Wikipedia

MrPersonHumanGuy

Joined 28 June 2020

Remarks

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On how Wikipedia works

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"Blowing it up" and starting over

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WP:TNT is WikiSpeak for "I'm too lazy to put in the effort to fix this article, I don't want other editors to worry about it, and I don't want our laziness to be the reason the problems are still there, so I'd rather force whoever worked on it to start from scratch again."

The Graphics Lab

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If I had known about the Graphics Lab sooner, I wouldn't have brought up this Minecraft painting of Jean Picard at the Reference Desk back in 2022. Perhaps the fixer-uppers at the Graphics Lab would've been less inclined to use colorful metaphors.

My only complaints are that:

  • I typically have to wait days or even weeks before someone gets around to fixing the image file that I brought up,[b] so I'd sometimes put up a custom {{ombox}} banner that says This request hasn't received a response in {{age in days}} days to remind users scrolling by of how long I've been waiting in the hope of getting the attention of the potentially willing.
  • I once had a request archived despite the image file I brought up not being fixed.[c]

Requests for comment (RfC)

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I've found it inconvenient that, in order to make a request for comment, you have to be in an unsettled dispute with one or more editors, which means you have to pick a side and hope you've made the right choice so your actions don't seem foolish in hindsight. This means you can't use RfC to preemptively establish consensus on something that no one has fought eachother over yet.

Userfication

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I don't think articles should be userfied as an alternative for draftification, as putting a user's username before a deleted article's title would give the implication that that particular user owns that deleted article and has the exclusive right to improve it. Then again, the userspace can be used by users to work on their proposed revisions to articles.[d]

"See our advice if the article is about you"

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I've come across a couple of Wikipedia articles with tags that say "See our advice if the article is about you" (either {{COI}}, {{undisclosed paid}} or {{promotional}}) even though the article is about an abstract concept (e.g. open-book management) or some other thing that isn't a person or organization, so the wording on those tags humorously implies that a given concept is a sentient person capable of viewing articles.

New page reviewers and redirects

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Because redirects count as new pages, they are subject to review just like ordinary articles are. This is the case even if a redirect's scope is exactly the same as its target article, apparently.

Articles for Merging

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Come to think of it, it's convenient that it's now acceptable to start an AfD discussion to propose merging or redirecting an article to another one instead of outright deleting it and making its revision history unavailable. If these sorts of proposals were made on talk pages, those messages would likely go unnoticed for unreasonably long periods of time unless {{please see}} was used at relevant discussion pages to draw attention to them.

What the mop is an analogy for

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When I first heard that being an administrator is like being a janitor with a mop, I thought it wasn't a good analogy (not as saying that they're police officers with handcuffs) because ordinary editors (especially extended confirmed ones) can clean up and revert vandalism just as effectively as administrators, but come to think of it, it turns out the mop can be considered an analogy for the administrative power to delete pages or revisions.

Advice for student contributors

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If you're editing one or more Wikipedia articles as part of a Wiki Education course assignment, keep in mind that the type of writing that would impress your teachers (e.g. sentences that go something along the lines of "Another important thing to consider when making a decision is whether or not a given choice will have a beneficial impact on our day-to-day lives.") may not be stylistically appropriate for encyclopedia articles.

Personal practices

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See a need, fill a need.
Catchphrase from the movie Robots
I came to Rome when it was a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.
Augustus Caesar
Overwrought speeches and flimsy weapons are tools of lesser robots. As a business bot, you should set aside these inferior tactics and just get to the point.
Dendy in the OK K.O. episode
"OK Dendy! Let's Be K.O.!"

Eureka moments

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When I add text, I sometimes can't help but make last-minute changes to it after I've published it. Sometimes, I'll revisit something I contributed to several months ago just to make more edits.

In some cases where I've struggled to solve a problem on Wikipedia, I would sometimes visit the relevant forum (such as the help desk or the village pump) and suddenly get an idea or two that turns out to be an effective solution to the problem I was concerned with, so it turns out that I never needed to bring up that problem in the first place.

Moving drafts into mainspace

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Draft is
created
Draft is
submitted		X markN
Draft is
abandoned
Article is
created		Draft is
moved
Draft is
accepted		Draft is
declined
checkY
Article
remains		Article is
nominated
for deletion
checkY
Article
is kept		X markN
Article is
deleted		Article is
draftified

When I feel safe doing so, or I'm willing to take a chance with a stub, I like to be bold and move a draft into the article mainspace instead of submitting it for review, which I am discouraged from doing in most cases by two factors:

  • After a draft is submitted, it may take several days (or even weeks) for it to get reviewed. On the bright side, that potentially gives editors plenty of time to improve that draft while waiting.
  • Submitting puts a draft at risk of being rejected (instead of declined) by a reviewer, even if tendentious resubmissions aren't really a problem.

Of course, there's the risk that the new article may be nominated for deletion, especially if it's poorly-sourced. However, if the discussion ends in favor of deletion instead of re-draftification, I can always go ask the deleter to restore the article as a draft.[e] Although, if the deleted article was a stub, and all its sources have been salvaged on a source assessment table, then I shrug (figuratively) and move on.[f]

Another benefit of moving a draft instead of submitting it is that, if a draft is moved into mainspace and it later gets nominated for deletion, the article's fate would be determined by the consensus of multiple editors rather than the opinion of one AfC reviewer, and being AfD'd may make it more likely to be improved by other editors (if sufficient sources exist to make that possible), whereas most drafts are hardly ever edited by anyone besides their creators and/or any eager beavers who happen to stumble upon them.

How I do sources

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I don't do web searches for sources, and I'm generally super hesitant to visit any because I prefer not to leave my digital footprints on so many different websites just for Wikipedia's sake.[g] When making new articles, I like to stick with references that others have found and (in many but not all cases) added to articles to support claims.[h]

Admittedly, this tendency to deliberately keep myself source-blind in this regard has put me at risk of being fooled by deceptive footnotes (added by other users) that appear convincing, plausible, and contain no obvious telltale signs that they're not what they seem to be.[i]

On the other hand, being hesitant to visit just any old site may make me less susceptible to the dirty tricks of entities like the Heritage Foundation or archive.today than the average encyclopedia builder. After all, curiosity killed the cat that failed to stop, think, and take proper safety and security precautions before it took a leap of blind faith into uncharted waters.[j]

When my horses are too heavy

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Like the scientists in Jurassic Park, I sometimes seem to get so preoccupied with whether I could do something that I get bold and don't stop to think if I should do it. Sometimes, hindsight reveals that something I've tried might not have been so right to go ahead with after all. This is why I created the userbox {{user preoccupied}}. Here are some examples of mistaken decisions and "What was I thinking?" moments:

  • December 22, 2024: Moving the then-draft article about Mr. Beat into the mainspace prematurely. On January 13, 2025, the article was nominated for deletion, and the discussion ended in favor of deletion on February 1 after Mr. Beat himself brought up the discussion page on Bluesky. Although he didn't explicitly ask people to participate, his mention of it on social media arguably constituted off-wiki canvassing as far as Wikipedians were concerned. On February 5, I successfully asked for the article to be restored as a draft, and it sat in draftspace until April 6, 2026, when it was finally reintroduced into the mainspace for good.
The best way to get the correct answer isn't to ask a question, but to say the wrong answer.
Cunningham's law
Sometimes, things have to get really dumb before they can even start to get smart.
Kevin Lieber
I may have made a lot of silly mistakes in the past, some of them I really wish didn't exist. But looking back, all of those mistakes led up to who I am today. If I hadn't had made those mistakes in the past, making them in the future will be inevitable, and it is only through learning from our [unintelligible] mistakes do we become better at what we do.
katyj98
Practice over theory: Stop reading those endless tutorials. Yes, maybe read a bit. You need to learn the fundamentals, but you often learn a lot faster by doing the task and failing. This way, you can self-correct and learn a lot.
Károly Zsolnai-Fehér
Sometimes it seems that to move blocks is fine, and the lines will be formed as they fall. Then I see that I have misjudged it. I should not have nudged it after all.
Lyrics from Complete History of the Soviet Union, Arranged to the Melody of Tetris

Struggling to settle on what to say

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When I post a comment, I sometimes make multiple changes to it so I can be sure I'm conveying my points the way that I want them to be conveyed, and I always hope that I'm able to settle on a version of my comment before anyone replies to it.

Other lessons learned

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How to settle a typographical dispute

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In the middle of 2024, I edited Vāsudeva such that a couple of instances of "an historical" were changed to "a historical". When I was reverted, I consulted the help desk for general advice and was told:

[F]ollow what the article's creator did and keep usage consistent within it.

With that advice in mind, I used some historical revisions to successfully argue my case for the "a historical" wording on the talk page.

Some of my favorite chart images

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Index of pages

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Items are checked (checked box) if I'm satisfied with the amount of coverage a topic has in the mainspace. If there isn't a separate article about it, I wouldn't push for such an article. Underlines indicate articles.

Topic wishlist

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unchecked box 184314 Mbabamwanawaresa – Currently a draft. An article about this object failed to survive a deletion discussion.

unchecked box Autism creature – An article about this was userfied.

checked box The Backrooms

checked box Cenotaph for Sir Isaac Newton

checked box Frutiger Aero

checked box Hinduism and Christianity

checked box Jain units of time

checked box Nickelodeon and LGBTQ representation

checked box Sundial (weapon)

unchecked box Year of three presidents – Currently a draft.

TV and web series

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Interactive media

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unchecked box 4D Golf

unchecked box 4D Miner

unchecked box Citystate (video game series)

unchecked box Fractal Block World – Currently a stub draft.

unchecked box Gacha Life – Currently a draft that has been declined once.

checked box Genie (world model)

unchecked box Henry Stickmin – Currently a draft that has been declined once.

checked box LibreOffice Impress

unchecked box Little Alchemy – Currently a stub draft.

unchecked box Oiligarchy – Currently a stub draft.

checked box Pathways (video game)

checked box The Scale of the Universe

checked box SpaceEngine

unchecked box We Become What We Behold

News items

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Music

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Literature

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Words and phrases

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Biographies and YouTube channels

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unchecked box It's AumSum Time

unchecked box Carl Azuz – Currently a draft that had been declined multiple times. An article about him failed to survive a deletion discussion.

checked box Mr. Beat

checked box BibleProject

checked box John D. Boswell / Melodysheep – Currently a stub.

unchecked box Emily Brundige – Currently a stub draft.

unchecked box Glove and Boots

unchecked box Kyle Hill (YouTuber) – A stub that failed to survive a deletion discussion.

checked box Cary and Michael Huang

unchecked box Brian Hull – Currently a draft that has been declined once. Articles about him have failed to survive deletion discussions.

checked box J. J. McCullough

unchecked box Paul Neave

unchecked box Peekaboo Kidz

checked box Redeemed Zoomer

unchecked box Sambucha – Currently a draft that has been declined multiple times.

unchecked box SuperCarlinBrothers – Currently a draft that had been declined multiple times.

checked box Barron Trump

unchecked box Two Minute Papers / Károly Zsolnai-Fehér

checked box UsefulCharts

Pre-existing highlights

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Userbox section

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This user previously used another account: MrHumanPersonGuy.
enThis user is a native speaker of the English language.
mdyThis user prefers month-day-year over day-month-year.dmy
This user can and will ask stupid questions if needed.
This user likes to use {{fmbox}}es beyond their intended purpose.
) (This user occasionally uses parentheses like this to give off the illusion of multiple edit summaries.
== ==This user page has been edited by the Untitled Sections Police.
This user can never figure out the best way to organize all these userboxes.
Interests (non-exhaustive)
This user drinks chocolate milk.
This user loves Dr Pepper.
This user is interested in
science.
Eagle NebulaThis user is interested in astronomy.
This user is interested in history.
This user is interested in
alternate history.


ΩThis user can, and will, clean up difficult spills if needed.
This user likes to watch
Animator vs. Animation
Two Minute Papers
Two Minute Papers
This user doesn't look at where we are, but at where we will be two more papers down the line.
#WC
This user wants you to slow down
and use the right pronoun to
show the world you're no clown.
Miscellaneous
This user was born in the United States of America.
This user lives in the United States of America.
This user used to contribute using
Google Chrome.
This user contributes using Firefox.
Windows 10This user contributes using Windows 10.
This user is autistic.
This user is Aroace
WThis user is a White
(motivated by peace)
DANG!This user's computer is CRUMMY![p]
  1. ↑ I always thought it was fitting that a Chinese sign said that.
  2. ↑ Case in point: Wikipedia:Graphics Lab/Illustration workshop/Archive/Jan 2025 § Reachable universe diagram, when I had to wait for over a month for a simple typo to be fixed.
  3. ↑ Case in point: Wikipedia:Graphics Lab/Map workshop/Archive/Feb 2026 § Typos on a color legend
    On the bright side, I eventually got the idea to make a template to replace the image.
  4. ↑ Example of a case in point: User:MrPersonHumanGuy/Timeline of the far future
  5. ↑ Case in point: Mr. Beat
  6. ↑ Case in point: Kyle Hill (YouTuber)
  7. ↑ In the rare case where I really want to visit a source just to see what it says, I would just go to the Wayback machine to see if it's been archived there.
  8. ↑ Examples of cases in point:
    • Admittedly, the sources I added to MechWest are ones that were conveniently mentioned on the official YouTube channel's Posts.
  9. ↑ Case in point: Whilst looking through historical revisions of Draft:Sambucha, I came across a bunch of great-looking sources in a revision by a temporary account user that reverted themselves, so I decided to add them back. Soon, another editor pointed out that they're all fake, so I quickly reverted myself.
    The temporary account via which those bogus citations were added was also used to tag that draft for speedy deletion, which led me to put it up for deletion review.
  10. ↑ Come to think of it, my choice of metaphors for this sentence evokes a rather ironic mental picture. Generally speaking, a cat wouldn't willingly get in the water, let alone leap into it unless it was blind and didn't know the water was there to begin with.
  11. ↑ The very first comment invoked WP:JUSTDOIT, which turned out to be erroneous advice in hindsight.
  12. ↑ Which is why that project page was called that in the XfD discussion.
  13. ↑ I wasn't aware of it until this point. At the time, I first thought up the concept of a move review as something analogous to deletion review, and I wondered if it was even a thing, so I decided to see if it was.
  14. ↑ This series is in development, so it's likely too soon for there to be an article about this series.
  15. ↑ Formerly a single article titled List of world map changes
  16. ↑ How so?
    I only have 4 GB of RAM, so my computer tends to have "slow moments" (especially when trying to use a web browser while Roblox is running), so I have Task Manager and the Process Manager tab open all the time just in case. Unfortunately, now is apparently a bad time to wish for more.
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