User:Malleus Fatuarum

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03:04, Sunday June 15, 2008 (UTC)
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Hello

This editor is a Veteran Editor, and is entitled to display this Service Badge.

We're all here to write articles, or at least we ought to be. So here are a few things to bear in mind in your writing:

Do not put statements in the negative form.
And don't start sentences with a conjunction.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
De-accession euphemisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.

—William Safire's Great Rules of Writing

About me

I made my first edit to wikipedia on 6 June 2006, a minor copy edit to the Delian League,[1] but I didn't begin to contribute regularly until February 2007. The first article I contributed significantly to was Sale, Greater Manchester, which achieved GA probably despite my efforts. I learnt a good deal about what was expected of a GA/FA in the process though. At about the same time I expanded the stub on Sale Water Park to what I thought then was a pretty cool article. I look back on it now with some nostalgia, and tidying it up is on my list of things to do.

My personal baptism of fire with the GA/FA review processes came with Stretford, now a featured article. The road to FA was tough, but a fantastic learning experience, in all sorts of ways. When Chat Moss was promoted to FA on New Year's Eve 2007, I felt that maybe I was beginning to understand what was expected of a wikipedia article. Since then I've helped to get Middlewich, Beeston Castle, Chester Cathedral and the Pendle witch trials to GA. One of the things I'm most proud of is having been a part of the Greater Manchester Project team that took the Peterloo Massacre from start to FA in just three weeks, a fantastic collaborative achievement.

As well as those articles to which I've contributed content, I also try to help with copyediting, particularly during the GA/FA review processes, where an objection to the quality of prose can be the difference between a pass or a fail. I flatter myself that I've been able to help at least Walter de Coventre, one of the 2,000th featured articles,[2] Navenby and Shaw and Crompton to FA in that way.

In November 2007 I accepted a nomination for administrator,[3] perhaps the biggest mistake I've made on wikipedia to date. That process coloured my view of the project and its administrators, and I found its vindictiveness to be quite shocking. As a result I withdrew from it, and almost the entire project. It is not an experience that I would care to repeat, and I would encourage other editors to think carefully before submitting to it.

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WikiProjects

Other

GA reviews

I believe that the good article process is potentially one of the best initiatives in wikipedia – a lightweight, although to some controversial, process that has generated a significant improvement in article quality. So I decided it was only fair to try and help out by taking on some of the reviews. This is a list of the articles I've reviewed: