User:Rivertorch

* Okay, so it's actually an IAQ.

Who are you? I am Rivertorch. I come in peace.

Where are you? On the North American continent of a small blue planet, third from its star, in a solar system near the edge of the Milky Way.

What are you? Stardust. Billion-year-old carbon. Besides that, I'm a writer and sometime editor who fell under the spell of Wikipedia and has yet to emerge.

Why are you (here)? I have three honest answers to that: one sounds grandiose, another sappy, and the third pathetic. Therefore, I decline to answer except to reassure anyone who may be frightened: I mean no harm.

When are you here? There is no fixed schedule to my presence. On many days, I spend more time reading than contributing, so I might be here during a certain interval but have no edits to show for it. Sometimes real life intervenes, and I disappear for a while.

How many edits have you made? Click here and see.

How should other editors contact you? The best way is usually to leave a message on my talk page. Email is an option. Other methods may meet with limited success.

Why should other editors contact you? Any editor should feel free to contact me for any reason at all, as long as it's not to impugn my integrity as a Wikipedian or as a human being.

What do you do here? A bit of this and a byte of that: fixing typos, copyediting, rewriting the occasional article or portion thereof, calling attention to problems I'm not sure how to fix, participating in discussions in order to seek consensus-based solutions to problems with article content or Wikipedia policy, reverting vandalism and other problematic edits, and so on. I enjoy turning vague, confusing, or clumsy prose into lively writing that communicates ideas with clarity and precision. I also like helping new editors when I get the chance. Sometimes I spend time responding to edit requests on semi-protected pages. Over the course of the year ending August 31, 2013, I answered 306 such requests and made the requested changes 81 times. Since returning from a lengthy hiatus, I've answered a lot more, but I'm too lazy to count them.

Are you a WikiGnome? A vandal-fighter? I'm a label-avoider.

Have you created any articles? To date, just three: Goudy Old Style, Berthold (company), and Rennie Airth. I keep meaning to create more but I get distracted. If I rubbed up a genie, one of my wishes would be for a longer attention span, fewer on- and off-wiki distractions, and more hours in the day. I have a particularly bad habit of following one link after another after another until I realize with a jolt that I've been at it for hours and have done absolutely nothing except read. I do have a couple of articles, as well as several major rewrites, up my sleeve. Time will tell. . . .

Do you focus on any particular topics in the articles you edit? Not really. There is some correlation between subjects I'm interested in and some of the longtime articles on my watchlist, but mostly I stumble upon articles almost at random. And I avoid editing articles on topics that I know a lot about.

How come? I take the verifiability policy rather seriously and prefer not to risk what I know getting muddled up with what I can provide reliable sources to verify.

How about articles on people you know? With rare exceptions, I never edit articles on people I know. I'll revert blatant vandalism if I see it on such an article, but that's about it.

How would you describe your philosophy as a Wikipedian? Primum non nocere. Beyond that, I try to assume good faith.

Even in the face of obvious vandalism? Of course not, but there are many borderline cases and ambiguities, and there are even—occasionally—honest mistakes that look like intentional damage. So, whenever practical, I prefer to give my fellow editors the benefit of the doubt. To me, though, assuming good faith means more than that; it also means assuming that even when other editors do things I consider unhelpful or unkind, they are still worthwhile human beings.

Are they worthwhile editors, though? It's hard to generalize. Some people have temperaments that make them poor Wikipedians, although they may be good editors in other contexts. We're all human beings first, and while most of us take Wikipedia quite seriously, it shouldn't be the most important thing in our lives. One more thing about good faith, by the way: in return for assuming good faith of my fellow editors, I expect them to act in good faith.

So what do you really think about Wikipedia? I think it's a grand social experiment.^[1] It fascinates me. That the world's most successful crowdsourcing project has become the world's premier reference work is pretty amazing.

Will it succeed? Precognition is not one of my major powers.

Give it your best guess. If our definition of success remains somewhat fluid, it will succeed. In several important ways, it already has. Since I made my first edit in 2004^[2], I've watched the project grow from a "cool idea" into a serious reference work whose scope far exceeds the best print encyclopedias and whose quality often equals (and occasionally surpasses) them. My contributions to the project have been less than tremendous, but I'm glad to have done what I could and hope to do more.

What obstacles lie ahead? With a project this size, obstacles are inevitable. Some are unnecessary, however. Over the years I have been alarmed by what I see as biography of living persons policy concerns gone overboard.

How so? Vigorous enforcement of WP:BLP is necessary in order for the encyclopedia to maintain credibility and for the project to enjoy a responsible and humane relationship with society. Unfortunately, some editors seem to view the policy as a license to remove content they dislike from certain articles. Unchecked, such actions make comprehensiveness and neutrality impossible, leading to whitewashed articles that might as well have been written by p.r. consultants.

What are some other obstacles? Malicious editing is a perennial obstacle. Some of it—obvious vandalism, for instance—is easy enough to handle, although it can be time-consuming. But things like furtive deletions and additions and rewordings that slant articles away from neutrality, sneaky introduction of deliberate factual errors . . . some of that can be very difficult to identify. And there just aren't enough qualified editors relative to the number of articles to stay on top of it. At various times during my tenure as an editor here, I've been disconcerted by the amount of time and energy I've seen being spent on civility enforcement.

What are your views on civility? Suffice it to say that civility is a good thing, but other qualities of human discourse are even better. It is quite possible to be thoroughly offensive while remaining perfectly civil; that's a phenomenon I've encountered around here all too often.

If you were omnipotent, what changes would you make to Wikipedia and the way it operates? I wouldn't make changes; I'd propose them.

Come on! Even if you were omnipotent? Maybe all that power would corrupt me, but I hope not.

What changes would you propose? Requiring registration to edit. It's a perennial proposal, I realize, but I find myself at a loss when I try to understand why requiring editors to have accounts is considered antithetical to the "anyone can edit" credo. How hard is it to register, after all?^[3] (The recent adoption of extended confirmed protection ought to help somewhat; we'll see.) I'd also propose that edit summaries be mandatory. It's a colossal waste of time trying to figure why certain edits were made when those responsible could simply provide their rationales in the first place.

Are you an inclusionist or a deletionist? I think it's best to strike a balance. And, as I said before, I avoid labels.

Why do you avoid labels? Labels can constitute a useful sort of shorthand sometimes, but too often they lead to prejudgment and misunderstanding. When I'm working to preserve content, I'm hardly a deletionist, and when I'm working to delete content, I'm hardly an inclusionist. When I'm reverting vandalism, I'm not being a "content editor," and when I'm writing an article, I'm not being a WikiGnome. Who cares? I prefer not to specialize.

What are your biases? I'm biased against dull prose, oversimplification, hypocrisy, foolish consistency, mindless conformism, needless threats, narrow-mindedness, bigotry, pseudoscience, illogic, humorless mindsets, empty posturing, scapegoating, sabre-rattling, fake news,^[4] the phrase "political correctness", and calamari.

What is your greatest weakness as a Wikipedian? It's hard to pick just one. I spend too much time reading about and discussing procedural matters that really aren't very important. Sometimes I expend lots of time and effort making principled stands over content questions that are quite trivial. Occasionally I give etiquette a miss and make a gratuitous ironic remark that annoys someone else and doesn't set a good example.

And your greatest strength? I can be a bit of a perfectionist. This doesn't stand me in good stead in terms of efficiency or time management, but it can be a useful attribute when it comes to refining content in an encyclopedia.

Any pet peeves? Officiousness. Annoying in real life, annoying on Wikipedia.

Anything more specific? Yeah, users—almost always IPs or new accounts—who report an article subject's death without providing a reliable source. In my opinion, this is the worst kind of BLP violation imaginable. Sometimes it's vandalism and sometimes it isn't, but it's always a very bad idea.

Any other gripes? Now that you mention it, yes. On multiple occasions I've noticed unsubstantiated allegations of biased or agenda-driven editing being made against individuals or groups of editors who identify as LGBT or are active in WikiProject LGBT studies or watch certain articles on LGBT-related topics. Of course, the world is rife with unsubstantiated allegations, and Wikipedia is no exception. What bothers me is not so much the allegations themselves as their being made with impunity, sometimes left entirely unchallenged. That sort of non-response sends a decidedly negative message to many editors and to the world at large.

Do you have any advice for your fellow Wikipedians? Most of us have a shared objective: to build the best encyclopedia we possibly can. That's a tall order, but look how far we've come in just a few years. Despite innumerable squabbles and countless episodes of drama, the encyclopedia has grown and thrived. So I'd just say let's be kind to one another and remember why we're here. And let's use edit summaries!

Anything else you'd like to say? Yes. Consider the nature of encyclopedias. What are they? What are their purposes? It's just possible that encyclopedias—this encyclopedia—can change the world for the better in myriad ways. Changing the world isn't the immediate objective here, but we can hope it's part of the outcome. Otherwise, what's the point?

Anything else else? Why, yes! Don't break the arm attached to your primary typing and mousing hand; it makes Wikipedia editing 7.5 times more tedious and only 82 percent as enjoyable. Maybe I should change my username—Mr. Sinister has a nice ring to it, and as of this writing, it's available.

People might mistake you for your evil twin. Yeah, I guess you're right.

Why are you messing with your user page when there's work to be done? Vandals are getting away with vandalism out there. Emaciated hyphens await transformation into nice, solid en dashes or beautiful, full-bodied em dashes at a touch of your nurturing hand—either hand. And then there's that article. Just stop. I know the one you mean. Say no more.

It reads like it was written by a— Lovely things, em dashes. Was there ever a more versatile punctuation mark?