BLP

Seriously, anyone who puts protecting new editors and retaining terrible content above upholding ethical and legal commitments to integrity, accuracy, and protection of a person's reputation is quite simply a massive idiot. Sceptre (talk) 14:01, 10 February 2010 (UTC) (Copied from Jimbo's talk page).

—Jonathan Rauch in Kindly Inquisitors, 1993, pg. 159

Those who claim to be hurt by words must be led to expect nothing in compensation. Otherwise, once they learn they can get something by claiming to be hurt, they will go into the business of being offended.

—Nikki Giovanni

Deal with yourself as an individual, worthy of respect and make everyone else deal with you the same way.

—Off with Their Heads: A Purely Personal View of Revolution and Wikipedia

My areas of interest in Wikipedia are (1) the Ref Desks for Humanities, Language and Miscellaneous; (2) Random Articles in English requiring copy editing and (3) interesting facts, suppositions and opinions, while trying to be clear about the difference.

Thanks to Mr.98 for the idea that others should be warned about areas where we are not to be trusted to answer questions without a reference (and sometimes even with one) on the Ref Desks. My list gets longer as I age, part of which is due to memory loss and part to growing self-awareness: mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy, astrology, television (shows less than 20 years old, stars less than 60 years old, and anything at all about production), music written in the past 20 years, music composition and theory, computers (hardware and most software), mechanics, electronics, manufacturing, history (if I haven't lived it, and even some that I have), languages (except for a basic competence in English, a small vocabulary in French and smaller still in Spanish), religion (except for some rituals from Christianity and Judaism), numismatics, philately, philosophy (as a formal subject of study), sports (aside from general rules of hockey, baseball, badminton, volleyball, soccer and basketball), botany, zoology, movies (unless I saw one before I turned 30 or in the past 5 years), oceanography, parenting, medicine, construction, architecture, politics (other than Canadian and what's currently in the news from elsewhere), fashion, weapons . . . In fact, think of a subject, any subject, and I am not likely to know anything substantive about it. Sad, isn't it?

I used to believe that Wikipedia's greatest strength was its active effort to remain neutral in its point of view, even under the greatest of pressures to be everything else but. Unfortunately, the PR firms, the fanatics, the ethnic warriors, the politically brain-washed and the garden-variety vandals have overwhelmed any neutral voice. To be able to describe what is, without getting into what it ought or ought not to be, would set a fine standard the rest of the world could do well to emulate. It really is too bad that the failure in this is abject, on-going, and essentially unlamented,

I have been to the following 39 places, many more than once: Gibraltar, Mexico, Barbados, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Jamaica, British Virgin Islands, Sint Maarten, St. Martin, Venezuela, Panama, Costa Rica, Belize, Guatemala, Nicaraugua, Canada (all provinces except for Nunavit and the Yukon), United States (Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Nevada, California, Oregon, Alaska, Hawaii, Colorado, North Dakota, Minnesota, North Carolina, South Carolina, New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois), England, Scotland, France, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Italy, Morocco, Sweden, Norway, Monaco, Switzerland, Cook Islands, New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong (before it rejoined China), Macao, Yugoslavia.

Still on my "one day, after I win a lottery" list are: Ireland, South Africa, Brazil, Russia, The Czech Republic, Poland, China, Japan and Mozambique.

Thanks to Rockpocket:

How to do diffs: [1].

Neutrality tags: Wikipedia:Neutrality templates