Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license.
Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat.
We can research this topic together.
Hello! I'm a fifty-something paralegal living in the Boston area. My Wikiactivity centers around hockey -- I'm a longtime statistician and sometime member of SIHR -- but I'm interested in everything from military history to politics to roleplaying games (and no, not in the console games that marketing departments insist on calling "RPGs").
For your tireless contributions to the Hockey WikiProject, please accept this barnstar. BoojiBoy 20:49, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
For your commentary on the Barbara Schwarz AfD in first half of March 2007, explaining the concept of WP:OR and WP:RSDennisthe2 21:57, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
I am so sorry, and I want you to have this as an apologetic gift. JONJONBTtalk•homemade userboxes 18:01, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
I'm constantly stumbling across your edits, and they are, without fail, shrewd, constructive, and sorely needed. On behalf the internet users of the world, thanks for all your hard work! Fullobeans (talk) 18:56, 11 July 2008 (UTC)
The Special Barnstar
Thank you for everything you've done for me and for the WikiProject! Taste the rainbow! Vyrida 10:56, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
The Barnstar of Diligence
Re your efforts in resolving the issues relating to Vassallo5448's contributions. LessHeard vanU (talk) 13:40, 21 November 2009 (UTC)
My Rant of the Month
My wife Amanda and I are walking home in the icy rain from Walmart, getting drenched. On the way, we have a conversation about clinging to belief. Substantively, we agree on the following point:
People, upon first encountering an issue, swiftly decide which side they support. This decision is often knee-jerk, and not based on much of anything: whim, emotion, the point-of-view first presented to them (especially when by someone likeable), and so on. Since humans are tribal animals, they then cling to that position in the face of all reason and contrary fact, and often dissolve in confusion or throw up irrelevancies when brought up short on their POV. I'm minded of the news yesterday about repeated Republican attacks on Newt Gingrich, who espoused an anti-global warming message in a public forum; plainly he's a traitor for breaking ranks just because of pesky scientific fact.
I run into this syndrome all the time on Misplaced Pages, where in various policing and content discussions - for some of the most turgid thinking extant, take a gander at WP:AFD - folks find the most startling explanations as to why they are right and the facts are wrong. All this to avoid the statements so many people would rather die than admit:
"I'm wrong." "I was mistaken."
It isn't easy to confront it; sometimes it is simpler to walk away. I'm as prone as the next fellow to fighting my corner ... but when it happens I have to accept when someone trumps my beliefs with fact and change my POV.
These are the things I think about.
=Its True Allan's Mom dose live there! Check your facts!
Postscript
"But the biggest worry is that the great benefit of the open-source approach is also its great undoing. Its advantage is that anyone can contribute; the drawback is that sometimes just about anyone does. This leaves projects open to abuse, either by well-meaning dilettantes or intentional disrupters. Constant self-policing is required to ensure its quality."
