User:Kcren
About me
My name is Kevin Crenshaw. I’m an empowering leadership consultant and rapid culture change agent, often as a fractional COO.
My degree is in physics and I’m a former programmer, so I love all things technical and analytical. As a father of 10 children and serial entrepreneur I love people and business issues, and I study and fix interpersonal and organizational leadership and communication. I've also done a lot of genealogical research, which has made me a stickler for citing good sources. However, I've also learned that in any work in progress, a tertiary source is better than no source at all, since then you at least have a chance of following the chain back its origin.
What I believe (re: Wikipedia)
I'm a moderate inclusionist Wikipedian. While certain limits are important, we need to practice common sense, openness, and civility in applying notability guidelines (and others) lest we recursively suppress legitimate knowledge ("it's not in Wikipedia, therefore it must not be important"). For example, it would appear that our largely male, white, Northern, and sometimes heavy-handed Wikipedia editors excluded Donna Strickland from Wikipedia until she won the Nobel prize.
As with all highly-successful, highly-empowering organizations, this standard must be established from the top. If it isn’t, only the most strident, privileged voices win out.
| 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". |
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I base my position on these principles:
- Knowledge is power,
- It's not time to close the patent office (there are plenty of things yet to be discovered),
- Technology easily lets us bypass the trivial and focus on what's important (to us), and
- Social filtering can create groupthink, which suppresses valid, emerging ideas. Let people decide what's important to them (instead of letting the group decide what is important to the individual), or we'll end up with self-reinforced, group censorship.
Active editors have opinions (or: "Who doesn't have a potential conflict of interest?")
I also believe that those best qualified to write about topics have studied them carefully, which means they probably have some vested interest or strong opinion (which is itself a vested interest). Hopefully, that means all of us. However, this should not disqualify us—yet. Good editors can uphold a neutral point-of view or argue either side. Like a double-bladed ax, they are incredibly useful, possibly dangerous, and they need sharpening. So we should:
- Edit and discuss edits,
- Hold each other accountable to the established standards, and
- Teach those standards to each other as we do so. (This is where the community usually falls short right now.)
This creates better articles, makes us more tolerant of other perspectives, and it makes Wikipedia a better community and more robust library of human knowledge.
Common sense applies. For example, the external link at the top of this article could be argued as self-promoting, even though it’s on my personal author page. But do we really want only the most notable authors to clarify who they are? If so, how would other editors check for true conflicts of interest?
Some conflicts of interest are egregious. For example, Wikipedia admins accepting payment to moderate articles about commercial entities is a gross abuse of power because it creates an unlevel playing field. “Power without transparency and accountability will become tyranny.”
"Delete-and-run" editing (or: "And this makes us all smarter... how?")
I oppose "delete-and-run" editing just as I oppose punishment as a primary way of building a company. It is highly inefficient:
- It discourages effort and demotivates people who are trying,
- It teaches very little,
- It destroys positive contributions along with the negative ones, in one fell swoop,
- It incites contention, and
- It generally makes Wikipedia dumber.
Most importantly, it violates civility guidelines because it invalidates work without discussion—and in some cases without recourse.
(Of course, it doesn't take much effort, which may be why it is so popular.)
Instead, edit and teach, or even delete and teach, but teach the principles! It creates permanent value in the organization.
Specific articles I may look at, contribute to, or create (a Someday/Maybe list)
As appropriate third-party sources are available, I may look to help with these articles or sections in existing articles:
- Intermediate Area (a sadly-empty article on a fascinating and mysterious region of the world)
- L. David Marquet (he wrote a bestseller and influences leadership thought worldwide, he deserves a page)
- Leadership models (especially empowering leadership models)
- Semilunar Biopsy Repair
- Calvin P. Midgley
- Spontaneous Assembly
- Technology in genealogical research