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| ==How I work==
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| I generally do not follow up on non-essential issues in individual articles. If the editors there do not like what I do, I usually go elsewhere. [[WP:OWN]] is a good policy, but hard to enforce. ''' [[WP:BRD]]''' when used for major changes seems mainly designed to increase the work at the Arbitration Committee.
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| If anyone who knows less than me tries to lecture to me, I know and use a good many ways of responding, other than simply asserting authority. But when someone knows more, I want to be taught. If I'm wrong, I say so. If I've messed things up, I apologize. If someone even thinks I've messed things up, I also apologize, for I must have been unclear in what I did. I'd rather get things right, than get them my way & wrong. For most things, there are several alternative right ways, but there will also be several alternative wrong ways. <br />
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| If I adopt too much of a lecturing tone myself, I hope people alert me, because it usually wasn't intended. I've taught (biology, and librarianship), and the manner stays with you.
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| I have never been able to spell, and I type very inaccurately. If I've made a typo, just fix it--don't lecture me about it, for it won't do any good. Other people make typos too, and if I notice them, I fix them quietly. I think I'm good at straightening out unclear sentences, and I do some of this sort of copyediting as I go.
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| ==My approach to spam==
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| Wikipedia is always dealing with paid spammers, people who earn their living by putting links to their own sites into web pages elsewhere. It is a large and well paid profession, and their activities are a serious danger to the integrity of any good site like ours. We have our methods for detecting and dealing with them. The most effective way is to block access to their web sites, by preventing links to known spam sites from appearing in Wikipedia. This is a partially automated procedure, carried out at several different levels, both at enWP and cooperatively by the different WPs. The other method is denying access to known spammers; this is a never-ending battle, for they just switch to a new account. Detecting these accounts, which we call "sock-puppets", puppets made by stuffing one sock into another as done to amuse young children, needs to be very fast and very stringent to be effective. This has led to a practice of blocking on any reasonable suspicion. Alas, anyone who deals with this much of the time will soon become over-suspicious, banning well-intentioned people and blocking good links. It's an inevitable side-effect of policing work.
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| This applies equally to commercial and non-commercial sites. I find the commercial ones easier to deal with, because they tend to add even larger numbers, and get caught all the sooner. And the non-commercial spammers have a narrower line between them and the well-intentioned people.
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| As for paid editing, I think it is wrong, because it interferes with the normal way people work here, and interferes with the good faith we extend to all users. The effects of such editing as we know about has usually been very poor articles. That need not always be the case, but so far almost nobody who understands Wikipedia well enough to write good articles has been willing to do it for money.
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