User:Eric Corbett: Difference between revisions

My name is Eric Corbett. If you know me in real life and you hate my guts, chances are I feel just the same about you.

I made my first edit to Wikipedia on 6 June 2006, a minor copy edit to the Delian League,[2] but I didn't begin to contribute regularly until February 2007. One of the first articles I contributed significantly to was Sale, Greater Manchester, which achieved GA probably despite my efforts. I learnt a good deal about what was expected of a GA/FA in the process though. At about the same time I expanded the stub on Sale Water Park to what I thought was a pretty cool article. I look back on it now with some nostalgia, and tidying it up is on my list of things to do.

My personal baptism of fire with the GA/FA review processes came with Stretford, now a featured article. The road to FA was tough, but a fantastic learning experience, in all sorts of ways. When Chat Moss was promoted to FA on New Year's Eve 2007, I felt that maybe I was beginning to understand what was expected of a Wikipedia article, and since then I've helped to get a few more articles to GA and FA. I have an abiding interest in the quirky, such as the Manchester Mummy, Gropecunt Lane, and Tickle Cock Bridge, because of what they tell us about ourselves as much as the subject itself. I've also created more than 100 new articles, three of which are now FAs and three are GAs.

As well as those articles to which I've contributed content I also try to help with copyediting, particularly during the GA/FA review processes, where an objection to the quality of prose can be the difference between a pass and a fail. I flatter myself that I've been able to help at in that way at least Walter de Coventre, one of the 2,000th featured articles,[3] and one of the 3,000ths, Whitechapel murders. But I think one of the pages I'm most pleased with is Wikispeak: it says so much that I couldn't then have said elsewhere without being blocked.

In November 2007 I accepted a nomination for administrator,[4] perhaps the biggest mistake I've made on Wikipedia to date. That process coloured my view of the project, and I found its vindictiveness to be quite shocking. As a result I withdrew from it, and almost the entire project. Against my better judgement I was persuaded to once again undergo the ritual humiliation that RfA has become in May 2008.[5] That is not an experience I would care to repeat, and I would encourage other editors to think carefully before submitting to their own RfA.

I previously edited as Malleus Fatuorum (né Fatuarum).