User:Rgb9000

Hello!

This is my userpage. I go by Rgb9000 mostly, and occassionally SIRoE. I don't really know what to put here, so I'll keep it simple.

While one day I would very much like to be a sysop, and I think I could do a lot of good, due to the process involved and scrutiny of the whole community, I regretably must back away. I've sysop'd on other wiki's and found the experience to be productive and enjoyable.

I'm getting a little peeved at the constant assault on articles that I like. It's either images up for deletion or discovering that articles have been deleted before I can reach them, or even entire groups on the chopping block. Images are especially a hot point right now, with all the complications thereof. I also see more and more Webcomics being proposed for deletion. Is there some space issue I don't know about? Since wiki is not paper, why must any worthwhile content be deleted? Why is WP turning into a popularity contest with the need for constant defense of worthwhile material? Wikipedia was a lot more fun and a lot easier to use a few years ago...

Basic Info

I am from the United States. I am a huge wikipedia fan. (I hope to become a sysop someday) I primarily use it to look up information, which I do on a near-daily basis. I only rarely make edits, when I feel that an article would truly be made better by my contribution, but I'm trying to be a little more active. I am a bit of a computer nerd, I am very knowledgable of hardware and software, and spend most of my free time gaming on my computer or browsing the internet.

Philosophy

I am against the deleting of materials on Wikipedia except in the most extreme and obvious cases. I have seen too many articles that I worked on and thought were excellent articles get deleted. Often the reason given is "Not notable"... but who can be the judge of that? What is notable and obvious to some is not notable and obvious to all. Yes, the average person may not have heard of every thing in the world, and many voted to delete on that ground, but some things are popular in their own right. I see topics with a large fan following, their own forum and sub-wiki dedicated to the topic, but we can't spare a few kilobytes to give them an article on WP. Also, when the article is quite long and developed, not something thrown together unprofessionally overnight it's even worse. The goal of wikipedia should be that of combining human knowledge, not censoring and having popularity contests constantly.

Personally, I think that you should ask yourself this question before proposing anything for deletion: "Does the existence of this content cause me harm?" If you answer no, then leave it. I see people fighting passionatly to delete things that have nothing to do with them, and it amazes me to see the hate and poisoned words flow from their keyboards. That said, I do realize that some articles are so bad they should never have been posted to begin with. IE articles that are clearly defamatory, vandalism, illegal, or contain 1 or 2 sentences with no edits for months are possible candidates. Aside from these, I think that too much time is spent debating the deletion information that is truly useful (if even to some) that could be spent bettering other things. If you add up all of the typed characters that have been spent arguing back and forth defending and attacking articles and their deletion, and put them to use in the main pages, I think we'd be done writing WP! I also think that past contributors for an article should be notified if some of their work is up for deletion so they can be involved in a AFD discussion. This is one part of wiki culture that needs to change.

I am also against those who speak out against wikipedia. A few people come to mind, but I won't mention any names lest they get any attention. It amazes me when people complain loudly about the content on WP being inaccurate... did they miss the "Edit This Page" link at the top? Or would they rather complain than fix the issue? People who complain about the content are not part of the solution, they are part of the problem. The people who spend hours tirelessly combing wikipedia looking for errors and spend their time correcting things and adding good information are the unsung heroes of wikipedia.

You will furthermore notice that I don't loudly tout the pages that I've had my hands in. If you really want to know, hit the user contributions button on the left... I think people that go and toot their own horn on their user pages are within thier freedoms to do so, but I don't think people should excessivly take credit for work in wiki... just like you shouldn't put 4~'s in an article body because you wrote a paragraph. ...Plus I've made too many improvements to summarize and list!