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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Reaper Eternal (talk | contribs) at 20:19, 10 December 2013 (Protected User:Bobrayner: Persistent vandalism ( (indefinite))). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Hello!

• Be friendly! Feel free to chat on my talkpage. If you want help with anything, just ask me or ask the helpdesk.
• I rarely touch articles related to my work; If I write something good or bad, blame me, not my employers.
• If you want to see some barnstars and related bling, try here.

Some of the things I'm interested in:

• Updating, cleaning, & adding sources to various Africa, economics, industrial, history, & transport articles; especially ones which are lower on the quality ladder.
• Occasionally, I spend a couple of days investigating some long-term subtle vandalism, copyvio, hoaxes, or pov-pushing.
• Cleanup of pseudoscience, alt-med, and other fringe articles; working towards neutral coverage on subjects which often have few mainstream sources. Sometimes I try to do similar work for some of the more controversial bits of human geography in the Balkans, and of Ottoman history, and other areas with persistent neutrality problems - though it can be quite wearing.
• Occasionally, I hang around at places like AfD, AN/I, and various other noticeboards.
• Less often, I create new articles; about 260 so far. Some are a bit stubby, but they're all bluelinks. Maersk Triple E class is probably one of the nicest, but I'm more proud of the Ottoman taxation articles as this is an area where en.wikipedia is much weaker - if I hadn't created the Maersk, somebody else would have. Also, I usually leave GAs/FAs &c to other editors.
• Dispute resolution &c: I've previously worked on 3O, RfC, and the mediation cabal, though I'm more interested in disputes brought up on other noticeboards and project pages.
• Working as an ambassador, and doing other outreach.

Biography, and CSB... I created an account in 2004. I fancied working on a couple of high-profile articles, but soon found the talkpages awash with epic debates over a single word in the lede, bickering over rules, and so on. That scared me off; I remained an IP address, making a few trivial typo-fixes &c, before taking the plunge and becoming a more active editor in the latter part of 2009. Brasher people would have edited anyway, but I think that there are more cautious folk out there (especially non-geeks, and those less fluent in English) who are deterred from editing wikipedia. I'd love to find ways to make it just a little easier for these people to join the editing community; this would also help counter systemic bias.

New editors: Assuming that wikipedia is going to be around for several more years, a large proportion of future content (and improvements to existing content) will be written by people who haven't even edited as of today; and who can guess how many of today's active editors will have got bored (or burnt out) by 2015 or 2020? So, if we want better quality in the long term, it's vitally important for the community to welcome good new editors (not just get rid of the bad ones), even though they might be disheartened when their first few edits are rejected.