User:DoubleGrazing

This user has been a member of Wikipedia since 3 October 2006.	This user is an administrator on the English Wikipedia. (verify)
This user has created 220+ articles on Wikipedia.	This user is against the practice of paid editing on Wikipedia.
This user has made 77 women blue.	This user thinks that registration should be required to edit articles.
This user has earned the 100,000 Edits Award.	This user is a participant in WikiProject AI Cleanup.
This user is one of the 800 most active English Wikipedians of all time.	8 This userpage has been vandalised 8 times.

27 November 2024 Current UTC time 🔁

I'm based in the UK, and therefore in the UTC time zone late Oct to late Mar, and UTC+1 the rest of the year. I edit mostly from early morning UK time into late afternoon, and then clock off. During those times I'm probably loitering somewhere around here (and will try to respond to pings etc. in a timely manner); outside them, I'm probably not.

It seems that as an AfC reviewer one can occasionally get wrongly accused of paid editing/reviewing, so I just want to put it on record that I have never edited for pay or other reward, and never will. More generally, I have never been asked by anyone to edit anything, and if I were asked, I would decline, as I'm not here to do anyone's bidding. When I create an article on a potentially sensitive subject, such as a living person or an extant business, I don't even inform them of this, so that there can be no suggestion of impropriety. I'm hyper-sensitive about COI, and have put a couple of drafts through AfC review, rather than publishing directly, where I thought someone could even think that I might have a COI.

I will display here my disclosed COIs (of which I don't expect there to be many), however slight, so they're all clearly visible in one place:

This user has publicly declared that they have a conflict of interest regarding these Wikipedia articles: Arif Demirer TURYID

Looking back at my creation history, it seems I work on fairly eclectic (ie., disparate) stuff, mostly to do with Finland; including but not only:

• Women artists, designers, opera singers, ballet dancers, etc., as my modest contribution to the 'Women in Red' project
• Works of Alvar Aalto, and Finnish architecture more generally
• Finnish lighthouses, ports, bridges, etc.
• Helsinki-related topics

 1987 Viking Sally murder

The display cabinet of vanity...

• On 'cuckoo' editing: WP:CUCKOO; "Oh what a wondrous bird is the..." — hold on, wrong bird!
• On using Wikipedia as a marketing channel: WP:WIKIMARKETING
• On application of GNG source criteria: WP:GNGSC

I googled my username 'DoubleGrazing', and discovered to my slight surprise that there is all sorts of stuff out there using the same name. I use this name only on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, so if you come across the name on social media etc., it has nothing whatsoever to do with me.

Using (or trying to) Wikipedia as a marketing channel: my essay WP:WIKIMARKETING elaborates.

The thing that gets my goat on WP more than just about anything: articles being published with no, or grossly inadequate, sources — and then me getting flak for pointing this out.

• "Hey, it's a new editor, give them a break!" (At what Wiki age do the rules start to apply?)
• "Hey, it's a new article, give it time, the references will be added!" (Oh yeah? When?)
• "It was published in good faith!" (How do we know that? And what does that even mean?!)
• "It's only a stub!" (And that makes it okay... how, exactly?)
• "Instead of [tagging it / draftifying / requesting speedy], help to find the sources!" (Why me; why not the creator?)

It's in particular the last one that drives me up the wall. When I publish an article, I make sure to add sources and citations to it. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect others to do the same. People who can't be bothered to reference their articles, especially the serial offenders, are effectively saying they don't need to play by the rules, and it's instead up to others to make up for their shortcomings. Yes, Wikipedia is a collaborative effort and everyone can and should chip in — but that doesn't mean you just do whatever you want, however you want, and leave it for others to clean up your messes. So when I come across an un(der)referenced article where notability is in question and/or the contents are even mildly promotional in nature, I will move for deletion. If that makes me a 'deletionist' or any other kind of 'ist', so be it.

Okay, rant over, feel a bit better now. :)

I've read various arguments for why IP editing is allowed, or even a 'good idea'. I've read none that was compelling. Here are my reasons why I think it's not a good idea, and why it should be banned:

• Per WP:ISU, user names that imply shared use are not allowed, so why is editing using an IP address allowed, given that IP addresses usually are shared? If the logic behind this policy is that an edit must be traceable to an individual editor, not a collective entity, then allowing anonymous editing from an IP address flies squarely in the face of that.
• IP editing accounts for a large chunk of vandalism, disruptive editing, BLP violations, etc., and stopping it would reduce the cleanup workload for other editors.
• Using multiple IP addresses, either intentionally or unintentionally, fragments a user's edit history, and makes it difficult, in some cases virtually impossible, to detect editing patterns and decipher intentions.
• The 'hassle' of registering really is not great, and therefore I don't buy the argument that mandatory registration would make it difficult to recruit new editors.
• It's too easy for a registered editor to get around certain rules (such as creators not being allowed to remove speedy tags from their own articles) by logging out and editing under IP.
• The whole malarkey about hiding IP addresses, allegedly for privacy reasons (!), would go away if IP editing weren't an option.

To be clear, I think everyone should be able to access the site without registering, and anyone should be allowed to edit, just not edit without registering. In that sense it's not that different from using a public library: you're welcome to browse the collection, access the reference section, etc. without anyone asking you any questions, but if you want to take a book home, you need to get a library card from the nice librarian first.

And a further clarification: I've nothing against users who edit under IP; my issue is with the system which allows this. As long as it is allowed, users are of course welcome to make use of this. I just think it shouldn't be allowed.

Links to handy tools and guidelines: