Sirfurboy

I am around... a bit.

What to say? Well I chose some userboxes. The language ones annoy me as they don't relate to CEFR levels. I have passed C1 (and a GCSE) Welsh, B2 French, B1 German and although I don't have certificates for all the others, you can probably work out what I mean by the numbers for all the rest.

Interests are wide and varied. You may see me editing pretty much anywhere, or maybe you won't see me at all!

Editing philosophy

We are building an encylopaedia, presenting information in a page to an interested reader. Some pages annoy me a lot. I am annoyed when a page or section is incomprehensible to me or when I recognise it would be incomprehensible to me if I were not well versed in the subject. Wikipedia is not a place to make us, the editors, look clever. If people notice the editors, we failed. Wikipedia is there to make difficult stuff understandable and to make knowledge available to all.

I therefore will challenge stuff that is just incomprehensible, even if it is sourced. Wikipedia is a tertiary source, for the above purposes. The fact that something is a fact and is sourced does not mean it belongs on a Wikipedia page.

I spent a lot of time tracking down sources for citation requests, and at one point there were no pages on my watchlist with a "citation needed" on them. Not any more.

I could probably say more but why would anyone care. Better I keep it short and hope someone reads it than say more and ensure no one does!

Happy to talk on my talk page.

Wise words

It is a rule of thumb (one so obvious that we probably don't have a written policy on it) that you absolutely should not use references you have never seen, no matter how sure you are that it must say what you want it to say.
-- Catfish Jim and the soapdish 08:14, 16 March 2023 (UTC)