Accounts
Previous usernames
I used the username User:Francophonie&Androphilie from November of 2012 to January of 2013. I was then renamed to User:PinkAmpersand, which I edited under till October of 2020, when I took on my current username. From then until January of 2022, I considered my second rename to have been a "soft clean start" and made my old usernames slightly hard to find without outright hiding them. At this point, though, I just see them as regular past usernames.
Alts and logged-out edits
I have two currently-active alternate accounts: User:'zinbot, a bot account; and User:'zin is short for Tamzin, used for testing and the occasional non-controversial mass edit. I also have registered, but have no plans to ever use, the doppelgänger accounts User:TamzinHadasa, User:Tamzin Kelly, and User:Tamzin Hadasa Kelly.
As PinkAmpersand I had a bot account used only on Wikidata, d:User:AmpersandBot; a public-computer account, User:PublicAmpersand; and a doppelgänger account, User:PinkAmpers&.
I have also created in the past, for testing purposes, User:Francophonie&Aardvark, testwiki:User:PinkAmpersand2 (testwiki only), User:Example male, and User:Example female. There may be one or two other testing accounts I've forgotten.
I occasionally edited mainspace logged out (in a policy-compliant manner) in my first few months of having this account, but stopped doing so to avoid any appearance of impropriety. I was never blocked or warned for any of those IP edits, and would link them but for the fact that I can't remember what they were. I have not (intentionally) edited logged-out since.
Connections to other users
I sometimes share an IP address with:
A previous shared-IP situation (with my brother, who made all of one edit) was disclosed to ArbCom at the time (c. 2013).
Before this account
Prior to becoming a Wikipedian, I edited occasionally from IP, including sometimes engaging in bored after-school vandalism. I made two throwaway accounts, User:Snowforme (I'd seen WP:SEMI linked in editnotices and thought I'd be very clever if I gamed autoconfirmed, but then forgot to actually do that) and User:SnowflakeAZ (which was used for one vandalistic edit). I've never been to Snowflake, Arizona; I just as a 15-year-old thought that the "Snow for me and flake for you" line sounded amusingly flirtatious. To the extent that it matters, after almost a decade's tenure, much of it devoted to anti-vandalism work: Yes, I do regret the one vandalistic edit I made with SnowflakeAZ, and the handful I made as an IP. Don't vandalize, kids.
Blocks, and what we can learn from them
I was blocked once, about a month into my editing tenure, after being mistaken for a sockpuppet. I was unblocked by the same admin three hours later "with apologies". I'm reminded often of what the blocking admin, Coren, said when unblocking me (emphasis added):
“ | Please accept my apologies for the block. I realise now in retrospect that I should have discussed this matter with you before blocking the account. I'll still offer a piece of advice, however: don't delve too deeply and quickly in the back-office aspects of the project – it's rather seedy back there and you'll end up with a jaundiced view. Not unlike mine, I suppose. | ” |
As someone who now does a lot of anti-sockpuppetry work, I do try to keep those words in mind.
More recently, my alternate account, 'zin is short for Tamzin, was briefly blocked when it was... mistaken for a sockpuppet, just in a different way! I'd used it to test one edit filter and instead had tripped a scarier edit filter, and the blocking admin assumed based on the username that it was some troll trying to harass me. My only takeaway from that is that sometimes things get messy and mistakes get made.
Privacy
M
y n am e i s T a mz i n Ha d as a K e ll y. There you go. Only person in the world with that name. Everyone I know who cares a lot about being outed seems to stress constantly about it, so I decided a long time ago to not care. This does not constitute consent to being harassed.I waive any privilege under WP:OUTING against people linking on-wiki to accounts where I participate under my real name, nor quoting on-wiki anything I say in public with those accounts, although it'd still be a dick move to for no good reason go quoting personal things I've said. (To avoid causing a false alarm for the OS team, you should probably link to this section if referring to me in a way that would normally violate OUTING; if "Tamzin" isn't in the account's username or display name, you should probably explain why the account qualifies as one where I participate under my real name
. This is for your benefit and the OS team's benefit, not mine.) If you see a "Tamzin" on a site and are wondering if it's me, feel free to ask me. I'll give an honest answer. I maintain my privacy rights under OUTING for any accounts where the name "Tamzin" cannot be seen in any public-facing context, although these days I don't have many of those.
COI
Just by virtue of my background, I know an unusually high number of BLP subjects. I'm also the child of a deceased biography subject. I used to give a central listing of this, but that started to feel like a bit of a "kick me" sign. Instead, I disclose as needed. If the COI is just in the form of "Yeah, we've met" or "Yeah I was vaguely involved in this thing", I reserve the right to edit such articles (in line with WP:COI); I always disclose the connection in my edit summary, which is a significantly higher degree of compliance than policy demands. On articles where I have a more substantial COI (relatives, employers, etc.), I use {{edit request}} for anything other than obvious vandalism/BLPvio.
I have never edited Wikipedia for compensation, and never will.
Wellness
I have dissociative identity disorder or something similar to it, and either have bipolar disorder or have DID symptoms that manifest the same way. Hopefully this is the only time you need consider that information; I am strongly committed to not letting my condition(s) adversely affect my editing or my fellow editors. When I need to take a break from editing to straighten things out, I do.
However, if I ever seem a bit forgetful, or I seem to flit from one project to the next a bit erratically, now you know why.
Accountability
I am committed to responding civilly and open-mindedly to any good-faith challenges to my actions as an admin, SPI clerk, or bot operator, as well as to any good-faith suggestion that I should resign any permission or role.
I have no interest in serving as an admin if I do not have the community's enduring support. If anything should happen to make me think that I no longer have the community's support, or if an uninvolved bureaucrat notifies me that they have reached that conclusion, I will promptly stand for a reconfirmation RfA, with the same support threshold as for any other RfA, and will not use the admin tools while that process is pending.
If elected to ArbCom
If elected to ArbCom, the above would be modified to:
I have no interest in serving as an admin or arbitrator if I do not have the community's enduring support. If anything should happen to make me think that I no longer have the community's support, or if an uninvolved bureaucrat notifies me that they have reached that conclusion, I will promptly stand for a reconfirmation RfA, with the same support threshold as for any other RfA, and will not use the admin tools while that process is pending. If the reconfirmation fails, I will resign as an arbitrator as well.
I do not think that being elected to ArbCom should guarantee lifetime access to CheckUser and Oversight, given that the electorate is not primarily considering suitability for those tools. Should there be no procedure in place at the end of my time on ArbCom to reconfirm ex-arbs' CU/OS access, I will retain those tools only until the next CU/OS appointments, at which point I will resign and seek re-appointment the regular way.