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User:WhatamIdoing

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Hello, World.

Article ideas

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  • Free play, what children naturally do when adults aren't telling them what to do
  • Menstrual magnification, perimenstrual changes in symptom severity (e.g., asthma, lupus)
  • Systemic problem, general category in which problems (e.g., racism, risk, violence) can't be solved through individual action
  • Near-miss effect, psychological component involved in gambling
  • War widow
  • Brief Fatigue Inventory, assuming sufficient sources exist
  • Success sequence (possibly a section in W. Bradford Wilcox) [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]
  • Blue in food doi:10.1111/1750-3841.16439 doi:10.1016/j.ijgfs.2018.08.001
  • Que no haya novedad or May no new thing arise, because change is bad

Essay idea:

  • On the Dunning–Kruger effect, and editors who are very confident that they are very accurate at figuring out who is an undisclosed paid editor

Policies and guidelines you can ask me about

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Stories I tell on wiki

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  • Wikipedia:Bring me a rock
    • On demanding an endless parade of sources, especially when sourcing isn't the main problem
  • Hoyle's Law
    • Whatever the game, whatever the rules, the rules are the same on both sides.
  • User:WhatamIdoing/Subjectivity in Wikipedia articles
    • Articles that omit subjectivity usually violate the WP:YESPOV policy. An article about an international trade dispute, for example, should explain the situation from the viewpoint of both countries – not just one or the other, and not just universally agreed-upon information.
  • The three umpires, on the differences between reality, perception, and definition:
    • Three baseball umpires are talking about their profession and the difficulty of making accurate calls in borderline cases. One says: "Some are strikes, and some are balls, and I call them as they are." The next feels a little professional humility is in order and says: "Some are strikes, and some are balls, and I call them as I see them." The third thinks for a moment and says: "Some are strikes, and some are balls, but they ain't nothing until I call them."
  • On the WP:BIASED source:
    • During a bout of library censorship ("Think of the children"), E. B. White recommended that schools "should strive for a well-balanced library, not a well-balanced book". The English Wikipedia agrees with this viewpoint and therefore does not ban sources based on their viewpoint or for "being biased". If one wants to write neutrally about a subject, one usually wants a source that argues strongly for a particular side, and a source that argues equally well for the other side. When you are trying to meet the policy requirements of WP:YESPOV, a source that says viewpoints differ is not nearly as useful as a pair of sources each arguing cogently and clearly that their side should have won the 1985 World Series.
  • On the definition of cure, which is different from feeling better:
    • We all hope for people with cancer to be cured, but most of us don't know how to tell when someone has been cured. The scientific definition involves plotting disease-free survival curves and figuring out when the slope goes flat. For the more common kinds of breast cancer, you're usually cured if you have been disease-free for three years. So this means that if you have breast cancer and have no detectable disease three years later, then you're cured. And if breast cancer is detected in subsequent years, it's a new primary, not a recurrence of the old one. The numbers vary by disease (e.g., 15 years for some lung cancers) and by the exact type, but it's fundamentally a calculus problem. But normal people don't think that way. More to the point, they don't feel that way. They'll say that they were cured when they felt cured. This might be when active treatment ended, or when the first test gave good news, or when a troublesome side effect wore off, or when a personally significant milestone passed (e.g., a birthday), or at any other time, for any reason that appeals to them. Or they might that they're still not cured, even though their doctors say they are, because they just don't feel it. Feeling it isn't everything, but where humans and their behaviors are concerned, the objective mathematical facts aren't everything, either.
  • Dave Barry's Bad Habits (1987, "College Admissions", pp. 202–203) has a beautiful description of how not to write a Wikipedia article:
    • "Sociologists want to be considered scientists, so they spend most of their time translating simple, obvious observations into scientific-sounding code. If you plan to major in sociology, you’ll have to learn to do the same thing. For example, suppose you have observed that children cry when they fall down. You should write: 'Methodological observation of the sociometrical behavior tendencies of prematurated isolates indicates that a causal relationship exists between groundward tropism and lachrimatory, or ‘crying’ behavior forms.' If you can keep this up for fifty or sixty pages, you will get a large government grant."
  • On the belief that all publicity is good publicity:
  • User:WhatamIdoing/I am going to die
    • I am not expecting to die any time soon, and I hope you won't die soon, either, but what will Wikipedia look like when we're gone, and what can we do now to make its future better?
  • On the number of editors needed to make a decision
    • Google used to put prospective candidates through 12 interviews. However, the answer rarely changed after the fourth interview. [9][10][11] The opinion of just four interviewers was enough in 95% of cases. Do we really think that we normally need more editors to answer a question about an article than a business needs to decide whether to hire a job seeker?
  • We've got to get the article content right.
    • And we need to stop worrying so much about how fancy the sources are. According to doi:10.1145/3366423.3380300, readers don't use the sources nearly as often as experienced editors do. For 99.7% of page views, the readers don't click through on a single ref. About once out of every 300 page views, one reader will click through to one source. If there are 10 refs in the article, you have to have more than 3,000 page views before anyone will try to read the ref you just added. Once.
    • Another way to put this is: readers are at least 300 times as likely to read the sentence you wrote than to read the source you cited. Make sure that sentence is right – fair, accurate, up-to-date, and representative of the whole body of the relevant literature – before you worry about polishing up the citations. Citations to high-quality sources are the means to a good article, not an end goal.
  • If you want to understand Wikipedia's community: ISBN 9780060971656.
    • On the six usual responses: "In practical terms we have the usual six options. One: do nothing. Two: issue a statement deploring the speech. Three: lodge an official protest. Four: cut off aid. Five: break off diplomatic relations. And six: declare war." (p. 49)
    • On how to avoid doing things that you don't want to do: Claim that it's too soon. Agree that something should be done, but question whether this the right thing to do. Now is not the time. There are technical, political, or legal problems. And now it's too late. (p. 93)
    • On how to discredit a source: "Hint at security considerations... it might be misinterpreted... it's better to wait" for another, stronger source, especially if no such better source is likely to be forthcoming. (p. 258–259)
    • The five standard excuses: I can't tell you because WP:BEANS, but trust me. The problem is too few resources. "It was a worthwhile experiment", even if it turned out to be a disaster in practice. "It occurred before important facts were known, and cannot happen again". "It was an unfortunate lapse by an individual which has now been dealt with under internal disciplinary proceedings". (p. 338)
    • Dressing things up in incomprehensible jargon lets you tell people things while minimizing the risk that they will understand you. (p. 465–476)
  • Using a telephone game as our primary way to to teach people how to edit is a bad idea. In the 1980s, when the internet was much smaller, we used to tell this story about communication:

In the beginning was The Plan, and the Assumptions;
And the Plan was without form, and the Assumptions were void;
And darkness was upon the faces of the implementers.

And they spake unto their manager, saying:
"it is a crock of $#@%, and it stinketh".

And the manager went to the department manager, and he spake unto him saying:
"It is a crock of excrement, and none may abide the odor thereof".

And the department manager went to the director, and he spake unto him saying:
"It is a container of manure, and it is so strong that none by abide before it".

And the director went to the Vice President, and he spake unto him saying:
"It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide its strength".

And the Vice President went to the Senior Vice President, and he spake unto him saying:
"It contains that which aideth the growth of plants, and it is very strong".

And the Senior Vice President went to the CEO, and he spake unto him saying:
"It promoteth growth, and it is very powerful".

And the CEO went to the Board of Directors, and he spake unto them, saying:
"This powerful new project will promote the growth of the organization".

And the Board of Directors looked upon The Plan, and they saw that it was good.

Why Wikipedia doesn't standardize everything

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Wikipedia doesn't standardize section headings for citations because the real world doesn't. There are four major style guides that are heavily used in universities, and articles using each one can be found on Wikipedia. Each requires a different name above the list of sources that were used to support content in an academic paper:

  • Chicago Manual of Style: "Center the title Bibliography about one inch from the top of the page"[12] (used by fine arts and historians)
  • APA style: "In APA style, the alphabetical list of works cited, which appears at the end of the paper, is titled 'References.'"[13] (used by sociologists and psychologists)
  • The MLA Style Manual: "Center the title Works Cited about one inch from the top of the page."[14] (used in humanities)
  • Council of Science Editors: "Center the title References (or Cited References) and then list the works you have cited in the paper; do not include other works you may have read."[15] (used by scientists)

Wikipedia hasn't chosen one over another because nobody wants to be stuck telling the English people that they have to follow scientific conventions, or the history folks that they're required to follow the English manual.

That, which, and who

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  • The relative pronoun that is used for restrictive clauses: The car that is red is broken. (The other cars are other colors, and whether they are broken is not stated.)
  • The relative pronoun which is used for non-restrictive clauses, such as a description: The car, which is red, is broken. (There's only one car, and I thought you might like to know what color it was painted.)
  • The relative pronoun who is correctly used in either of these manners, so long as the antecedent is a person. In some situations, such as describing a marginalized group of people, some people may object to the "de-humanization" of the antecedent if that or which are chosen instead of the personhood-affirming who. However, that and which are grammatically correct, and their use in older and formal English is well-established. For example:
    • John 11:25 (KJV): "Jesus said unto her, 'I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.'"
    • Luke 16:10 (ERV): "He that is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much: and he that is unrighteous in a very little is unrighteous also in much."
    • Romeo and Juliet: "He jests at scars that never felt a wound."
    • Poor Richard's Almanack: He that's content, hath enough; He that complains, has too much.
    • Thomas Paine: "He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression."
    • John Bunyan: "He that is down needs fear no fall..."

Smiles

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Memory hole

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Notice

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Babel user information
en-N This user has a native understanding of English.
de-1 Diese Benutzerin beherrscht Deutsch auf grundlegendem Niveau.
es-1 Esta usuaria tiene un conocimiento básico del español.
Users by language

From June 2013 until September 2023, I worked for the Wikimedia Foundation in the Community Relations team to answer questions and report problems about some wiki software, especially VisualEditor and DiscussionTools, but this is my personal account. Edits, statements, or other contributions made from this account are my own, and may not reflect the views of the Foundation. If you want to reach someone at the Wikimedia Foundation in an official capacity, then send e-mail to info@wikimedia.org

Wikipedia editors are unpaid volunteers. I do not write Wikipedia articles for pay. If someone has asked you to pay for an article, or if you are trying to figure out how to get your article on Wikipedia, please see Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Scam warning and Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations.

How to verify an editor's identity

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Scammers will call you up and claim to be from your bank. If you want to be sure you're talking to your bank, you should hang up on them, pull out your bank card, and call the phone number on the back of your bank card – not the "special" number that the scammer gave you. That way, you know you're really talking to your bank.

We have the same problem with Wikipedia. Anyone can claim that they're a Wikipedia editor or admin – but how do you find out if they really are? If you receive an e-mail message, text message, or other off-wiki message in which someone claims to be a Wikipedia editor or admin, ask for their username. Then think up a specific 'password' and ask them to post it temporarily on their userpage from the account they claim to control. It doesn't really matter what the password is; maybe you'll pick something like "It really is me" or "Bananas" or "Test edit" or "Hi, friend", or maybe you'll pick something related to the reason they contacted you, like "I am posting this to prove to a potential client that I really am this Wikipedia editor".

After they've posted it, then (this is super important) look at the top of the page where they posted it for the tab marked "View history" (sometimes shortened to just "History"). Find their username in the list of changes made to that page, and at the start of the line, click the "prev" button to see what changes that particular line records. If you see something like:

  • (cur | prev) 02:19, 6 February 2024‎ Their_username_here (talk | contribs‎) 14,685 bytes +24 Test edit

with a recent date, and clicking on "prev" highlights the words you told them to post, then it's probably someone who actually has that account. But if they refuse to post anything, or if you see a different username in the middle (or just a series of numbers and letters, like "198.51.100.21" or "2001:db8:249b:13e:122e:2249:18:1397"), then you'll know that they're scammers who are lying about whether this is really their account.

Alternatively, if you create your own account and add an e-mail address in Special:Preferences, then you can use Special:EmailUser to send e-mail to most experienced editors. Send them a message like "Someone claiming to be you on <link to other website> is asking me to pay money for a Wikipedia article. Is that really you, or is this a scammer?"

When in doubt, especially if they are asking for money for anything related to Wikipedia, you can send e-mail to paid-en-wp@wikipedia.org and ask one of the volunteers. Remember: Real Wikipedia editors don't charge the subject of an article for creating it, editing it, reviewing it, or anything else!

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