I have been editing here since May 2005, (a month of my editing time under an IP), so I should probably give you an idea of who I am beyond what's been here as a placeholder just so my name isn't red. So I'm finally getting around to adding userboxes (which are here, but because something broke them, I'm not putting them on this exact page until I figure it out) and a better biography of myself.
Let's do it in bullet-point form (because I can get verbose...very verbose).
- I'm a 44 year-old guy from Wisconsin...Sheboygan, specifically (he/him/his pronouns, though they/them/theirs is just peachy too). I'll wait while you get the giggles about America's favorite funnily-named town outside of Walla Walla and constant weird news dateline out of your system.
- Yes, again, I am a man. Back in 2005 I didn't know that Wikipedia capitalized the first letter of titles, so at times I was called Mrs. Chimpf by unknowing users. I did find humor in it, but I finally bit the bullet in 2022 and had that "S" capitalized with a name change request, just in case you're wondering why over seventeen years of messages redirect that way.
- No, I don't know Sam Dekker, sorry to disappoint there.
- I still stubbornly edit the same way I did in 2007; on the MonoBook skin, without Visual Editor, and with pop-ups. So if I'm not up on the latest 'in' thing here, that's probably why.
- I usually edit a little bit of everything, mainly pop culture topics, television shows, and television/radio stations, along with local roads and expressways. After so much time here though, you get bored editing the same things, so I've broadened my horizions to do minor spelling and grammar edits, and I occasionally edit a template here and there.
- Currently I work as a support agent with a subsidiary of Allegis Group and sub-contracting for TaxAct through the 2022 tax season. Because of this, I am declaring those conflicts here and will not edit anything related to the Allegis Group or its subsidiaries, nor with TaxAct or its competitors.
- My editing style is simply this; whatever I write needs to be easily understandable to an average person. If it isn't, I've failed them. So I try to keep the jargon limited on even the most esoteric topics. This isn't hard to do at all for any editor.
- Whenever possible, I listen to local editors. There is nothing worse than someone who knows their local community left to right somehow being overruled in their edit by someone 1,000 or 10,000 miles away who has never come close to being in that area and just believes whatever the press says about something, rather than confirming it with someone who knows the subject closely.
- I do deal with vandalism also, but it's not my life. Just enough to discourage them from doing it again, but not flying off the handle because someone added immature content that can easily be reverted. Hey, it is the encyclopedia anyone can edit after all.
- However, yes, I have made a few enemies out of some serial vandalizers and their sockpuppets (one created a "Sucks" account on Twitter even! I feel honored by that). But eventually they get worn down, you just have to ignore their threats and push on against them.
- If I can stay out of a content fight, I will. 3RR is an important rule and I feel it's better to come to a consensus than to make new enemies if I don't have to.
- As a Wikipedian, you are under no legal obligation to update a company's name that changes every few months (this is especially annoying with media companies) for the sake of editing. If you have to update a subsidiary of a division of an LLC of a tax shelter S.A. or whatever, do so, but just know that we aren't going to get mad because a company has more former names in a year than Erica Kane and after awhile we'll just say the one company and be done. We're not employees of major media companies, but volunteers. Focus on editing, not on being a fan of a corporation.
- I'm also heavy into voting on AfD's and creating them occasionally, and though I am personal with why I choose my article decisions, it's always for the good of the project.
- My watchlist might be thin, but I do monitor plenty of articles and WikiProjects. My goal is to keep articles clean and concise to read, and hopefully entertaining as well.
- I use ip-exempt due to issues with some IPs I've used over the years, along with surveys requiring me to use their VPN to track things while I travel the web.
- And call me a supporter of WP:2FA. I hope it rolls out soon to everyone on the site, because maintaining a complex password means nothing if you don't have other roadblocks to vandalism through your own account (thankfully that has never happened, and God willing, never will to my account).
- I do not have an account on Fandom or Wikia (or CLG Wiki, which was thankfully blocked as an impersonator sock); if you do see someone under my username there, they're not me.
- I am liberal, but here I'm neutral to anything political. If someone vandalizes an article about someone from another party, I still revert. It's the right thing to do.
- I do disagree with some of the fair-use picture policies, but that's for the lawyers to fight out. Suffice to say if it's from a photo agency, it should be gone, but I think fan pictures and many historical logos are fair game (really, is Nickelodeon going to throw a fit because you dredged up their hideous old 1979 logo?).
- What I do hate is overly crufy information from extreme fans of something such as those of Nickelodeon. Sorry, but I don't consider Miranda Cosgrove hosting a marathon of Fresh Prince episodes upside-down revolving around the theme of Carlton wearing a green sweater and featuring the 'world premiere' of a 13 second SpongeBob SquarePants Switch video game ad to be the most earth-shattering event in the history of mankind. Nor does it need an article.
- Nor does a block which everybody else except you, "Mr./Ms. Obsessed Fan with a restraining order filed by (current Nick actor)", a marketing exec, an announcer, or graphics guy at Nick calls '4pm-6pm and/or Mommy's calm-down time'. Really, as long as the kids see The Loud House or SpongeBob on-screen, they don't care if it's named "The importance of hydro generation response resulting from the new thermal modeling -and required hydro modeling improvements...on Nick!".
- "Controversy" is a word that needs to be used carefully here. A common product recall, a known rule, or something overhyped by one thing while the others just think of it as routine...that's not a controversy. I remove headings titled '"Controversy" when appropriate, because it's needlessly provocative and usually used in a non-neutral way; say, certain parents getting annoyed by something only because some pressure group told them to, not because of natural and universal outrage.
- I learned about the project from reading an article about it from Aaron Barnhart, the former television critic for the Kansas City Star, who if I recall, described Wikipedia as 'addictive'. I scoffed at the time when I clicked on a WP link. About 40,000 edits later (this one for The Steve Wilkos Show being the 10,000th, while this edit to Liza Weil's article updated a film title for my 20,000th, #25,000 reverted some vandalism on the Sundance Channel article, a removal of not-needed information for my #30,000th edit on Sirius XM Hits 1, a minor Nickelodeon template tweak for my 35,000th edit, adding newscast information to the WFNA article for #40,000, and yes, yet another source add to the LW article for #45,000...and then for the 50k edit, a minor MOS tweak for Saturday morning preview specials and the 55,000th edit involving multiple moves of television spectrum in Milwaukee, 60k being a fair-use pic violation cleanup, and 65k being a minor text change on KARZ-TV, this 'nice' edit on 2020 Major League Baseball season)...not so much with the scoffing.
- I watched all seven seasons of Gilmore Girls, even the last annoying season with that guy who isn't Amy Sherman-Palladino (and I have pre-planned for the Netflix film series). I fell for the awesomely talented and beautiful Liza Weil through the show and her character Paris Geller. That she's my favorite actress and Paris is the best character will probably never change.
- And then she was on Scandal. Which I love a lot, despite her character being killed off (damn ABC's decision to go with the Charlie's Angels reboot over them at first!).
- Of course I also naturally enjoyed Bunheads from A-SP for it's wonderful writing and LW's character (also, Bailey Buntain has the most alliterative actress name in history). I expect ABC Family to renew the show at the same time they relaunch The Flying House as a future-dystopian based CGI series, along with a Big Brother Jake reunion show.
- To my chagrin, Pat Robertson is relaunching The Flying House, though not with the future dystopia stuff. Umm, reboot of Gunsmoke before Bunheads gets renewed, I guess?
- Nope, Bunheads is gone. It was fun while it lasted though...
- But maybe she'll survive more than 13 episodes of How to Get Away with Murder? That wacky Shonda Rhimes sure loves doing heart-wrenching things to GG actors...
- She did! But six seasons in, who knows what'll happen?!
- I won't state my feelings regarding what happened in the finale. 😒
- I also watched all five seasons of Ally McBeal and am finally thankful Fox is putting it out on DVD in the States, though I can admit it hasn't aged that well.
- The CW used to be my favorite network, until GG ended and they replaced it with 192 hours of reality, lame infomercials, a drama set around the payday loan industry (really?!; though that show brought me another favorite actress in Katie Lowes once she got on Scandal) and programs with redundant deja-vu titles. Now I watch soccer alot. I still don't know what my favorite football team is, but I'm leaning toward Everton.
- Of course I like the Super Bowl XLV Champion Green Bay Packers. If I didn't, I think it would be against some Wisconsin statute and I'd have to perform community service.
- Yes, I write fanfiction. I do write Paris/Rory and Paris/Lorelai femmeslash. I'm proud to do so.
- I also watched Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice (OK, not so much with later seasons as it fell into melodrama, but she pulled me back in with Scandal and HTGAWM), and ship Callie/Addison and Callie/Hahn, though after what they did to Brooke Smith, I stopped watching.
- Yes, I'm a guy. No, I don't care for most male-targeted shows or science fiction, and I'm lost on Lost and Heroes.
- But I do watch NCIS.
- Also since I got an HDTV, Mythbusters. Because you can't deny the lure of an awesome explosion. Or Kari Byron.
- Though the last two seasons were terrible. Don't get rid of people to cut costs.
- Or How It's Made. It is weirdly addictive to watch for hours on end.
- I'm an X-Play superfan. I watched almost every episode and had videos of reviews up on YouTube before Comcast got all DMCA on G4/TechTV fans and deleted them all. Now that Adam Sessler moved on to be awesome on Rev3Games (well he did, but now he's retired, and I can't say I blame him) and G4 is becoming the Esquire Network...wait, never mind, Style Network became Esquire and G4 died at the hands of 3,124 Airwolf and Campus PD episodes stuck on loop...oh, and Esquire Network died in June 2017 because nobody wanted to watch Burn Notice and A-Team reruns 24/7.
- See, TV editing is fun, never a dull moment!
- The Soup was the only time I can watch reality television, because Joel McHale is the only one who made it sane to me. I also watched Best Week Ever, but it deserved to die after it went to the soul-sucking single-host format.
- I've started quite a few articles (like WMLW-CA, WPVS-LP, WWRS, WWG91, WSHS (FM), WPXE, the new Two Rivers version of WEMP, and MeTV Milwaukee (since then, becoming WBME-TV, which I rewrote, and then a call switch between WMLW and WBME meant yet more rewrites for both articles...and then again after the spectrum auction where WMLW moved back to WBME), and the article for the actress Natalie Morales), along with a redlink-killing draft for How to Get Away with Murder, but most of the time I don't care for credit or anything. I say I lay the foundation and you bring the bricks. My major contributions were to the Paris article of course, at least before it got merged into one GG character article (since broken out with better sourcing), and since then to the Eastern Wisconsin radio and TV articles).
- Yes, I do know I'm using my real name to edit. I'm uncreative like that.
- I do own an iPhone 7 Plus and iPad Pro, which I love. Leaving it at that, because boasting is dumb (although I did get to pre-order my 7+ ten minutes after it launched)...
- I listen to AM radio all the time, especially all-news radio. But I prefer middle of the road talk like WGN; I don't care for political and sports talk. I also hate local radio monopolies which suck locality out of radio so they can carry shows you can hear on big city radio stations anyway.
- But I was very unhappy about WGN's 'old shock jock retirement home and convicted felon' host direction in the Sam Zell era. Really, can we have one station that's just truly and stubbornly middle of the road?
- Ah, never mind about the convicted felon, he's gone, thank goodness. Now if only we can get Nick Digilio much more presence on the station.
- And he has! And the terrible management is gone! Hooray!
- But Sinclair is around the corner. Uh-oh...
- Never mind, they got bogged down in dumb sales of stations to used car salesman. Is that Nexstar lurking around though?
- Yup, and they fired him. Thankfully he's got a podcast now and I can ignore WGN as it is now; like every other station.
- I am also somewhat proud to say I am among the 292 Americans who have adopted HD Radio. For non-commercial stations, pretty awesome. Commercial stations...seriously, an HD comedy subchannel with moldy stand-up routines? Not being used to it's potential is an understatement here.
- WGN America's thankfully short-lived logo (and now sadly gone because
obviously some children were scarred for life viewing the cold, dead green eyes gazing at them like she would rise from the logo and kill them it was deleted) was totally the new can't sleep, clown will eat me. Except replace the clown with Lydia from Beetlejuice and combine it with a Wayne's World EXTREME CLOSE-UP!!.
- Automation also really bugs me. It somehow ends up malfunctioning and a station has dead air for an hour because some engineer 1,000 miles away forgets to flip a switch.
- Which is why I love podcasts. Unless the server's down or your MP3 player is broken, no technical difficulties. I have been a TWiT since Leo first recorded that post-MacBreak 2005 roundtable, though less so as the podcasts got waaaay too long.
- I also enjoy the personalities (formerly) of Channel Awesome, though I'm more a fan of Team NChick and Obscurus Lupa.
- Though this was before #ChangeTheChannel happened in March 2018 and exposed a whole lot of garbage behind the scenes. I still follow many of the ex-CA'ers, but boy, the site has the template for How to Crash a Brand In 30 Days down to a science!
- I own a Weatheradio and am a middling weather geek. I even bought a DTV receiver so I could get the local weather digital subchannels to watch (and watch and watch...let's just say I have memorized Stormcenter 2 24/7's background music and commercial playlists down to knowing Glen Park at Lake Metonga is where you can just sit on the deck and drink your coffee in the morning to about 7.23 seconds).
- As much as I'd like to use an external WP editor, I hate IE (which most of them use as an engine) and try to never use it if I don't have to, so I'm content with popups.
- Although I did receive rollback in July 2010 and use Huggle whenever I don't find anything to do on regular article patrol. I also have file-mover privileges, which I mainly use to change picture names to something that can actually be understood.
- I also edit on TVTropes, though anonymously and under an alias I will not reveal since we've gone to more sourcing and less rambling writing on minutia like I usually do and love here.
- This picture, meanwhile, has the most awesome fair use rationale I've seen in three years of using them in image descriptions (darn, deleted...well to describe it featured a still from the Snuggie ad with the image description "Our fearless leader")...
- ...while this edit, though I don't encourage vandalism at all, is the most hilariously true[citation needed] edit I've had the pleasure to read.