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|style="font-size: 85%"|'''This is a Wikipedia user page.'''
If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated, and that the user this page belongs to may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia itself. The original page is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/{{NAMESPACE}}:{{PAGENAMEE}}.
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== Me ==
Now, there's not much point using a pseudonym if you then blurt out your mundane identity (where would that have got Batman?), but a couple of misunderstandings have occasionally arisen, which I ought to head off.
Image:garden-01.JPGFirst, despite my User name, I'm not Greek but English (half Irish, in fact, but born and brought up in England). I took the name ''Mel Etitis'' from some on-line dialogues on the philosophy of religion; the original Greek word has been distorted to make it look like a name, but it means something like "one who studies".
Secondly, the character in the dialogues is female; I'm male. Not important, but some people get needlessly embarrassed if they find that someone they've been referring to as "she" turns out to be a he.
Thirdly, despite my youthful appearance (both on the page and – you'll have to take my word for this – in real life) I'm not far off fifty; I'm a philosopher by profession, teaching in the University of Oxford, and spent many years teaching English as a Foreign Language, also in Oxford.
Aside from all that, my interests are wide and varied, my musical, literary, and other tastes are eclectic, and some of them are represented in my contributions (though some are not, and some of my contributions are utterly unrelated to my tastes or interests).
I'm an admin., which means that I'm an ordinary editor who's been trusted with a few extra powers to help me do some largely tedious housekeeping jobs. Being an admin doesn't mean that I'm in any way above Wikipedia policy, and in fact brings with it extra responsbility — so if you think that I've behaved wrongly, let me know — but politely; it's most likely to be inadvertent, as is most wrongdoing here. (If I have a fault ("if"!), it's that I tend to respond badly to rudeness and aggression.)
== My contributions == I spend quite a bit of time randomly paging through the encyclopædia, tidying English and style, adding categories and stubs, occasionally doing more extensive editing. It's not glamorous, but I think that it helps make the encyclopædia better and more readable. After a longish period of doing no more than this, both before and after I registered, I finally started making more substantial contributions to existing articles, and even adding new articles of my own. So far they are (or are planned to be):
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" align="center" ! style="background:#cdcdcd;" align=center width="50%"| New articles ! style="background:#cdcdcd;" align=center width="50%"| Existing articles |- | valign="top" style="background:#e6e8fa"| *'''Music''' **Ambrose_(bandleader) **Neil_Ardley (English jazz composer & popular-science writer) **M'bilia_Bel (Zaïrian singer) **Julia_Biel (English jazz singer) **Ian_Carr (Scottish jazz musician & composer) **James Carter (jazz musician) **Clout (South African band; material supplied by anon) **Alice_Coltrane (jazz musician) ***''Huntington_Ashram_Monastery'' ***''Journey_in_Satchidananda'' ***''Ptah,_the_El_Daoud'' ***''A_Monastic_Trio'' **Copyist **Double_clarinet **Fairground_Attraction (Scottish band) ***''The_First_of_a_Million_Kisses'' ***"Perfect" **Michael_Garrick (English jazz pianist & composer) **Guitaron **Al_Haig (jazz pianist) **Ted_Heath_(bandleader) **Nikki_Iles (English jazz composer & musician) **''JuJu'' (Wayne Shorter album} **Fran_Landesman (lyricist & poet) **Tina_May (English jazz singer) **''Me_Myself_I'' (Joan Armatrading album) **''Mingus_Ah_Um'' (Charles Mingus album) **Oliver_Nelson (jazz musician & composer) **Eddi_Reader (Scottish singer) **Don_Rendell (English jazz musician) **Ben_Riley (jazz drummer) **''Speak_No_Evil'' (Wayne Shorter album) **Clare_Teal (English jazz singer) **''Too_Much_Sugar_for_a_Dime'' (Henry Threadgill album) **Tulsi (tambura player) **Eugene_Wright (jazz bassist) *'''Philosophy''' **Anton_Wilhelm_Amo (18th-century Ghanaian philosopher) **Anamnesis_(Plato) **Bachelor_of_Philosophy **Lady Anne Finch Conway (17th-century English philosopher) **Kwame_Gyekye (Ghanaian philosopher) **Martha_Klein (modern philosopher) **Retrodiction **Placide_Tempels (Belgian missionary, influential in African_philosophy) **Wang Ch'ung (1st-century C.E. Chinese philosopher) **Wang_fu-zi (17th-century Chinese philosopher) **Kwasi_Wiredu (Ghanaian philosopher) *'''Miscellaneous''' **Academic world ***Collection_(Oxford_Colleges) ***Double_degree ***Past_paper **Books ***''The Last Samurai'' (novel by Helen DeWitt) **Films ***''All_Night_Long_(1961_film)'' ***''Bagdad_Café'' ***''Bird'' ***''The_Happiness_of_the_Katakuris'' ***''The_Red_Balloon'' ***''Rebetiko'' **People (real & fictional) ***Arete_(goddess) ***Thomas_Bell (novelist) ***Dandi_(poet) (6th-century India) ***Israel_Isidor_Elyashev (1873–1924) ***Javan (one of Noah's grandsons) ***Maya_(Egyptian_official) ***Juliet_Stevenson (English actress) ***Honeysuckle_Weeks (English actress) **Places ***Blythburgh, Suffolk ***Bruisyard, Suffolk ***Churchill,_Oxfordshire ***Grandpont,_Oxford ***Hosseiniye_Ershad (institute in Tehran) ***Mater_Misericordiae_University_Hospital,_Dublin ***Snape,_Suffolk ***Snape_Maltings, Suffolk ***Sturmer,_Essex ***Tombs_of_the_Kings_(Paphos) ***University_of_Ghana ***Woodrow_Wilson_International_Center_for_Scholars **Times ***1770,_Queensland ***Archaic_period_in_Greece **Ragbag ***Astronomical_constant ***Beauchamp-Feuillet_notation ***Coat_of_arms_of_Cyprus ***Dumb_Britain (Private_Eye item) ***Great_Tom_(bell) (I haven't included new Category or disambiguation pages here, of which I've created or revivified a few.) I've also created the following page, into which I plan to insert all the relevant free images from the Wikipedia archives: *Wikipedia:List_of_images/Places/Europe/United_Kingdom/Counties/Oxfordshire I started a page designed for those who are contributing, or who want to contribute, to Wikipedia in a language other than their first or native language: *Wikipedia:Contributing_to_articles_outside_your_native_language Finally, I've up-loaded a few of my own photographs. | valign="top" style="background:#e6e8fa"| Articles on which I've done significant work, up to and including complete rewriting: *'''Music''' **''The_Blues_and_the_Abstract_Truth'' (Oliver Nelson album) **Bert_Boeren (Dutch jazz trombonist) **Tubby_Hayes (English saxophonist) **''Out to Lunch'' (Eric Dolphy album) **Omara_Portuondo (Cuban singer) **Guilherme_Rodrigues (Portuguese jazz musician) **Carlos_Santana (Mexican guitarist) **''Saxophone_Colossus'' (Sonny Rollins album) **''Sketches_of_Spain'' (Miles Davis album) **''Time Out'' (Dave Brubeck album) *'''Philosophy''' (or related) **African_philosophy (a continuing project) **al-Kindī (mediæval Arab philosopher) **Aspasia (hetaira, mistress of Pericles, inspiration of Plato) **Arete_(excellence) **''Cogito_ergo_sum'' **Creationism **Divine_command_theory **Divinity **Euthyphro_Dilemma **Feng_Youlan (modern Chinese philosopher) **Paulin_J._Hountondji (modern African philosopher) **Hindu_answers_to_the_problem_of_evil **Human **Performative **17th-century_philosophy **Francisco_Suarez (Spanish scholastic philosopher) **Ernst_Tugendhat (Czech-born German philosopher) **Victoria,_Lady_Welby (19th-century English philosopher) *'''Films''' *''Democrazy'' *''Tsubaki_Sanjūrō'' *'''People''' **Henry_Heimlich (of the Heimlich manoeuver) **Andrey_Illarionov (Russian politician) **Siegfried_Lenz (German writer) **Kylie_Tennant (Australian writer) **D._P._Tripathi *'''Places''' **Aldeburgh, Suffolk **Konark (town in Orissa, India) *'''Miscellaneous''' **Apostle_spoon **"The_Lady_of_Shallott" (Tennyson poem) **Murmillo (gladiator) **Necktie **Olympia_Academy (discussion group including Einstein) **Prison_education Plans for significant work on existing articles: *Possible_worlds *Theory_of_conduct *Will_(philosophy) ---- New-article plans: *The Jazz–L Top 100: some years ago Eric Saidel compiled a list of the top 100 jazz albums, as suggested by subscribers to the Jazz-L mailing list and Usenet group. I'll be adding these (where no article yet exists) as and when I can. It's a long and occasional project.
{{Babel-4|en|fr-2|de-2|el-2}} {| cellspacing="0" align=right style="border:solid #CCCCCC 1px; margin: 1px; background: #EEEEEE; width:242px;" | style="width: 45px; height: 45px; background: #CCCCCC; text-align: center; font-size: 14pt;" | 50px | style="font-size: 8pt; padding: 4pt; align: left; line-height: 1.25em;" | This user is an administrator on
the English_Wikipedia. |}
Category:Wikipedia_administrators
|}
I score, incredibly, only 142 on the Wikipedia addiction test. This labels me an addict, but only just. On the other hand, it'll definitely have gone up since the last time I dared to take it.
I've made http://tools.wikimedia.de/~kate/cgi-bin/count_edits?user=Mel+Etitis&dbname;=enwiki edits since I registered on 29th December 2004. Good grief, that's over 3,000 edits a month; that addiction test isn't doing its job. (My 10,000th edit: 25th April 2005. My 15,000th edit: 12th June 2005. My 10,000th edit ''on an article'': 17th July 2005. My 20,000th edit. My 25,000th edit. 15,000th edit ''on an article'': 8 ix 05. My 30,000th edit: 19 x 05.)
==Awards==
{| {{prettytable}}
|-
| valign="top" style="background:#eee"|
Image:WMBarnstar.png, hereby award Mel Etitis this Working Man's barnstar for having an amazing 5-digit edit count, and an unbelievable average of 85.09 edits '''per day'''! Keep up the amazing work! Wikipedia will benefit for as long as you are ignorant of Real_Life :-) Please don't lose yourself along the way- I hope that you will always remain as great a contributor as you are now.]]
|
Image:Barnstar.png]]
Image:WMBarnstar.png, hereby award Mel Etitis this Working Man's barnstar for his remarkable dedication to maintaining Wikipedia standards in articles relating to Pop_music, as has been shown beyond the shadow of a doubt here. Keep up the great work! 22:08, 12 October 2005 (UTC)]]
|
Image:Raok_barnstar.png 01:34, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)]]
52px52px52px52px
Image:Rouge-Admin.png 20:36, 26 August 2005 (UTC) It is only appropriate that the original "rouge admin" be awarded this badge of honor. Without your dilligent efforts, there would be no rouge admins.]] | Image:WMBarnstar.png (talk) 25px
''' 22:23, 20 October 2005 (UTC)]] Image:Barnstar2.png Image:Barnstar-rotating.gif |} ==My attitudes to Wikipedia (an excuse for some moans)== My main attitude, of course, is the desire to help build this into an ever more useful reference work and information centre. I've some more specific thoughts, however: #'''Votes for deletion'''. There's a tendency on the part of some editors to see this as their most important task. Well, it ''is'' important, of course; removing what's inaccurate, misleading, or biased is as important as adding what's accurate, helpful, and neutral. On the other hand, an overzealous attitude can lead to the removal of genuinely useful material that's of minority interest. #*One frustratingly annoying habit is the appeal to Google — the unargued (and largely unchallenged) assumptions being, first, that any topic worth mentioning appears on the Web (and with a frequency that reflects its importance), and secondly, that Google is wholly accurate. The latter is relatively insignificant, but the former is breathtakingly and demonstrably false. #*The most significant area is people, though: whilst the smallest village in the U.S. has its own page, with full and tedious census details, let someone add an article about an academic, actor, writer, etc., who isn't widely known and acknowledged, and a pack of editors appear, yapping that the person isn't ‘notable’. Leave aside the inconsistency for a moment; many of those who are claimed to be non-notable by this Vfd-pack are known to and have affected more people than all the nay-sayers put together (one sometimes wonders if that isn't the problem). #*My approach, therefore, unless there's some genuine reason to delete, such as a prank article, is either not to get involved in such votes on people, or (if I can see a good argument against deletion) to vote to keep. #'''Voting in general'''. There's a disturbing tendency on the part of many editors to jump into a discussion, vote without reading any of the comments, and then leave. The main symptom is a terse comment that clearly ignores what's gone before, and even seems to have been made in ignorance of the object of the discussion (see, for example, here, or the full, depressing debate here). It can make the business of voting a farce. Some admins take comments into account, and presumably make allowances for this sort of blind (and therefore pretty irrelevant) voting, but some just mechanically tot up the numbers. #'''Admins'''. The vast majority of admins with whom I've had contact have been helpful, considerate, and professional in their approach. They're human, though, and occasionally one will develop a blind spot with regard to some issue, or a far from disinterested approach, and act against Wikipedia rules. What seems to happen then is that either their behavior is ignored by other admins, or (especially when the clamour of ordinary users is loud) they're subjected to a mild finger-wagging. If non-admins had behaved in the same way, they'd likely have been blocked from editing for a while — either generally or on a specific article or topic. Simple fairness demands the same treatment for the same behaviour — but given that admins are in fact expected to behave better than ordinary editors, it would seem right that they should be treated more strictly when they fall well short.
Now that I am an admin, I hold the same view, incidentally. ==Licence== I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below: {{MultiLicensePD}} Mel Etitis Mel Etitis Mel Etitis
== My contributions == I spend quite a bit of time randomly paging through the encyclopædia, tidying English and style, adding categories and stubs, occasionally doing more extensive editing. It's not glamorous, but I think that it helps make the encyclopædia better and more readable. After a longish period of doing no more than this, both before and after I registered, I finally started making more substantial contributions to existing articles, and even adding new articles of my own. So far they are (or are planned to be):
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" align="center" ! style="background:#cdcdcd;" align=center width="50%"| New articles ! style="background:#cdcdcd;" align=center width="50%"| Existing articles |- | valign="top" style="background:#e6e8fa"| *'''Music''' **Ambrose_(bandleader) **Neil_Ardley (English jazz composer & popular-science writer) **M'bilia_Bel (Zaïrian singer) **Julia_Biel (English jazz singer) **Ian_Carr (Scottish jazz musician & composer) **James Carter (jazz musician) **Clout (South African band; material supplied by anon) **Alice_Coltrane (jazz musician) ***''Huntington_Ashram_Monastery'' ***''Journey_in_Satchidananda'' ***''Ptah,_the_El_Daoud'' ***''A_Monastic_Trio'' **Copyist **Double_clarinet **Fairground_Attraction (Scottish band) ***''The_First_of_a_Million_Kisses'' ***"Perfect" **Michael_Garrick (English jazz pianist & composer) **Guitaron **Al_Haig (jazz pianist) **Ted_Heath_(bandleader) **Nikki_Iles (English jazz composer & musician) **''JuJu'' (Wayne Shorter album} **Fran_Landesman (lyricist & poet) **Tina_May (English jazz singer) **''Me_Myself_I'' (Joan Armatrading album) **''Mingus_Ah_Um'' (Charles Mingus album) **Oliver_Nelson (jazz musician & composer) **Eddi_Reader (Scottish singer) **Don_Rendell (English jazz musician) **Ben_Riley (jazz drummer) **''Speak_No_Evil'' (Wayne Shorter album) **Clare_Teal (English jazz singer) **''Too_Much_Sugar_for_a_Dime'' (Henry Threadgill album) **Tulsi (tambura player) **Eugene_Wright (jazz bassist) *'''Philosophy''' **Anton_Wilhelm_Amo (18th-century Ghanaian philosopher) **Anamnesis_(Plato) **Bachelor_of_Philosophy **Lady Anne Finch Conway (17th-century English philosopher) **Kwame_Gyekye (Ghanaian philosopher) **Martha_Klein (modern philosopher) **Retrodiction **Placide_Tempels (Belgian missionary, influential in African_philosophy) **Wang Ch'ung (1st-century C.E. Chinese philosopher) **Wang_fu-zi (17th-century Chinese philosopher) **Kwasi_Wiredu (Ghanaian philosopher) *'''Miscellaneous''' **Academic world ***Collection_(Oxford_Colleges) ***Double_degree ***Past_paper **Books ***''The Last Samurai'' (novel by Helen DeWitt) **Films ***''All_Night_Long_(1961_film)'' ***''Bagdad_Café'' ***''Bird'' ***''The_Happiness_of_the_Katakuris'' ***''The_Red_Balloon'' ***''Rebetiko'' **People (real & fictional) ***Arete_(goddess) ***Thomas_Bell (novelist) ***Dandi_(poet) (6th-century India) ***Israel_Isidor_Elyashev (1873–1924) ***Javan (one of Noah's grandsons) ***Maya_(Egyptian_official) ***Juliet_Stevenson (English actress) ***Honeysuckle_Weeks (English actress) **Places ***Blythburgh, Suffolk ***Bruisyard, Suffolk ***Churchill,_Oxfordshire ***Grandpont,_Oxford ***Hosseiniye_Ershad (institute in Tehran) ***Mater_Misericordiae_University_Hospital,_Dublin ***Snape,_Suffolk ***Snape_Maltings, Suffolk ***Sturmer,_Essex ***Tombs_of_the_Kings_(Paphos) ***University_of_Ghana ***Woodrow_Wilson_International_Center_for_Scholars **Times ***1770,_Queensland ***Archaic_period_in_Greece **Ragbag ***Astronomical_constant ***Beauchamp-Feuillet_notation ***Coat_of_arms_of_Cyprus ***Dumb_Britain (Private_Eye item) ***Great_Tom_(bell) (I haven't included new Category or disambiguation pages here, of which I've created or revivified a few.) I've also created the following page, into which I plan to insert all the relevant free images from the Wikipedia archives: *Wikipedia:List_of_images/Places/Europe/United_Kingdom/Counties/Oxfordshire I started a page designed for those who are contributing, or who want to contribute, to Wikipedia in a language other than their first or native language: *Wikipedia:Contributing_to_articles_outside_your_native_language Finally, I've up-loaded a few of my own photographs. | valign="top" style="background:#e6e8fa"| Articles on which I've done significant work, up to and including complete rewriting: *'''Music''' **''The_Blues_and_the_Abstract_Truth'' (Oliver Nelson album) **Bert_Boeren (Dutch jazz trombonist) **Tubby_Hayes (English saxophonist) **''Out to Lunch'' (Eric Dolphy album) **Omara_Portuondo (Cuban singer) **Guilherme_Rodrigues (Portuguese jazz musician) **Carlos_Santana (Mexican guitarist) **''Saxophone_Colossus'' (Sonny Rollins album) **''Sketches_of_Spain'' (Miles Davis album) **''Time Out'' (Dave Brubeck album) *'''Philosophy''' (or related) **African_philosophy (a continuing project) **al-Kindī (mediæval Arab philosopher) **Aspasia (hetaira, mistress of Pericles, inspiration of Plato) **Arete_(excellence) **''Cogito_ergo_sum'' **Creationism **Divine_command_theory **Divinity **Euthyphro_Dilemma **Feng_Youlan (modern Chinese philosopher) **Paulin_J._Hountondji (modern African philosopher) **Hindu_answers_to_the_problem_of_evil **Human **Performative **17th-century_philosophy **Francisco_Suarez (Spanish scholastic philosopher) **Ernst_Tugendhat (Czech-born German philosopher) **Victoria,_Lady_Welby (19th-century English philosopher) *'''Films''' *''Democrazy'' *''Tsubaki_Sanjūrō'' *'''People''' **Henry_Heimlich (of the Heimlich manoeuver) **Andrey_Illarionov (Russian politician) **Siegfried_Lenz (German writer) **Kylie_Tennant (Australian writer) **D._P._Tripathi *'''Places''' **Aldeburgh, Suffolk **Konark (town in Orissa, India) *'''Miscellaneous''' **Apostle_spoon **"The_Lady_of_Shallott" (Tennyson poem) **Murmillo (gladiator) **Necktie **Olympia_Academy (discussion group including Einstein) **Prison_education Plans for significant work on existing articles: *Possible_worlds *Theory_of_conduct *Will_(philosophy) ---- New-article plans: *The Jazz–L Top 100: some years ago Eric Saidel compiled a list of the top 100 jazz albums, as suggested by subscribers to the Jazz-L mailing list and Usenet group. I'll be adding these (where no article yet exists) as and when I can. It's a long and occasional project.
{{Babel-4|en|fr-2|de-2|el-2}} {| cellspacing="0" align=right style="border:solid #CCCCCC 1px; margin: 1px; background: #EEEEEE; width:242px;" | style="width: 45px; height: 45px; background: #CCCCCC; text-align: center; font-size: 14pt;" | 50px | style="font-size: 8pt; padding: 4pt; align: left; line-height: 1.25em;" | This user is an administrator on
the English_Wikipedia. |}
Image:Rouge-Admin.png 20:36, 26 August 2005 (UTC) It is only appropriate that the original "rouge admin" be awarded this badge of honor. Without your dilligent efforts, there would be no rouge admins.]] | Image:WMBarnstar.png (talk) 25px
''' 22:23, 20 October 2005 (UTC)]] Image:Barnstar2.png Image:Barnstar-rotating.gif |} ==My attitudes to Wikipedia (an excuse for some moans)== My main attitude, of course, is the desire to help build this into an ever more useful reference work and information centre. I've some more specific thoughts, however: #'''Votes for deletion'''. There's a tendency on the part of some editors to see this as their most important task. Well, it ''is'' important, of course; removing what's inaccurate, misleading, or biased is as important as adding what's accurate, helpful, and neutral. On the other hand, an overzealous attitude can lead to the removal of genuinely useful material that's of minority interest. #*One frustratingly annoying habit is the appeal to Google — the unargued (and largely unchallenged) assumptions being, first, that any topic worth mentioning appears on the Web (and with a frequency that reflects its importance), and secondly, that Google is wholly accurate. The latter is relatively insignificant, but the former is breathtakingly and demonstrably false. #*The most significant area is people, though: whilst the smallest village in the U.S. has its own page, with full and tedious census details, let someone add an article about an academic, actor, writer, etc., who isn't widely known and acknowledged, and a pack of editors appear, yapping that the person isn't ‘notable’. Leave aside the inconsistency for a moment; many of those who are claimed to be non-notable by this Vfd-pack are known to and have affected more people than all the nay-sayers put together (one sometimes wonders if that isn't the problem). #*My approach, therefore, unless there's some genuine reason to delete, such as a prank article, is either not to get involved in such votes on people, or (if I can see a good argument against deletion) to vote to keep. #'''Voting in general'''. There's a disturbing tendency on the part of many editors to jump into a discussion, vote without reading any of the comments, and then leave. The main symptom is a terse comment that clearly ignores what's gone before, and even seems to have been made in ignorance of the object of the discussion (see, for example, here, or the full, depressing debate here). It can make the business of voting a farce. Some admins take comments into account, and presumably make allowances for this sort of blind (and therefore pretty irrelevant) voting, but some just mechanically tot up the numbers. #'''Admins'''. The vast majority of admins with whom I've had contact have been helpful, considerate, and professional in their approach. They're human, though, and occasionally one will develop a blind spot with regard to some issue, or a far from disinterested approach, and act against Wikipedia rules. What seems to happen then is that either their behavior is ignored by other admins, or (especially when the clamour of ordinary users is loud) they're subjected to a mild finger-wagging. If non-admins had behaved in the same way, they'd likely have been blocked from editing for a while — either generally or on a specific article or topic. Simple fairness demands the same treatment for the same behaviour — but given that admins are in fact expected to behave better than ordinary editors, it would seem right that they should be treated more strictly when they fall well short.
Now that I am an admin, I hold the same view, incidentally. ==Licence== I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below: {{MultiLicensePD}} Mel Etitis Mel Etitis Mel Etitis