User:Nhprman

From Wikinfo

Intro to nhprman

My name is Stephen. I am very honored to have been made a Sysop here. Like many Wiki users, I'm always learning.

I live in Northern New England and I serve as president of a local non-profit organization.

These days I'm active here, as well as on various "Wikia," formerly known as Wikicities.

My view of Wikipedia

I am a bit of a Wikipedia Refugee, although I have spent a lot of time there in the past year and it's sad to let it go, but I have to. I have not created an article there in over a year. I visit and edit still, but very tentatively.

I believe WP's NPOV policy is a source of endless debates and division, and that the concept of NPOV, along with their view of "consensus," is an unattainable fantasy that leads only to poorly written, overly wordy articles. It is also a lie. Most articles are the result of "gang editing" and are biased, based on the philosophical views of the people who edit the article's text the most aggressively. "Notability" is also a misleading term. What is meant, most often, is "notoriety" and "popularity," and these are not the same thing as notability.

The Sympathetic point of view concept is superior to the NPOV standard in many ways, not least of which is that it may in the long run reduce edit wars and "cleansing" expeditions by 'fans.'

Wikinfo has a great tradition of SHORTER, more concise articles and I like that. I also prefer fewer categories, though some simple ones are definitely worth having here.

Wikipedia hates lists. I find great value in them.

The use of original research I find to be an EXCELLENT addition to articles, so long as they are fact-based and labeled.

I find the current Jihad there to remove all images (an odd electronic Iconoclasm) bizarre and misguided, and a great illustration of mob editing and totalitarianism growing from a misguided Libertarian fear towards having rules (leading, of course, to mobs creating rules and enforcing them at will. cf French Revolution and the warnings of Edmund Burke.)

Areas of interest

• Religion - all kinds (literally), from neopaganism and Wicca to Christianity to new religious movements.
• Politics - mostly U.S., esp. lists of elected officials, but also UK and Europe
• History - ancient, mostly, but also modern and current events
• Calendar reform
• Science fiction - a big fan of the genre
• Flash fiction - short, short fiction stories
• Individuals who made a difference in each of the above fields
• Britney Spears (NOT!)
• Working on proper (and simple) categories for the above subjects, hopefully with others eventually, in Projects.

Current and ongoing projects

• Articles about Neopagan and other New religious movements.
• Mormonism (Latter-day Saints)
• Fixing redirects and other wikifixes, the biggest of which is adding Categories to articles.
• Populating Winkinfo with articles about members of Generation X (born 1965 - 1981 - although some say from 1961).
• Revisiting very old articles that are out of date (such as recently, Labour Party (UK) which had only been updated to Tony Blair's resignation.)
• Creating articles from the List of New York Governors (infrequent) and creating gubernatorial lists for other U.S. states.
• And mostly just riffing off others' recent edits, to fill in "red" wikilinks. I *love* the variety and spontaneity of various editors here. Many of the articles they create here I would NEVER think of ever reading, but I'm glad when I do, and learn so much.

External Links

• A New Calendar: Options for Reform
• The Get Religion media criticism site
• Calendar Wikia - for calendar enthusiasts (NOT an encyclopedia)

References

• Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "User:Nhprman" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Nhprman, used under the GNU Free Documentation License