User:Ragan651
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Ragan651 (aka me) is a quiet, unassuming lyricist currently residing in the Northwestern United States.
Contents |
[edit] Biography
[edit] Personal Background
I spent my childhood traveling from one end of the United States to the other. I was home-schooled for the most part, in a poor sub-working class, single-parent family. By high school, I had begun attending public school, at an uneven level to the other kids (in some areas I blew away the others, while certain concepts I just never got). Due to my unstable living situation and frequent moves, I ended up losing a years worth of high school credits between states, despite taking and passing the classes. The increasing personal tensions within my family and the health deterioration of my mother, and the onset of a personal illness lead to my dropping out of high school and immediately receiving a GED. Since then I have worked mostly in the developmental services field. Due to past concerns, I have not gone back to school, choosing instead to further my knowledge personally through reading and experience.
[edit] Social Views
I was raised a hardened Republican Christian Fundamentalist. I held and espoused these views all the way through high school. In 1998, I became interested in the Clinton impeachment, and watched a bunch of grown men make fools of themselves, becoming more and more eager to perform a witch hunt over an act that was not necessarily illegal. Until that time I had considered myself to be inexperienced and thus my failure to understand Republican concepts was a matter of me needing to be more aware of them. As I became more aware of the principles of Republicanism, I found a heavy contrast between actions and the alleged "conservative" party line, which included excess government spending, and while Republicans in the 1990's portrayed themselves as seeking to protect personal freedoms while increasing American defenses, actions toward concepts such as wiretapping and Internet privacy became alarming. I found myself slightly siding with Democrats (although I feel the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act leads to a major increase in personal privacy intrusion, to the point that some sites began using credit card verification system to ensure the identity of the user. I jokingly created a hotmail address for my cat after the introduction of the COPPA laws, when prompted by Microsoft to enter a credit card, due to the age of the cat being 1 year. This was a joint Republican/Democrat venture.) Also in 1998, I watch the media rig an election by naming George W. Bush as a candidate before he announced his intention to run, and dedicating massive air time to speculation about his possible presidency, often backed with criticism of the Clinton Administration. I proceeded to watch Bush be exalted by Republicans and the media. As a native Texan in a poor family, I had seen the personal affects of George Bush's LoneStar program and reorganization of Welfare, which amounted to asking people to perform tricks and jump through hoops in order to receive government assistance, as well as a lack of attention to wavering standards of the once highly esteemed Texas school systems. By the 2000 election, I had gained enough cynicism to throw away my Republican moniker and gave my support to the Libertarian Party, which on the surface appeared to mirror my beliefs in personal freedom. My time backing Libertarians was short lived, as I found that while the party claimed to uphold my then-current views, the actual population of Libertarians was diverse and none of them actually agreed on the platform. After the 2000 election, I considered myself an independent, although I still periodically refer to the Libertarian platform. From high school up until 2001, I became active in grass roots internet-based efforts to secure personal privacy, in many ways inspired by the aftershock of COPPA and DMCA provisions. After 9/11, I became silent, out of concerns for a changing political climate, as personal privacy was abruptly pushed aside (although my time monitoring government actions against personal privacy had made it clear in the months leading up to 9/11 that the government was attempting to force legislation to invade privacy without warrants, most notably in the Summer 2001 debate over CARNIVORE.) Because of the shift in political climate, when discussion against the "new terror-fighting tools" were called unpatriotic, I withdrew from activism. Soon after 9/11, the name Iraq started getting thrown around MSNBC and Fox News. It was only a matter of time before a manufactured war began. My attention became drawn on the murder of a man named William Cooper, who posted on a website a military document from the 1960's on a proposed plan to attack a united states passenger ship in the Gulf of Mexico in order to create public support for a war against Cuba. I saw the increase of war drums as Bush became more insistent in Iraq's WMDs. Around St. Patrick's Day, 2003, Bush announced he was side tracking the military action in Afghanistan to give Saddam Hussein an ultimatum. It was the opening shot of a media-orchestrated war on Iraq. Immediately I began posting slogans under the name "Coalition of the Unwilling" on the Internet with intent of stirring discussion among people critical about the war. For three years I watched the anti-war movement languish and do nothing but get some fickle teenagers who were more interested in their cause of the week, usually the Sony boycott. I then watched politicians (Sen. Clinton) and media figures turn around and change positions on a war they initially asked for and supported.
My personal views are generally Libertarian in nature. My work, however has forced me to change my viewpoint. I've come to realize that on their own, companies have no intention of acting on the behalf of individuals, which caused me to lose faith in a valued tenet of Libertarianism, that Government should not be providing financial assistance, that all support should come from charitable organizations. I believe in scaled back government. I support Net Neutrality. I stand against the RIAA lawsuits of their customer base, and the lobbying of political figures. I also keep a watch on social issues involving Mental Health and social stigmas over mental illness and disabilities, through NAMI. I also work toward the free dissemination of information over the Internet, with the idea that free flow of information enriches society.
[edit] Contributions
[edit] Music
[edit] PFR
In 2004, I created the entry for Christian rock band PFR, and since then I periodically check and maintain the page for errors. To create the layout, I copied the entry on Pearl Jam at the time, it has since been completely reformatted, and I am happy with the changes.
[edit] Eager
Along with PFR, I also created entries of Eager and Patrick Andrew, two related groups.
[edit] Lisa Bevill
While adding an entry for Vireo Records, I added links to all of the artists on that label. Among those are Lisa Bevill, which has gone on to grow into a nice article.
[edit] Steve Taylor
I contributed a list of student films made by Steve Taylor prior to his music career, which has since been expanded. I do wish Taylor's music video filmography (director) was listed.
[edit] Other
A long list of little edits and corrections to various Christian music pages, as well as some major rock bands.
[edit] Internet
[edit] Intelius
I recently discovered Intelius had my personal information on file, available at low cost to anyone with a credit card (or hacked password). As a result, I began heavily researching the company, and it's origins. I found the wiki entry on Intelius and its founder Naveen Jain were in desperate need of editing, as their lacked sources, formatting, and were single-sided, appearing more as a company advertisement than an encyclopedia article. I have since revamped and corrected both pages, added sources and added missing information on the history of the companies, as well as sorted out contradictions in the text. It has changed drastically for the better.
[edit] Freei
Created an article on Freei.net, the free internet service provider (that I was a user of periodically in the late 90's). See "current activities" for the status on this article (unless some saint decides to take the burden from me, since I already linked several sources in the talk page).
[edit] Supposed Edit War
This is a recent and resolved event (people who know me, however, know that I love paper trails, and document every time I sneeze).
[edit] Part I - Early Edits
On February 28, I started editing work on Intelius and Naveen Jain, in response to both a lack of information, and statements made on the talk pages requesting an article cleanup. After reading the Intelius article, which I referred to elsewhere as "Whitewashed and biased", I placed two sections critical of Intelius. The information originally placed was critical of the service, listing potential security concerns with the company, illustrating how the service could be abused easily. Lacking a formal article, I posted links to the company's website, a sample search in which a (probably) fictional woman named "Lori Ortiz" had her personal information displayed, and some websites that had expressed the same concerns. One of the sources was blocked by wikipedia, the rest of the edits were removed with the statement "sources don't fit statements", or something of the like.
[edit] Part II - Intelius Revision
While my first edit was an intent to balance a viewpoint with cynicism, it was my first serious wikipedia edit in several years. The tone and form had changed a lot since my early (2004-2005) contributions to the music section. I placed a statement of my concern in the talk page, while I studied other articles, and read wikipedia's help pages. I spent this time gathering sources and information on the company's background and subsequent actions. My intention then (and still is) to create the wikipedia page I needed to find, a neutral source on a company's background and activities. Along with small revisions, I added a "Controversy" section, referring to a personal difficulty I was having (the removal of personal information from Intelius) and a recent news event regarding Verizon threatening a lawsuit on Intelius (this was mentioned in the talk page by another user, however was not added or was removed). Both were heavily cited and sourced. Another scandal I found was a mounting list of complaints regarding the company referring credit card numbers of users to other subscription services (much like the Enzyte lawsuits). I mentioned this, however the same user as before disagreed that customer complaints on the Better Business Bureau and Rip-off Report websites were valid sources, and the section was removed (this also made it clear to me that if a link does not match a cited source, the entire section could be removed, which is a rule I have since followed). I did not pursue the section, because there was no point, unless a mainstream media source becomes available, at which point I will revise the entry, as it has bearing in the status of the company.
[edit] Part III - Naveen Jain Rewrite
The Talk page on Naveen Jain was simply a mess. The talk page described the article as "a resume", and other users had found that the main editor who was adding a lot of praise and "fluff" on Jain was using a computer belonging to Jain himself, and another contributor of praise was using an Intelius computer to edit information. Both were doing so anonymously. As a result, a conflict of interest was called, and Jain was banned from editing his own article. The page was tagged as requiring a total rewrite. So I opened the file and carefully reorganized all of the information into sections, focusing on the content I had to work with, which referred to his name, companies he worked at, awards, and a side note that he "Lived in Bellevue Washington with his wife and kids." In the first edit, my intent was not to change information, but to make the article legible. I reworded a lot of entries, in many cases totally rewriting sections from sources on the Intelius page. When it was done, I was able to read the article and begin content/neutrality editing. It was around this point that I started logging in (until then, all entries were done by IP address, because I had not used wikipedia in such a long time.) My reason for logging in was two fold, one was because I wanted to add the article to my watch page, and the second was I wanted to contribute to discussions on content, and felt doing so anonymously when I had an account was dishonest. After being able to read the article clearly, I was able to locate redundant references, bad links, inaccuracies, and most of all, an already contended statement that [Naveen Jain is] Smarter Than Bill Gates.
[edit] Part IV - Naveen Jain's Brain
I had no idea what the above statement would lead to, but when the article was cleaned up, it went from being buried to a standout line. It read on the page "This man is so much smarter than even Bill Gates." This was someone's opinion (and previous edits disagreed on how to state this, while one edit stated a magazine named him "Smarter Than Bill Gates" (which is true), another stated Jain himself said he was smarter than Bill Gates. As an opinion, not a fact, and one that was not properly sourced (there was a link to an article called "Smarter Than Bill", which did not in fact, say that Jain was smarter than Bill Gates, instead stating than an InfoWorld article in 1995 referred to him as such, then mentioned the date and author of the article, stating "Yes, it really does exist!"). I simply deleted the line, with a comment on why I did so. The same user as before in the previous edits went to the article, and acclaimed that it was "fairly encyclopedic and non-promotional", and began his own contributions to the page. Because I put a lot of work into the cleaning up, I wanted to see how editing unfolded. Over the next 24 hours, I watched the page (it was on my watch list), and periodically checked for updates. The only significant change at first was the removal of my reference to the recent Intelius Cell Phone scandal. Because the information existed on the Intelius page, I didn't argue the point. Among this user's revisions, however, was an undo of my deletion of "Smarter Than Bill Gates". When I read it, I removed only that line, stating it was an "irrelevant third hand comment aggrandizing Jain." At this time, it was in the "an article states" form. This was immediately removed with an "undo". When I caught it, I removed the statement again, and posted a notice of why I removed it on the talk page, which the summary referred to. In an edit simply referred to as "Well now", the line was replaced, in a new form, reading "In an article entitled "Smarter Than Bill". I again undid the edit, again citing the talk page, where I left another explanation on why it did not belong there. The user replied with the statement that "It's the title of an article". In the summary of the undo, I stated it was curious that he was so insistent that the words "he was Smarter Than Bill Gates" were in the text. Instead of a discussion, after reading my profile, the user posted a comment on the talk page against "angry speculators" and accusing me (the only other editor at the time, who else was he referring to?) of allowing criticism but not acclaim in the article, and inviting me to check my attitude at the door. I suppose that calling someone names and accusing them of having an agenda is enough to make an angry speculator out of anyone. I replied with a justification of my position on the article (and while I did remove blatant promotional statements, the article as I contributed it never crossed the line into non-neutrality). A comment the user posted on my talk page made it clear at that time he had read my profile, which included information on my current editing of Intelius and Naveen Jain, and a note that he was also editing, and I thought it was a nice touch that two users were able to work together on an article. He insisted his name be taken off this page, and I complied. What I (I'm an angry speculator, remember?) gather is that he read my positions on civil liberties and privacy issues, and gathered that my intent was vandalism (again, this is the guy who praised one of my edits, said to the guy who inspired him to expand the article). I received a notice from him that I was engaged in an edit war, with (the notice, while looking official, was ridden with typos) a threat of banning if I did not cease editing. I placed a series of comments on his page, again justifying my actions (how sad) and extending a truce (per wikipedia policy). I requested a third-party review of the article over the statement that Jain is Smarter Than Bill Gates. The statement has not been returned to the site...
[edit] Part V - A Few Last Words
Now for my turn to lash a little. The accusation that I engaged in an edit war, that I made four undos of the "Smarter" comment (which is false, I have gone over the history, and there was three, while he in fact added the comment three times despite being referred to the talk page to discuss it)...those all reflect back on this user. As I just said, he was the one insistent, despite an open discussion in progress on the statement being there, on placing the statement in the article, in the end using a sneaky means of hiding the information by using the article name. I've argued my position on this to death already, it's not back, but I don't like being threatened, I don't like name calling, and I did not nor will I ever resort to those actions. I declared to truce to end the argument, however this is my page, and I can have my say here. My political positions, personal views, etc., while often controversial, are my own views, however among those is that I believe in free speech and free access to information. I believe that people can make informed decisions only when provided accurate and unbiased information, which is what I strive to pursue, and the standard in editing these articles.
[edit] Epilogue (I hope)
After this occurred, the user posted a neutrality dispute on the page. Another user came in and read the article, and removed it. The contents of this essay were referenced on the disputed page. Since then, the contested statement has been replaced for the moment, with the note "I wonder how long before this is deleted...". I am starting to take the opinion that I can post anything praiseworthy of Jain without a source without fear of deletion, while researched criticism isn't appropriate?
In the end, I will use this analogy as a final defense...there are countless accessible websites (that can be cited) that mentioned the negative statements on Bill Gates, including such ideas as "Bill Gates is the Anti-Christ." I can cite these, and carefully word it into his wiki article. But why should his article say "Bill Gates is the Anti-Christ?". Even though it's cited, it remains someone's opinion. I suppose I would have no problem saying that "people were very critical of Gates in the early 90's, often making disparaging regarding him, as well as personal attacks." (which oddly, has the opposite effect, the first way made Gates as a villain, the second one a victim). Because of the manipulative nature of such statements, they should not ever be used in an encyclopedia (at one time I would refer this to a trivia section, however those are no longer encouraged, which means they should not appear at all). The same rule as the Anti-Christ statement would apply to a laud. What's the difference between say "Naveen Jain is smarter than Bill Gates" and "Naveen Jain is the smartest man, ever...?" This is biased and misleading information.
[edit] Current Activities
[edit] Life
For the past month I have been sick on and off again, and generally haven't been doing much, and I plan to continue not doing anything for awhile. As such, I have decided to wait on editing any articles until I am better, as my last experience was more stressful than it should have been. It will be nice when my stomach will allow me to eat an actual meal again...
I am currently under going what is best called a "career change" while I regather myself. And my stomach still hasn't recovered.
[edit] Music
I am working on recording a rough demo of "A Slight Case of Burnout", or at least a few of the songs, however I have been sick and it has affected my voice, meaning I can't deliver a decent vocal, so I'm waiting until I recover. Meanwhile, there is a chance that one of my songs, Hungry, will be performed by a band on this year's Warped Tour, and I'm really looking forward to that.
