User:Mostlyharmless

I'm a Wikipedia user from Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand), doing a Master of Philosophy at the Australian National University. My work looks at how foreign organisations have represented conflicts in Indonesia to the outside world, with a focus on historical representation/presentation and memory, and the 'construction' of rights.

Editing philosophy

The first rule of Wikipedia is, and should always be "Ignore all rules: If rules make you nervous and depressed, and not desirous of participating in the wiki, then ignore them entirely and go about your business."

Wikipedia is now a bureaucracy, with thousands of self-appointed control freaks, each pointing to a pile of rules. I am one of these people.

"Wikipedia is not a random collection of information. It is an encyclopedia. It is a tertiary source. Everything on here ought to link back to secondary sources." - User:Mgekelly

Reference relentlessly. If something doesn't have references to reliable sources, search for them and add them (before you take it to AfD). I cannot state this clearly enough. I've saved dozens, probably hundreds, of articles from AfD (and worse, PROD and CSD) that were on subjects that the nominator had clearly never heard of, did the most cursory search. Lazy deletionists piss me off more than anybody on this encyclopedia.

Books and peer reviewed journals trump the internet 9 times out of 10. The internet has great limitations, especially for subjects in languages you don't speak, and things that were notable more than 10 years ago.

Wikipedia:Notability says that if something has received coverage "...by sources [that] address the subject directly in detail" "...in reliable sources that are independent of the subject" it stays. As simple as that.

Wikipedia:Verifiability says "In general, the most reliable sources are peer-reviewed journals and books published in university presses; university-level textbooks; magazines, journals, and books published by respected publishing houses; and mainstream newspapers. As a rule of thumb, the greater the degree of scrutiny involved in checking facts, analyzing legal issues, and scrutinizing the evidence and arguments of a particular work, the more reliable it is."

Wikipedia:Reliable sources says "Wikipedia relies heavily upon the established literature created by scientists, scholars and researchers around the world. Items that fit this criterion are usually considered reliable. However, they may be outdated by more recent research, or controversial in the sense that there are alternative scholarly explanations. Wikipedia articles should point to all major scholarly interpretations of a topic.

Wikipedia:Babel

enThis user is a native speaker of the English language.

es-2Este usuario puede contribuir con un nivel intermedio de español.

id-2Pengguna ini mampu bersumbangsih dengan bahasa Indonesia tingkat menengah.

mi-1He tapepa rawa te reo Māori o tēnei tangata.

Search user languages

• The material has been thoroughly vetted by the scholarly community. This means published in peer-reviewed sources, and reviewed and judged acceptable scholarship by the academic journals.
• Items that are recommended in scholarly bibliographies are preferred.
• Items that are signed are more reliable than unsigned articles because it tells whether an expert wrote it and took responsibility for it"

WP:NPOV needs to be enforced with respect to WP:V and WP:RS. It currently isn't. Instead of censuring users for ignoring these policies, administrators and arbitrators themselves ignore them. Wikipedia policy gives weight to scholarly sources. These are the so-called pillars of Wikipedia, but administrators and Arbcom having been refusing to enforce V and RS for a very long time, instead ruling that V and RS disputes are "content disputes". They need to enforce policy or go home.

I'm not down with User:rednamespacelinks. If you have a red user name, please redirect it to your talk.

I tend to create stubs (see below), and watch them grow, rather than expand existing articles. Kinda like Johnny Appleseed.

My creations

• Biographies

Arnold Ap, Carmel Budiarjo, Florian Habicht, Gretchen Albrecht, Guy Ngan, Jane Kelsey, Marti Friedlander, Richard Killeen, Shane Cotton, Syd Jackson, Takeshi Matsuda, Tom Naegels

• Publications

Cenderawasih Pos, Encyclopedia of New Zealand (1966),On the conditions and possibilities of Helen Clark taking me as her young lover, Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand, Truth and Method

• Businesses

Solid Energy

• Film and images

Woodenhead, The House is Black, View from the Window at Le Gras

• Geography

Bastion Point, Bimbila, Bole, Ghana, Ejura, Harania Creek, Hohoe, Ironsand, Kete Krachi, Kpandu, Mount Burnett, Ngatimoti, Nkawkaw, Saint-Chély-du-Tarn, Tumu, Wamena, Wulugu, Yeji, Yendi

• Language

Camfranglais

• Music

Cornerstone Roots, Fleet FM, Hai Tanahku Papua, Kora (band), Life of Contradiction, The Midnights, The Tellers, TrinityRoots, Unity Pacific

• Organisations

Amnesty International Aotearoa New Zealand, Amnesty International Australia, Amnesty International USA, Council for International Development, Freedom shop, Greenpeace Aotearoa New Zealand, Human Rights Commission, Indonesia-Timor Leste Commission of Truth and Friendship, New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, New Zealand Union of Students' Associations, Ngā Tamatoa, Peace Action Wellington, Radical Youth (Aotearoa New Zealand)

• News

2006 transatlantic aircraft plot, 2008 China Railways train T195 accident

• Universities

Cenderawasih University, State University of Papua

• Species

Togian White-eye

• To do list

El Coloso [1], Wor (Biak)

This user is a member of the Association of Wikipedians Who Dislike Making Broad Judgments About the Worthiness of a General Category of Article, and Who Are in Favor of the Deletion of Some Particularly Bad Articles, but That Doesn't Mean They Are Deletionists AWWDMBJAWGCAWAIFDSPBATDMTAD Est omnino difficile iudicare inclusionis meritum cuiusdam rei in encyclopædia cum ratio sciendi quid populi referat incerta sit, sed nihilominus aliquid encyclopædiam dedecet It is generally difficult to judge the worthiness of a particular topic for inclusion in an encyclopedia considering that there is no certain way to know what interests people, but some topics nevertheless are not fit for an encyclopedia. This motto reflects the desire of these Wikipedians to be reluctant, but not entirely unwilling, to remove articles from Wikipedia.

Relevant external link

The Australian National University's Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies