Ivanvector's real name is not Ivan Vector, which many users and acquaintances find confusing. His real name is Greg, but he does not take offense in being referred to by his pseudonym, nor by Ives, Ivan, Vector, or other variations. He is also not Russian, as some users think his name implies. He has used this name for Neverwinter Nights characters in the past, which may add to the confusion.
As a self-identifying male, Ivanvector prefers the use of the male gendered pronouns (he/him/his, etc.) when referring to him. He also accepts the use of singular they as an unoffensive gender-neutral pronoun set. Ivanvector attempts to employ a user's preference regarding gendered pronouns and attempts to use neutral pronouns when referring to users who have not identified their preference or gender. He also understands that some users take offense to the use of singular they or to the use of other particular sets of pronouns, but hopes that these other users will assume good faith - Ivanvector respects all users' stated preferences but is sometimes clueless.
From 1999 to 2002, Ivanvector was enrolled in the Bachelor of Engineering Science program at the University of Western Ontario, studying electrical engineering. He withdrew from the program in 2002. He then enrolled in the electronics engineering technology program at Fanshawe College in London, withdrawing in 2004.
In 2005, Ivanvector enrolled in the Certified General Accountant professional certification program. He is currently an advanced-level student.
Userboxen
Ivanvector previously added userboxen to his user page to connect with users with similar interests and to be included in lists. Because of issues getting them to line up on the page, he has removed most of them. He may add your userbox if you tell him about it or he finds it interesting or amusing.
Ivanvector previously viewed himself as an inclusionist, but now finds that the terms (with deletionism) don't really apply to the way things work in reality. Actually, there are a good many pages on Wikipedia that have no business being here, and many topics deserve coverage though they might currently have a page which is just terrible. Ivanvector favours flagging, cleanup, merging and improving to deletion. However, Ivanvector will !vote to delete articles which have no hope of meeting inclusion standards, such as those that clearly fail WP:GNG, WP:CRYSTAL and WP:BIO1E. He also has much-higher-than-average tolerance for stubs, and lower-than-average tolerance for the trend of creating ever more obscure and exclusive lists on Wikipedia, but evaluates each AfD case individually as any good editor should.
One particular argument that Ivanvector thinks is a complete cop-out is the essay WP:NUKEANDPAVE, which suggests that an article may reach a point where deleting it and starting over is the best course of action. Ivanvector believes this is ridiculous, and believes that AfDs in which this is given as a rationale for nomination should be speedily closed. Either a topic meets inclusion standards or it doesn't, and throwing out a page just to replace it with a page on exactly the same topic is an utter waste of time and effort. However, he supports selective revision deletion in cases of copyright violations and serious personal attacks, as though his personal opinion on the use of administrator tools means anything to anyone.
Ivanvector is fluent in his native language English and reads and writes at a professional level, and speaks with what has been called a southern Ontario urban accent[1]. He has also studied French academically and Spanish for travelling, but is not confident enough in these languages to converse or write efficiently. Still, he has on very rare occasions contributed to the Spanish and French Wikipedias, and has lately become more active on Simple English Wikipedia. On this Wikipedia he writes in Canadian English unless an ENGVAR template directs otherwise. On the other Wikipedias he just writes poorly.
I am credited with creating many pages here, often by chance, but there are only a few which I consider significant content contributions.
Completely new articles
Woodbine Building Supply fire: a significant arson that occurred in Toronto about 12 years ago. One of the largest fires in Toronto's history.
1999 Highway 401 crash: a multiple vehicle collision which occurred near Windsor, Ontario. One of Canada's worst road disasters; seven people were killed.
Rewrites and expansions
Miyata: a Japanese bicycle and motorcycle manufacturer.
Debits and credits: fundamental accounting principles. Article has always been a mess, but I tried to help.
Expanded redirects
Mitch Martin: an Australian race driver; redirect previously pointed to Old School (film) as one of the main characters' names.
Translations
Consumer Protection Act (Quebec): created as a result of a redirect discussion I think for the sole purpose of demonstrating some obscure point, probably about interlanguage links.
Saltes Island: translated primarily from Spanish with help from other language wikis as a test of whether it was possible for wikidata's interlanguage feature to point to a redlink. Article was selected randomly.
Note:I do not claim ownership of these pages! These are pages that I have started, and placed links here for myself so that I can find them easily in the future. If you would like to make edits, please feel free, but please do not move the pages to mainspace. Thanks.
User:Ivanvector/Template:welcome-coi-candidate: a welcome notice for editors who are editing content about candidates in political elections, who appear to be editing content about themselves based on their username.
User:Ivanvector/Blues guitar playing: article userfied after Rfd determined the redirect should be deleted. Reviewing for possibility of rebuilding an article.
To my knowledge, I am the first editor to employ the red maple leaf emoji 🍁 in my signature, having started with this edit on 30 June 2015 at 21:58 UTC, and it pleases me greatly that several other users have since followed my lead. If you would like to flaunt your Canadian-ness to the world (or just really likeappreciate envy your hoser brethren) visit Special:Preferences and add <span style="color:red">🍁</span> to your signature where you would like the maple leaf to appear. Note that the use of templates in signatures is discouraged, so using {{red}} directly is not possible. Also note that you can't use the proper Canadian spelling of colour in the code, because of systemic bias against us.
I'd also appreciate being corrected if I am in fact not the first to use the maple leaf. Credit where credit's due, eh?
[2] - on the importance of awareness of your neighbour's culture
[3] - on the intersection of gender transparency and avant-garde fashion
Accountability
In the interest of transparency, should there ever be a need to mine my contributions, I am aware of the following edits which were made by other people on my computer while logged in, or edits I made while logged out:
[5] - a test of whether anonymous editors could post into active requests for adminship pages. At the time they could, obviously. The IP used here is a WIND Mobile dynamic IP, the other edits from that address are not mine.