User:Chanting Fox

Hi, I'm Chanting Fox.

Barnstar

Got this Barnstar 2 to 3 days after registering my account. I probably wouldn't have gotten my Barnstar so quickly if there weren't so many events of vandalism. It's sad how many vandals are out there... and how pathetic some of their attempts can be. My rule of thumb is that I look at the Recent Changes page and every once in a while, I'll check out an article that's been changed by an anon. user. Now initially I'm assuming that it might be a vandal (under the assumption that most vandals aren't going to even bother registering an account because it means that they're delayed from vandalizing other people's work), but I always check the page history to be sure,and you should as well. I once reverted a page assuming it was vandalism, but when the person returned what he'd put in, I realized that it was just a case of multiple spelling errors. That proved to be correct, as the editor continued to make minor edits to correct his spelling. Nevertheless, checking the history of a page is an easy way to tell whether or not the change is vandalism most of the time. I don't take any action until AFTER I do this check. Another rule of thumb is that if the topic is something that I don't understand or if it's hard to tell whether or not the change is legitimate, I don't do anything. My final rule of thumb is that you vandalize my user page, I will report you. Legitimate criticism is welcomed... insults and other offensive forms of expression are not.

Some random thoughts

So many vandals, so few original ideas. (Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is up to debate.)

If stupidity were a crime, we'd all be in jail. Unfortunately, some of the people we meet sometimes make us think that making stupidity a crime is a good idea.

Thomas Alva Edison is supposed to have said: "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." What I say is: "Vandalism is 1% silliness, 49% stupidity, and 50% aggravation."

You know... I do so many reverts on Wikipedia that sometimes I think I should get paid for it!

Userpage Vandalism Count

So far, my userpage has been vandalized 19 times.

Wikipedia Activities

As my barnstar should tell you, one of my activities is monitoring for and dealing with vandalism to the extent of the abilities of any registered user. I also look for the creation of new articles. The unfortunate fact is that a lot of the time these new articles are nothing but mere nonsense, and I mark those with a speedy tag. Not really out of the ordinary IMHO. As for articles.... don't have much to attribute to myself there. My activities there consist mostly of occasional spelling and grammar edits. I'm working on one article right now... I don't think I'll be able to get it up to the point where I can remove the cleanup tag I placed on it... but it's quite a bit better than it was before I started working on it.