User:AlisonW

Este læti. Et mirabiles. Bibite coffeam!

Wikipedia:Babel

enThis user is a native speaker of the English language.

de-2Dieser Benutzer hat fortgeschrittene Deutschkenntnisse.

fr-2Cet utilisateur peut contribuer avec un niveau intermédiaire en français.

la-1Hic usor simplici latinitate contribuere potest.

Hi, I'm AlisonW and though I worked in IT for most of my life I'm now retired. In the past I also worked in the entertainment world as a sound engineer, lighting designer, and tour manager. I used to be very active in and around the Westminster Bubble for the LibDems, for remaining in the EU, and in LGBT politics since the early 1980s, being one of the founders of the UK Chapter of the Lesbian Avengers and of the London Lesbian and Gay Centre (LLGC).

My Hippo going through a ford

I live in Markyate, have an MBA from the Open University Business School, drink a lot of strong black coffee, am polyamorous, and drive a Land Rover Freelander 2 car. I love Off-roading, especially on BOATs. Since I retired I even bought a Swift caravan!

I was present at the first ever WikiMeet, in London on 5th June 2004, and some others since.

My Wish for Wikipedia

Is that people would spend less time on seeking to delete articles or useful information on pages, and actually spend their time here *adding* to "the sum of all human knowledge". The Wikimedia Foundation and its allied Chapters fund this operation through thousands of individual donations, and editing the content in order to increase that record of knowledge is and will always be far more important than getting hung up on 'process' and 'policy'. The only policy that matters is to *add useful stuff*, so yes, I'm definitely an 'Inclusionist'.

I can do no better than to quote someone who wrote a comment on one of my blogs:

"Deleting stuff is really stupid, there´s been a few times I've looked things up on wp, and it´s had ´marked for deletion´ pasted over it, I've felt lucky to get there and find the info I wanted before the vandals who run lurk there wiped it. Often I don´t need to know a lot of in depth detail so even a stub is enough to be really useful.

"Probably a good many people who actually *use* the site find things out just want as much info as possible, so long as it´s accurate it doesn't matter if it´s not complete so long as the gaps are marked. Most people won´t have an account and don´t have time to get into a long argument with some troll who spends their life being negative rather than actually contributing content and filling in the gaps."

Another commenter had noted:

"Then again, it may just be naivety on my part in assuming that an encyclopædia is about amassing as much knowledge as possible."

Indeed.

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A note on editing

Because my account was one of those hacked in late 2016 I switched to the two-factor authentication on this account. Thing is, I don't always have the authenticator to hand when I want to do a quick one-off edit via my phone or tablet, so you'll often see them as IP-only edits instead. As I have fixed IP addresses I can verify that any edits associated with 84.45.170.208/28 (prior to November 2022) or by User:90.155.48.18 (since December 2022) are by me.

This user has been on Wikipedia for 20 years, 9 months and 6 days.

This user participated in Wikimania 2014 held in London, United Kingdom.

This user lives in Hertfordshire

This user is a former resident of the European Union.

This user objects to Brexit and wishes the UK to rejoin the EU

This user is English.

theyThis user considers singular they standard English usage.

less & fewerThis user understands the difference between less & fewer.

their
there
they'reThis user thinks that there are too many people who don’t know that they're worse than their own children at spelling!

"…"This user favours typewriter style quotation marks over typographic ones.

…This user is addicted to ellipses and has been known to use them indiscriminately...

;This user knows how to use a semicolon correctly.

This user thinks good grammar is sexy.

“,;:’This user is a punctuation stickler.

enThis user supports the
English English language.

This user is a member of the Association of Inclusionist Wikipedians.

This user has an account on GitHub.

prog-NThis user thinks in bytecode and dreams of electric sheep.

@This user can be reached by email.

6This user is a WikiSenior.

This user is a citizen of the United Kingdom.

This user attended
Imperial College London

This user is an
Open University graduate

MBAThis user has a Master of Business Administration degree.

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Categories

WikiWomen, Queer Wikimedians

This user is a member of the Association of Inclusionist Wikipedians. The motto of the AIW is conservata veritate, which translates to "with the preserved truth". This motto reflects the inclusionist desire to change Wikipedia only when no knowledge would be lost as a result.