Propaniac

About this user

(You can pretend these are in userboxes if it makes you more comfortable:)

This user has a compulsion to clean up bad writing/spelling/formatting, and tends to take out this urge on Wikipedia where there's always a lot of work to be done in that area.
This user mostly works on disambiguation pages, wrestling them into conformance (or close to it) with the Manual of Style.
This user doesn't understand how or why people manage to look at a dab page with lots of entries all formatted in the exact same way, and add a new entry in which every single thing is different. I mean, seriously, shouldn't you notice? It's usually more work to do it wrong than to do it right. (This user is airing this frustration here since it would be wildly uncivil to take it out on the people adding these weird entries.)
This user also really hates it when people create redirects to pages that don't actually contain the redirect term. A redirect is not the same as a merge-and-redirect, people.
This user is kind of a deletionist, and does not subscribe to the philosophy that if you leave a horrible, worthless article lying around long enough, eventually someone will come along and make it good. (See "Wikipedia silliness" below.)

Articles I've created:

Bigger ones

Smaller ones

Possible future article(s) that I've been working on

Wikipedia silliness

The article Lothar Schämer bore a hatnote that made literally no sense (the parameters were switched around) for eight months, until I fixed it after happening upon the article via the "Random article" feature. I'm tempted to undo the correction to see how long it takes for someone else to notice, but I'm pretty sure I'd just end up taking it off my Watchlist in six months when I can't remember why I put it on there. Propaniac (talk) 15:04, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

The article Frank McCourt, about the Pulitzer-winning author of Angela's Ashes, included a bibliography listing for "My lucky Charms And Me", which lasted for nearly eight months (until I removed it in December 2008) without anyone questioning whether the book existed (it doesn't) or even correcting the capitalization of the title. Propaniac (talk) 16:37, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

The article for the TV show Austin Stories claimed in its introduction that the show had achieved "widespread critical and ratings success" (yeah, that's why it got canceled after twelve episodes) from the time the article was created, as a stub, in March 2004 until I deleted the phrase over five years later in April 2009. I mean, come on. Propaniac (talk) 13:58, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I wish someone would create a bot to change every usage of "adaption" to "adaptation." "Adaption" is not a word, it's a semi-literate bastardization that became common enough (due to laziness and ignorance among the general populace) to earn a mention in some dictionaries. I really, really hate it. Propaniac (talk) 02:59, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Partial list of articles with embarrassingly horrible pictures due to Wikipedia's idiotic image policies

No matter how long this list gets, it is still likely to include only a tiny fraction of such articles. The really great thing is, you can't tell me "instead of whining about it, why don't you fix the problem" because there is nothing I can do about it short of stalking these celebrities to their homes and convincing them to visit a Sears portrait studio with me and subsequently sign over all rights to the resulting photograph. Wikipedia's image policies encourage articles to be illustrated by horrible crappy cameraphone snapshots, thanks to empty-headed idealists who won't accept that it's much easier for a layperson to write encyclopedic text about a famous person than to take an encyclopedic photograph of such a person.

Kevin Covais (added 2/12/09)
Kate Flannery (added 2/12/09)
Jane Lynch (added 5/19/09)
Geri Halliwell (added 7/7/09)

Conflicts over trivial articles

I don't think I agree that it's significantly more silly to get into disputes over articles about trivial topics, than over more important articles. People who are like, "You're arguing about that article?" seem to suggest that you shouldn't mind if that article sucks (in your own eyes) because of terrible decisions by another editor, because the article doesn't really matter. But if you're not supposed to care whether an article sucks, why don't we just delete it already? What's the good of an article that you're supposed to allow to suck? Just a thought (not really relevant to any of my own personal disputes, of course; those have all been over very, very important matters, I assure you). Propaniac (talk) 14:09, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

The thing that's eventually going to drive me off this site

I'm beginning to think it's going to be frustration with people's inability to have an actual productive discussion. There's no incentive to try to make any kind of real argument about anything, because people will literally just ignore it and feel completely comfortable just spewing whatever completely uninformed, unexamined bullshit comes into their heads. Am I seriously the only person here who understands that in order to make progress in a conflict, you need to actually consider what other people are saying? That if you think the other person is incorrect, it's more helpful to explain to them why you don't agree, and then maybe when they understand your perspective, it'll cause them to reshape their own? Or am I just the only person who gives a shit? For a project that's supposed to be centered so strongly on the idea of community, and consensus, why is everyone so goddamn resistant to creating the simplest engagement between two people? If you don't give a shit whether your opinion actually makes any sense in reaction to other opinions, why are you sharing it in the first place? The trope is that Wikipedia's swallowed by bureaucracy, but not even the people who participate in the bureaucracy give a shit. There's little point in making every decision by committee if the committee is the equivalent of a herd of circus seals just thrusting their noses at whichever rainbow-colored horn looks shiniest. Propaniac (talk) 00:49, 14 April 2010 (UTC)