Brief history of me as an editor

In 2004 or so I heard about a bunch of amateur crackpots who were writing an encyclopedia on the Internet. I ignored that and stuck with my Britannica CD.

Sometime in 2005 or 2006 I heard/read/watched an interview with some guy named Wales who spoke articulately about Wikipedia being a tertiary source and that readers shouldn't believe it, but should check the references instead. That kind of made sense, so I decided to check it out. I started reading. It was pretty good. One day I saw a spelling error. I saw an edit button. I clicked the button, fixed the error, and waited for someone to yell at me. No one did.

In 2006 I enjoyed the scene the movie, or "film" as it's called here, My Best Friend's Wedding where Cameron Diaz sings I Say a Little Prayer. Curious about the history of the song, I read the article. I noted that her performance wasn't listed. I wasn't sure why not. I started skimming rules, although I wasn't terribly motivated to learn a bunch of rules. I got to "Be bold" pretty quickly. That was my kind of rule. I created an account, added movie to performances, and waited for someone important to tell me I was wrong to do that. No one did.

Over the next couple years or so, I dabbled in editing. In 2008, someone put some crap about Penelope Cruz in her article because she did a commercial for a cosmetic company, and the company used animals for testing. I did not know there was WP:BLP policy or a WP:BLPN board -- not even sure I was clued in there were editors called "admins" -- but I knew it was lame to tag her with that cause it wasn't like she was personally involved in the testing, so I posted on article talk and took it out. From the comment, it appears some one stuck it back in. I didn't edit war. I did not know there was a WP:3RR policy or a WP:AN3RR board, I just knew it was silly to take it out 'cause they could just stick back in, right?

The first content dispute I recall was over a graphic photo at Talk:Urination/Archive 1#Picture of female urinating (as "Gerardw"). To be honest: in hindsight, I was edit-warring; if a similar thing happened today I'd just post an RFC.

A more recent content discussion may be found at Talk:Water distribution on Earth#Water in earth and Talk:Water in Earth's mantle.

Metamorphosis

So I was an editor, if not a very hardworking or ambitious one. One day, in response to a watchlist notice requesting additional volunteers at WP:WQA, I started with [1] and began my wiki-metamorphosis to whatever the heck it is I do around here.

My second username was "Nobody Ent," Nobody, because prior to now I've never asked anyone to accept what I say became of who I am, but because it makes sense and/or is congruent with Wikipedia policy. "Ent" references Tolkien's mythical tree-shepherds (article Ent) because I observed at WQA a lot of unnecessary conflict is caused by editors responding quickly without thinking through the impact of their posts; my namesake Ents place great value on "not being hasty".

When it became apparent I was being recognized I thought it disingenuous to continue using "nobody" so I shifted to "NE Ent."

I do not take myself seriously, and always endeavor to remain grounded in the real world and remember it's just a website. I actually care about two things:

The encyclopedia as a whole,
The editors who write it.

I understand, but disagree with, the precept that only content contributors should be on noticeboards / admins / on the committee. On Wikipedia, writing is the most important thing but it's not the only thing. An expensive, sophisticated internal combustion engine has many very important parts -- pistons, crankshafts, stuff like that. But it's destroyed without $5 / quart (US) motor oil. Human society and advancement came about due to specialization: a guy named Andy George recently made a chicken sandwich "from scratch" [2] -- it took six months and $1,500 USD.

My wiki-time is limited. Lots of folks can, and do, write great content, and I do appreciate that. I believe my ability to be slow, deliberate, and understand and have empathy with all sides in a dispute, while concurrently not taking things personally (see WP:Other duck), and voluntarily participate in unpleasant forums such as WP:ANI adds value to the project.

Why run?

"The rules" say non-admins don't win arbcom elections, and voters want the committee to be staffed by content contributions. On-wiki observation of, and comments by, many of the editors who have served, indicate it's a soul crushing experience, and the pay sucks. So why run?

A Oct 2012 signpost article quoted research that found in content disputes, "Only one formal mechanism was found important—the policies—while seven informal mechanisms were deemed important: collaboration among users, discussions on article talk pages, facilitation by experienced users, individuals acting as guardians of the articles, inviting individuals to participate, large numbers of editors, and participation by highly reputable users. Notably, the interviewed editors did not view elements such as administrator involvement, mediation or voting as important."

Per us, Arbitration "is a technique for the resolution of disputes." Per policy, "The Committee has significant autonomy to address unresolvable issues among the community, but at the same time does not exist to subvert community consensus, to adjudicate matters of article content (Wikipedia has no "content committee"), or to decide matters of editorial or site policy. (emphasis mine)

Wikipedia is too big for a 15 member arbcom to "manage": there are 116,969 active users, which means there are 6,840,814,996 possible one on one interactions.

There should be no doubt that the Wikipedia movement has many significant issues, but it is not the role of arbcom to resolve them; it should be a servant to, not a leader of, the community. I am running because the candidate pool has far too many "agenda" candidates who see arbcom as government and will attempt to, and fail to, make Wikipedia better by fiat rather than the necessary consensus building. Such failures impact the rest of the community, by producing sanctions which aren't effectively enforced, by impacting morale of editors observing the operation of arbcom, by harming the reputation of the project to outsiders who don't understand the nuances of wiki culture.