User:Squidfryerchef

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[edit] Why Squidfryerchef?

I chose the name because I have a real thing for seafood.

[edit] Philosophy

[edit] What all this means

I've been more interested in the information on the Wikipedia than in, say, networking with other users. This may change over time, as I've seen what can be done when users team together to clean up articles or to patrol for disruptive changes.

I think that most articles on the Wikipedia are good, and that deletion should be reserved for the worst cases. I don't have a problem with articles of primarily local interest, for example schools, though I do acknowledge that an article about a school could be problematic for other reasons, such as most of the persons involved not being public figures.

I do have a problem though with stub articles that seem to remain stubs no matter how long they have been around. I think in many cases it's better to add to an existing article, and then splitting off a section once it is long enough to exist as a truly separate article.

Often these stub articles can be merged together, especially when you find a bunch of "synonym" stubs that could comprise a nontrivial article once merged together. Though I am unsure about the process for executing a merge. ( Do you need to be an admin? ) It's easy to put up a suggested merge tag, but usually it gets debated and nobody ever does the merge.

Another peeve is overuse of red links, especially when I know that nobody's ever going to write a nontrivial article about the requested subject. ( Closely related is my peeve about "listcruft", and how certain types of articles seem to attract lists of redlinks )

Another issue is the boundaries of "original research". Original research to me means doing your own experiments or going out to take your own interviews. The policy also excludes "synthesis of published material serving to advance a position", which can be overinterpreted. While we can't have people cherry-picking ( in the intelligence-gathering sense ) sources to support their own thesis, I don't see any problem with people comparing and contrasting existing sources.