User:PearlyGigs

Userboxes This user lives in England. en-GB-N This user is a native speaker of British English. Lab This user supports the Labour Party. This user is a member of the Guild of Copy Editors. This user has participated in 1 Backlog Elimination Blitz and 2 Backlog Elimination Drives with the Guild of Copy Editors. This user is a participant in WikiProject Football. This user supports Leeds United. This user pledges to return to Old-fashioned Wikipedian values.

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I have used WP for reference since it began. I remember I first stumbled across it in an early Google search, probably back in 2001 or whenever. From time to to time, I took advantage of its open door policy to correct typos and the like. Never anything substantial – maybe a sentence or two at most. As I say, I was more interested in finding things rather than adding them. I never considered membership until last year (2023) when I saw WP:GOCE and thought I wouldn't mind helping with that.

My username, by the way, is based on a CAPTCHA!

I have been a very intermittent member, it has to be said, because of things called real life and work, and that is likely to remain the case. I am really being messed around at work and I'd love to find another job, but the pay and benefits are good so leaving might be cutting my nose and all that. This month (July 2024) has been really bad, though. First, I'm all set to go on secondment for several weeks and I find out at the very last minute that it's cancelled because of yet another crisis. I raise objections and they find me a new post at base where I am close to home. Then that's off and they suddenly want me to go to London on a permanent basis. A big row develops and I threaten to walk out. Not knowing what to expect, I even "retire" from Wikipedia. Then, on a Friday evening, it's all sorted and I've signed a new contract. It won't last.

But, at least I can relax for now and I decided to pick up Wikipedia again.

So, what do I think of WP after several months and a thousand edits? I'd say it's a mixture of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It is highly positive in some areas and completely negative in others. In between there are areas which are, as another editor said to me recently, arcane. I won't go into too much detail at this stage but I have my opinions and maybe one day, with more experience, I'll try to help reduce the negatives and clarify the arcanes.

I am clear about where I can help in the meantime, though. GOCE is always going to be worthwhile and, after my experiences as a reader, I consider good categorisation to be essential because readers need to navigate. Then, obviously enough, the site being an encyclopaedia, we need to develop our articles. GOCE has given me several that I've been able to improve (hopefully!) and there are others that I've selected out of personal interest. I'm very pleased to have lifted Norman Hunter to B-class and beyond, although I now think B-class is quite sufficient for any article that isn't going into FAC.

Yes, I've decided the GA process is one of the arcane ones and I'll be giving it a miss from now on. After all, who needs it? If an article is developed to meet the B-class criteria, it's a good article.

Equally, I have no interest in the AFD process because it is just a pointless shouting match. In my humble opinion, requests for article deletion should be decided by a designated sysop, not by a minimal "consensus". The sysops know the site policies and can judge notability, so any one of them should be trusted with keep, redirect, merge, or delete. I don't advocate the same for CFD because notability doesn't come into that and a consensus of interested parties is the best approach to navigation.

On the subject of notability, I think that's a can of worms needing urgent attention. I'll have to read into it much more but it looks to me as if there are some glaring inconsistencies in the way notability is interpreted. I think I'm right in saying it is only a guideline, not a policy, but my perception is that it is treated as if it is the site's core policy. That's all I can say about it at present but, whatever may be the good and whatever may be the bad, I think notability is the ugly.