User:Jeffq

Wikipedia:Babel en This user is a native speaker of the English language. fr-2 Cet utilisateur peut contribuer avec un niveau intermédiaire en français. de-2 Dieser Benutzer hat fortgeschrittene Deutschkenntnisse. es-1 Este usuario puede contribuir con un nivel básico de español. Search user languages

Wikipresence (by decreasing activity) This user has a page at Wikiquote This user has a page on Wikipedia. This user has a page on Wiktionary. This user has a userpage on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki. This user has a page on Wikisource. This user contributes to Wikimedia Commons. This user has a page on Wikinews. This user has a page on Wikibooks.

I am a long-time reader (September 2003) and editor (April 2004) of Wikipedia. I divide my work on the Wikimedia projects into three groups:

• Small fixes that take seconds. I do these every day, sometimes in large numbers as part of a cleanup project.
• Modest work that takes minutes. This includes minor cleanup and answering simple questions.
• Heavy work that takes hours or even days. This includes creating, rewriting, or researching and sourcing articles; dealing with hard or complex issues; and perfoming major maintenance or policy work.

I am happy to answer all questions and points brought up to me on my talk page (except from vandals and other disruptors jerking my chain). My response time usually is in line with how much work is involved as shown above. If I'm too slow, you can post a second note, but please remember that Wikimedia projects are not primarily real-time communities, and you can never be sure when someone is online.

One exception to my timing above is that I will often take a considerable amount of time to help someone with editing issues that I could fix myself in a minute, because I believe that helping other editors resolve problems will ultimately have a more useful impact on Wikipedia than my direct contributions. (Assuming I know what I'm talking about, of course. ☺)

• Films: The Eye Creatures - Looney Tunes: Back in Action - The Power (now split into The Power (1956 novel) and The Power (film))
• TV shows:
  • Firefly episodes: The Train Job - Bushwhacked - Shindig - Safe - Our Mrs. Reynolds - Jaynestown - Out of Gas - Ariel - War Stories - Trash - The Message - Heart of Gold - Objects in Space
  • Firefly characters: Inara Serra - Saffron (now at List of minor characters in Firefly#Saffron)
  • TV-related: Castle Forrester
• People: Pattie Boyd - Bonnie Bramlett - Jonathan Edwards (music) - Cathy Ladman - Milesians (Greek) - The Roches - Jamie Sanders
• Music: Makin' Whoopee
  • Song lists: all gone now — c'est la vie
• General: Container Security Initiative - Goldilocks planet - Organic salt
• Miscellany: User:Jeffq/Images (my image "gallery")

• TV shows:
  • Buffy and all of its characters, topics, and episodes
  • Firefly and all of its characters, topics, and episodes
  • Mystery Science Theater 3000 and all of its characters, topics, and episode films
• Random fact-checking and cleanup work on any topic

I've done work on many other topics, but these are my current foci.

• Manual of style
  • Measurements used as compound adjectives (e.g., "433 MHz band"): Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Archive 94#Measurement query

• Citation cleanup : cite syntax ◆ need page nos ◆ need page refs ◆ broken/old cites ◆ need in-text cites
• Crusade for establishing reliable sources for film and TV-show articles
• My sandbox: stuff I'm playing with at the moment
• Near-term to-dos

WikiThanks for the wikiquote tv shows split and the custom TOC, all in one edit. — Jeandré, 2005-01-09t09:24z

The perils of cherry picking and ideological myopia

• 0 + 0 = 0
• 0 - 0 = 0
• 0 × 0 = 0
• 0 / 0 is meaningless
  • Therefore, addition, subtraction, and multiplication are identical, and division doesn't exist.

Anyone can be fooled by a magician

• It doesn't matter whether the magician call him/herself a professional magician, a scientist, a motivational speaker, a doctor, a psychic, or a prophet.
• It doesn't matter whether the victim is a believer, a skeptic, a scientist, or even another magician!

• See if you can figure out Dr. Richard Wiseman's "Colour Changing Card Trick" before he reveals the secret. (I'll even tell you that it's all about misdirection, and you'll still miss it.)

Color of the bikeshed

• I've seen a lot of policy discussion across Wikimedia projects where people focus on their narrow perspectives of broad-reaching initiatives, thinking the answers are easy because they only see the bikeshed and not the entire construction project. (I've been known to become obsessed about painting some bikesheds myself.)

Although I'm mostly bored with my own supposed cleverness these days, every so often I write something that I'd like to recall for later use.

• While the courts take years to thrash out the legal issues, Google and YouTube will pull a Microsoft on the marketplace and rake in ad money. By the time they're called to court on it, they'll be able to afford the best defense our 1-lawyer-per-268-citizens legal system can buy.
  • On how video hosting sites routinely avoid responsibility for users' massive copyright violations
  • Post to Talk:Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, 11:09, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

• Overheard at a primate skeleton exhibit in the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, mid-August 2005:

  Parent: How weird, they look almost like us…

  Child: Geez, that's kinda the idea, Dad!

  • Swift, 26 August 2005, "Another Smart Kid", reported by reader David Craig

• Those who want information to be free as a matter of principle should create some information and make it free. ~ Nicholas Petreley, InfoWorld

• The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. ~ George Orwell, "Notes on Nationalism" (1945 Polemic essay)

• Caesar: Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature. ~ George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra