User:Wikivader

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Wikivader

Joined: May 6, 2005

Edits: 450+

Contents

[edit] About Me

Out in the real world, I'm known as Michael Billings, and I'm a 19-year-old High School student living in New Jersey. Not much else to say about my personal life, unless I want Wikipedians to stalk me.

Online, I have a personal website called DarkForce which I created in July 2002. I'm relatively well-known on the NewGrounds forums as Subpar, and use the same username on AdultSwim.com. I'm also a contributor and moderator for TheShadowSun.net under the alias DarkForce.

And I don't care if this isn't what user pages are meant for. At least I kept it short.

[edit] Wikipedia Stuff

[edit] My Contributions to Wikipedia

Below is a list of Wikipedia articles that I have edited. The ones in bold are articles that I made significant contributions to, and the ones marked with an asterisk (*) are articles that I created.

Click here to view all of the individual contributions that I made while signed in.

(Note: Many of my contributions were made while not signed in, so technically, the link above does not account for all of them. Many of my edits were made under the IP addresses 69.141.141.174 and 69.141.166.225. However, not all edits from those IP addresses were necessarily made by me, since other people are capable of using my computer, or old IP addresses that I no longer have.)

[edit] Why I'm Here

Wikipedia is a great site, and despite the fact that anyone can edit it at any time, it's a great source of information. I first started editing Wikipedia because I wanted to help contribute to the information that's already here, and have my own small part in this project.

Recently, I've become more determined to have Wikipedia recognized as a reliable research tool, since many schools automatically discount it as rubbish because of a few nonsense pages and vandals. Unfortunately, an encyclopedia that anyone can edit will have this kind of reputation, since many teachers don't trust anything that isn't written by a professional... but their arguments won't hurt us much as long as we don't let them find any specific examples of bad information. If you see bullshit on Wikipedia, fix it!

[edit] My Opinion: Wikipedia's Notability Policy

Despite the fact that Wikipedia is a great site, I do have problems with it. One big problem, actually: Editors delete articles. Of course, some articles that are created are clearly unnecessary, or can even be considered spam (such as self-promotion articles, biased rants, or utter nonsense). But aside from those few articles that really subtract from the site, almost all of the content on Wikipedia is in some way useful. Still, these useful articles are often deleted because the subject matter is not quite important enough, so we end up throwing away information that someone might need because we don't need it ourselves. Here's my question: Why are we always so eager to delete any article that we don't "need" to have?

The website has practically infinite webspace and bandwidth, so it isn't to save space. Even if an article isn't absolutely necessary, or its subject matter isn't "important enough" to be found in other encyclopedias, it doesn't mean that the article needs to be trashed. We aren't running out of space, so stop trying to free it up.

The first thing that attracted me to Wikipedia was the multitude of articles on seemingly everything. Not just historical events and scientific facts, but TV shows, and music, and popular culture. At first, it might seem like Wikipedia has a page on everything. But that's just because we have so many pages on really stupid (yet popular) things. The fact is, many editors still delete good articles that clearly pose no threat to the site simply because they aren't "notable."

For example: Wikipedia has articles on random internet fads and separate pages for more than two dozen System of a Down songs, but there seems to be a problem with devoting even one page to a musician like Joey Eppard, the singer from 3. I found it amusing that Wikipedia had pages for the guy's band, and all their albums, but until I stepped in, not Joey Eppard himself or his solo album. Of course, there had been a biography page for Joey Eppard before I arrived, but it was deleted twice for the following reason: no assertion of notability.

Oh, I see. So obscure internet fads like the "O RLY?" Owl picture or the Numa Numa Dance are notable, but the singer of a band that they already have an article for is not? (I know a lot of you are saying to yourselves, "yes, that's right," but that's because you're internet nerds.) They even have a page for Jeoy Eppard's brother, Josh Eppard, because he's the drummer for Coheed and Cambria, and also has a solo album that's apparently more popular than the other guy's. Isn't it ironic that these Wikipedia editors always bitch about making their articles unbiased, while there's such heavy bias in deciding which articles are worthy of staying on the site? They usually have separate articles for every member of a band. But arrogant assholes keep deleting Joey Eppard's article because they haven't heard of him.

So what do I do? I create a page for Joey Eppard myself. It's the one that's sitting there now. This one. And within a day, people are voting to delete it again. I figured there was no hope for him, since his article was deleted twice before, but somehow, the vote was KEEP, and the article survived. I'd like to see this happen more often. But until then... Me: 1 Wiki: 0

Keep in mind that I'm not ranting or bragging about the Joey Eppard page specifically. It's just an example, and I care more about seeing lesser-known musicians on this encyclopedia than seeing this guy in particular. The point I'm trying to make is that I can see why someone might not think that a guy Joey Eppard is "notable" enough to be in an encyclopedia. But this isn't any encyclopedia. This site isn't a single-volume school book in which you can only fit a certain number of names and you have to pick the most important. This site is maintained by the public, and grows constantly, and is meant to be a site where people can add their information to the growing pool of knowledge. Why keep knowledge out?

I don't see why the hell we would want to delete an article at all. Unless an article is literally useless, or completely offensive (i.e. -- ten thousand lines of "poop poop poop") then deleting a page doesn't help the site at all. It just loses information that someone worked hard to add. We're purposely omitting any information that doesn't interest us, and I'm sick of it.

There are plenty of other bands, movies, people, events, and important subjects that don't have articles because the editors of Wikipedia don't think it's worth mentioning. I'm not saying they should have an article for every person on Earth -- we don't want Wikipedia to turn into some kind of Myspace where people write profiles for themselves, or their garage bands that haven't produced a single album. But a person doesn't have to be world-famous to be notable. It's almost like Wikipedia editors only want us to contribute information that everyone already knows. That would make a pretty useless encyclopedia.

The only problem now is where to draw the line. If we relax the notability requirements, where does it stop? Well, that's a matter of opinion, and the line is going to be crossed either way. It should always be a democratic process, not a mechanical one where an article can be speedily deleted on a technicality. Maybe straight lines aren't meant to be drawn. Maybe we should allow the site to have some amount of freedom, and let people create pages for their own unpopular local bands and pull the plug when people start contributing articles for 13-year-old suburban kids who have nothing to add but lists of their favorite video game characters. Well, it doesn't have to go that far. But it doesn't have to stop at the obvious information that everyone already knows, either. Our content doesn't have to be limited to keywords that get more than two million hits on Google. Even if it's referenced in as few as ten other places on the internet, there are probably enough people who care about it to warrant a tiny little article on an encyclopedia that has extra pages to spare.

If you EVER see an article that's being recommended for deletion, enter the discussion and vote to KEEP the article. Unless it's absolutely pointless or contains no truthful information, it should stay on the site. It's not like Wikipedia needs to free up any space. We can afford to have more articles, so let more articles be made. I'm not saying you should spam Wikipedia -- that'll only make things worse. But if someone deletes an article that you liked, fucking recreate it. Your opinion matters, and these other idiots aren't going to ruin my favorite encyclopedia by censoring the fuck out of it.

[edit] Miscellaneous Stuff

[edit] Contact Information

To contact me, e-mail me at mcb6188@yahoo.com.
Or, contact me on AOL Instant Messenger at mikecb732.