User talk:Dovetail with this editor who kept adding links to [3]. I am happy with how I dealt with the situation, which may have been complicated by the website's affiliation with Tyler MacNiven, the subject of one of the articles to which he was adding what I still consider spam.
I found this article to be much too long for such a website, and went ahead and cut a lot of the cruft. On a few occasions I have discussed this with User:Chuckgy80s, who claims to be the webmaster of the site, at his talk page. He has been very cooperative and approves of the changes I have made.

[edit] Other stuff I've done

I vividly remember when the subject of this article vandalized the page, and proceeded to threaten a lawsuit. I was excited; I'd been an editor here for a while, and had been following Thompson's legal career for some time as well. When the article was essentially blanked, and later restarted with a clean slate, I consider myself one of the more productive editors. Rather than simply complain about the new higher standards for sourcing, I actually went ahead and found some acceptable sources. At one point I believe I was responsible for over half of the citations provided. I am extremely proud of the result, and consider it one of my best writing accomplishments, at Wikipedia or otherwise.
I learned how to use Lexis-Nexis, which I had access to through my school, and found citations for what many considered to be the most important parts of Thompson's career. I also am proud of my "defense" of the article from lesser sources, such as video game websites and LiveJournal comments. Although I feel that much of their content is relevant and notable, I agree that it is not verifiable. If I someday run for admin, I will point to this article as my rebuttal to the one featured article requirement, if the article does not actually attain the status by then.
This was an interesting one. I was surfing the AfDs one night, and I noticed that List of Sci Fi Channel (United States) programs was up for deletion. I voted to keep, noting that there were many similar lists, a rationale used by many other editors. In the end, the closing admin decided that while there was not a clear consensus, the reasons provided by those voting to delete were of better quality than those who voted to keep.
A number of editors had mentioned that they would be willing to vote to delete any of these other similar lists if they were nominated. Because of this, and because I am such a fan of consistency, I went ahead and nominated all of them. I was happy with the result because, for one, the Sci Fi Channel was then resurrected via deletion review, but also because a consensus was reached that didn't rely on the quality of an individual list to make a patchwork policy of sorts. There was also a much more thorough discussion of the issues, one that could set a much more thought-out precident based on a multitude of examples.
For a while it seemed like I was the only editor willing to require any amount of verifiability for the tracklist reported in the article. Many turned out to be fake, of course, but one was pretty much accepted on the Weird Al message boards after the user who reported it provided some members with a copy of one of the songs. At that point I ended up removing information I was reasonably certain I knew was legit because of a lack of sources. This meant I had to deal with a lot of inexperienced editors who thought I didn't believe the tracklist and would look like a major idiot on September 26.