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This is a Misplaced Pages user page.
If you find this page on any site other than the English Misplaced Pages, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated, and that I may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Misplaced Pages itself. The original page is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/User:David_Gerard . |
David Gerard is an utter wikipediholic. He is apparently an administrator and arbitrator and helps clear the incoming spam on wikien-l. He is from Australia and lives in Walthamstow, London with his wife, and his girlfriend nearby.
My wife foolishly directed me here and I became an instant addict. Like Barney Gumble having that first beer.
My life has been spent filling my head with unbelievable quantities of trivia and rubbish. Here's a chance to get some of it out.
As a recovering editor, I can't see a grammatical or spelling error without my red-pencil hand twitching. Misplaced Pages provides tremendous opportunity in this field.
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Contacting me
Put it on the article talk page in the first instance, my talk page in the second. If you email me stuff that would normally go on a talk page, I'll likely ignore it. I've also erroneously deleted such mail as spam before ...
If you're inadvertently affected by a block I've made, do of course email. (Direct address: wp at davidgerard dot co dot uk.) Collateral damage is bad.
Jobs
These are as well as writing and editing articles.
- Administrator (mostly vandal and troll fighting; see WP:ANI)
- Arbitrator (hideous amounts of work; soon to retire!)
- arbcom-l list admin (almost no work)
- wikien-l list admin (this is actually work)
- #wikipedia channel op (fun)
- James F. says he's going to land me with others. Oh boy.
- Help:CheckUser on en:
- checkuser-l list admin (almost no work)
- UK-based press contact for the Wikimedia Foundation ("You're on Irish radio in 40 minutes" — Danny)
- To be UK press contact for Wikimedia UK
- To be a director for Wikimedia UK (spork!!)
- WikiProject Scientology participant (wrote lots of the project page)
- Calming ruffled feathers as needed
- Exacerbating ruffled feathers as needed
- At least three Misplaced Pages cabals, probably more if I thought about it
"On Misplaced Pages, the reward for a job well done is another three jobs" — me. This is because when a new task comes up, people tend to look for someone that they know already has competence and a clue. This is probably a feature rather than a bug. I think.
I must write more articles
And not copyedit so much. And so must you. My scratchpad (for the terminally bored or work-avoidant). The Problem With Music.
Misplaced Pages 1.0 is my current obsession. Go to m:List of articles all languages should have and Misplaced Pages:List of articles all languages should have and help bring all listed articles to Featured Article status.
I started WikiProject Scientology, Xenu help me. NPOV is pretty much a new approach to Web-based writing about Scientology.
The "Fix Crappy Prose" Challenge
I'd like everyone reading this who thinks they're a pretty good writer to middle-click "Random page" twenty times and rewrite any crappy prose without sacrificing facts. Do this at least once a week.
Detail and accuracy beat eloquence when the choice arises, but that does not justify crappy prose.
If you're feeling particularly strong and have a fresh pack of Gudangs and a bottle of whisky to hand, there's a Metric Shitload of stuff on Category:Articles that need to be wikified that can only be fixed by hard editorial slog.
* or control-click or command-click. You do use Firefox, right?
My personal style guide
- "It's about viral payload density." — John Hawkes-Reed
We're writing articles for someone who knows nothing about a topic but needs to get up to speed really quickly. You have ten seconds.
- Who, what, where, when, why?
- Summary lead, then inverted pyramid.
- Omit needless words.
- The Economist Style Guide: clarity with precision. ("I love The Economist. It's like a really rational guy on crack." — Erithromycin)
- HOWTO: write bad documentation that looks good. "Why" is almost more important than "what."
- Notes on brevity.
I sometimes picture my reader as a very bright ten- to twelve-year-old. Someone with a good reading age, but who knows nothing yet. Did you used to devour encyclopaedias as a kid?
Feature brag
- GNU/Linux naming controversy — featured July 1, 2004 — front page July 2, 2004
- Xenu — featured December 21, 2004 — front page February 19, 2005
- X Window System — featured February 4, 2005 — front page September 3, 2005
- Space opera in Scientology doctrine — featured July 16, 2005 — front page September 10, 2005
That's two FA classifications (Computing and Religion and belief) ... I need one more.
Sockpuppetry and CheckUser
I have the 'l33t power of CheckUser, a developer-level facility to match IPs to usernames on the English Misplaced Pages, so that the Arbitration Committee doesn't have to bug the devs. Owing to not much firm consensus on the use of this power, I'm generally keeping it to what I was given it for, i.e. matters of AC-level interest, not general sockpuppetry (even if it's a real pain in the arse). I'm also getting a lot of referrals from Tim Starling, so that he can spend his time on things like writing the software and administering the servers.
I can't promise a timescale for response, even for the plausibly AC-related ones. But I will try. Ask on the talk page.
Note that I can't check Wikipedias other than the English one. To see a full list of users with CheckUser access across projects, see m:Stewards. If your WIkipedia has a problem, you need to find someone who knows lots about itnerpreting IPs and net abuse who your wiki trusts to check this stuff out, then ask the Stewards to give you permission on this page. If you've been given this power on another wiki, I'm very happy to help make sense of IP evidence if you can't work out what's up with something or whether an excuse seems plausible (best to email me with a cut'n'paste of the checkuser output).
I also have a sock puppet of my very own: User:Querulous, my favourite example user.
Deletion and undeletion
User recovery
If you need access to a Misplaced Pages article that has been deleted, ask me. If it's not a copyright violation, libel or similar, I will make the text available to you.
Note that using the text to recreate the deleted content is speedyable, and using it to keep it hanging around in your userspace has gotten editors penalized before. But that's your problem.
Expertise and deletion
If you can verify for me that you are a subject expert in a subject considered notable enough to include on Wikiedia, I will, on your say-so, close any deletion debate as "keep" within your field of expertise, and will undelete any articles within your field that you say are notable.
A note on deletions
WP:AFD's culture is utterly broken and poisonous. That said, almost all of what appears on it does in fact deserve as quick, painful and messy a death as can be achieved. If you think you're an inclusionist, do Special:Newpages patrol some time. Oh My Goodness. So please don't bother me to undelete utter crap.
Misplaced Pages meetups
These are always really good. I recommend them highly. It's amazing what a difference it makes to your view of Misplaced Pages to meet your fellow editors and have a drink with them. I attend the London ones where possible, and will be trying for the Birmingham one in January 2006.
The following users are MY FAULT
Hey, kid — your first puff of Wikicrack's free.
Trivia
Your humble editor has been inducted into the Western Australian Music Industry Association's Hall of Fame. I got in and Bon Scott didn't. User:Redcountess will never forgive me.
See also
I have logins on Meta, OpenFacts (which I mostly use to write articles during Misplaced Pages downtimes) Disinfopedia SourceWatch (life's so much more fun without NPOV) and Misplaced Pages's replacement, Uncyclopedia (where I am also an admin, and have more featured articles than I do here).
External links
- My home page at Thingy (the original and best)
- My Misplaced Pages mirror (presently a bit crap, working on it; but it is the only known mirror of the Cymraeg Wicipedia!)
- Rocknerd (the first web hosting I have ever paid for)
- My LiveJournal (a reliable source of TMI and unutterably tedious for anyone who doesn't know me)
I personally favour weak copylefts. Please feel free to reuse my stuff:
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Multi-licensed with any Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License |
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| 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 2.0, and the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike license 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. | ||
This only applies to my work in the main article space, not talk pages, Misplaced Pages: space pages or whatever. It does apply to images created by me and uploaded by me to Wikimedia.
