User:David Gerard
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David-gerard.png
David Gerard is an utter wikipediholic. He is apparently an administrator [1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:David_Gerard&diff=4118402&oldid=4113890) [2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:David_Gerard&diff=4120900&oldid=4118402) and arbitrator and helps clear the incoming spam on wikien-l. He is from Australia and lives in London.
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. Wikipedia 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: dgerard at gmail dot com.) Collateral damage is bad.
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.
Wikipedia 1.0 is my current obsession. Go to m:List of articles all languages should have and Wikipedia:List of articles all languages should have and help bring all listed articles to Featured Article status.
My personal style guide
- "It's about viral payload density (http://www.livejournal.com/users/reddragdiva/90300.html)." — John Hawkes-Reed (http://www.livejournal.com/users/hirez/35316.html)
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 (http://www.useit.com/papers/responsetime.html).
- Who, what, where, when, why?
- Summary lead (http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=52&aid=38693), then inverted (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9606.html) pyramid (http://www.ultimate-affiliate.com/4.%20site%20design/4.5.6theinvertedpyramidstyle.htm)).
- Omit needless words.
- The Economist Style Guide (http://www.economist.com/research/StyleGuide/): clarity with precision. ("I love The Economist. It's like a really rational guy on crack (http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3e33bb09%240%242569%24afc38c87%40news.ukonline.co.uk)." — Erithromycin)
- HOWTO: write bad documentation that looks good (http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/9/29/104212/112). "Why" is almost more important than "what."
- Notes on brevity (http://www.executive-speaker.com/idea_1.html).
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?
Trivia
Your humble editor has been inducted into the Western Australian Music Industry Association's Hall of Fame. (http://rocknerd.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/03/1915248) 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 Wikipedia downtimes) Disinfopedia SourceWatch (life's so much more fun without NPOV) and Wikipedia's replacement, Uncyclopedia (where I am also an admin).
External links
- My home page at Thingy (http://thingy.apana.org.au/~fun/) (the original and best)
- My Wikipedia mirror (http://factsite.co.uk/) (presently a bit crap, working on it)
- Rocknerd (http://rocknerd.org/) (the first web hosting I have ever paid for)
- My LiveJournal (http://reddragdiva.livejournal.com/) (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: Template:MultiLicenseWithCC-BySA-Any This only applies to my work in the main article space, not talk pages, Wikipedia: space pages or whatever. It does apply to images created by me and uploaded by me to Wikimedia.