| Revision as of 02:46, 12 December 2004 editCalair (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users3,687 editsNo edit summary← Previous edit | Latest revision as of 12:05, 12 July 2007 edit undoCalair (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users3,687 editsNo edit summary | ||
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| I'm a professional geek, of the maths/engineering variety. |
I'm a professional geek, of the maths/engineering variety. 'Calair' is a handle of convenience, because there are just a few too many crazies out there for me to feel comfortable giving out my real name. | ||
| Things I like removing from Misplaced Pages (and I've been guilty of most of these myself at one time or another): | |||
| I'm a dual US/Australian national, born in California and living in Sydney. | |||
| *]. | |||
| Due to occasional stalker problems (none current), I prefer not to use my real name in a searchable venue, so I pinched 'Calair' from a favourite roleplaying character. | |||
| *]. | |||
| *"Notably, ..." at the beginning of sentences. ''Every sentence in Misplaced Pages'' is there because some editor thought it was notable. If it really is notable, it'll speak for itself. | |||
| *"Controversial" as a descriptor of people - about 90% of interesting people in Misplaced Pages are controversial for one reason or another. Just cut to the 'one reason or another' part, please? | |||
| *"However, ..." - occasionally this helps the flow of ideas, but often it's just padding. | |||
| It seems to me that the Misplaced Pages process often generates a sort of point-counterpoint style of article - "his detractors say X, his supporters say Y". This isn't entirely a bad thing; it's one of the easier ways for people with widely differing opinions to agree on an article, and it provides a certain sort of balance. But I'm not convinced it's the ''best'' way to write an article; when everybody's concentrating on representing two separate extremes, there's little attempt to show how those extremes may meet in the truth, and other dimensions to the discussion are often missed. | |||
| I try to keep my edits NPOV, but so the curious can better judge whether my edits are Fair & Balanced, some information on me and my biases... | |||
| One pet peeve: please do not 'correct' my signed comments. If you think I've made a mistake, you're welcome to let me know on my Talk page or suggest a correction below the comment where that mistake appears. But it's misleading to put things I didn't write into something that has my signature attached. (Also, a lot of these 'corrections' aren't, and adding ''mistakes'' to my comments is particularly irritating.) Obviously, this doesn't apply to article text, which isn't signed. --] 14:22, 28 July 2006 (UTC) | |||
| I love science, especially when it's mathematical. | |||
| Sadly, I'm spending less and less time on Misplaced Pages lately as the climate here gets more and more irritating. I can put up with anonymous vandalism, and systematic POV-pushing, but people are getting far too legalistic and bloody-minded about Misplaced Pages policies; they're important, but they're not a replacement for common sense. --] 12:05, 12 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| I detest 'factoids', those catchy little bits of trivia that everybody hears, believes, and repeats, without checking to see whether they're actually true. Stuff like "It's not compulsory to vote in ], only to get marked off the roll" or "] and ] continue growing after death". I would rather remove a false fact from Misplaced Pages than add a true one. This doesn't mean I don't make mistakes myself :-) | |||
| The current time is '''{{CURRENTTIME}}, ], ]''' (]). | |||
| I'm a member of the ]. This doesn't mean I'd want them running the country tomorrow; it means I'd like to live in a country where human rights issues are taken as seriously as economic ones, and long-term environmental issues get more consideration than they do, and at present I see increasing the Greens' influence as the best way to do that. Don't even get me started on the US political and electoral systems... | |||
| ⚫ | {{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}} | ||
| Speaking of human rights, that includes ]. IMHO, the State's job is not to make choices for adults, but rather to assist them to make their own informed decisions. On gay marriage, my preferred policy would be to divorce the legal aspect of relationships from the religious one altogether - put the government in charge of legal partnerships to facilitate things like inheritance/child custody, and let each church and religion decide for themselves whose relationships they'll recognise as 'marriage'. | |||
| ] | |||
| I am the step-parent of a twelve-year-old child. | |||
| ] | |||
| {{userpage}} | |||
| I try to be courteous to people, but I have a tendency towards ]. This is not something I'm proud of; if you see me doing this, do me a favour and point it out so I can fix it up. | |||
| Pet peeve: Wikipedians who complain that an article is POV because "it doesn't mention $IMPORTANT_FACT". Instead of doing this, how about amending the article so it ''does'' mention $IMPORTANT_FACT? | |||
| ==Contributions== | |||
| Lots of minor stuff, especially spelling/grammar. Major contributions: | |||
| *] - still not convinced this should be a page of its own, but it survived VfD, so I tried to improve it by adding historical context, mention of human rights, East Timor etc. | |||
| *], ], ], and ] - restructured & reduced duplication between these sites; attempted to steer towards NPOV on the "refractive surgery is the work of Satan" issue. | |||
| *] - rewrote much of this for NPOV, added policy information. | |||
| *] - edited for length and focus. | |||
| *] - created from scratch. Needs more content, as do related pages. | |||
| *] - fleshed out 'values of' & 'criticisms of'. | |||
| *] - added discussion of amateur forms (especially net-based writing). | |||
| ⚫ | {{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}} | ||
Latest revision as of 12:05, 12 July 2007
I'm a professional geek, of the maths/engineering variety. 'Calair' is a handle of convenience, because there are just a few too many crazies out there for me to feel comfortable giving out my real name.
Things I like removing from Misplaced Pages (and I've been guilty of most of these myself at one time or another):
- Scare quotes.
- False precision.
- "Notably, ..." at the beginning of sentences. Every sentence in Misplaced Pages is there because some editor thought it was notable. If it really is notable, it'll speak for itself.
- "Controversial" as a descriptor of people - about 90% of interesting people in Misplaced Pages are controversial for one reason or another. Just cut to the 'one reason or another' part, please?
- "However, ..." - occasionally this helps the flow of ideas, but often it's just padding.
It seems to me that the Misplaced Pages process often generates a sort of point-counterpoint style of article - "his detractors say X, his supporters say Y". This isn't entirely a bad thing; it's one of the easier ways for people with widely differing opinions to agree on an article, and it provides a certain sort of balance. But I'm not convinced it's the best way to write an article; when everybody's concentrating on representing two separate extremes, there's little attempt to show how those extremes may meet in the truth, and other dimensions to the discussion are often missed.
One pet peeve: please do not 'correct' my signed comments. If you think I've made a mistake, you're welcome to let me know on my Talk page or suggest a correction below the comment where that mistake appears. But it's misleading to put things I didn't write into something that has my signature attached. (Also, a lot of these 'corrections' aren't, and adding mistakes to my comments is particularly irritating.) Obviously, this doesn't apply to article text, which isn't signed. --Calair 14:22, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Sadly, I'm spending less and less time on Misplaced Pages lately as the climate here gets more and more irritating. I can put up with anonymous vandalism, and systematic POV-pushing, but people are getting far too legalistic and bloody-minded about Misplaced Pages policies; they're important, but they're not a replacement for common sense. --Calair 12:05, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
The current time is 06:15, December 28, 2024 (UTC).
| Multi-licensed with the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License versions 1.0 and 2.0 | ||
| I agree to multi-license my text contributions, unless otherwise stated, under Misplaced Pages's copyright terms and the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license version 1.0 and version 2.0. Please be aware that other contributors might not do the same, so if you want to use my contributions under the Creative Commons terms, please check the CC dual-license and Multi-licensing guides. | ||
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