User:VoX

I am 19 years old (June 2004), Capricorn (for those superstitious enough to care), male, in college, and I have a probably unhealthy passion for the past (history), the present (current affairs), and the future (science fiction). I live in Bucharest, Romania, which is not my home town, however (I moved here to attend college). My e-mail address is vocse@yahoo.com. The noms-de-plume (I hope I spelled that right, my French is getting rusty) "VoX" and "VoCSe" are based on my actual name, but I'm not going to tell you what that is ... because it's a ridiculous name even by Romanian standards.

Wikipedia has been very useful for my personal growth. Whilst I was certainly not ignorant before discovering it, this site has helped me expand my understanding of the world to levels that overwhelm me. I mean that literally, I might need a spare brain. I recently got a 90 on the Wikipediholic test.

If some anonymous user has been making changes with the quotation marks that you don't agree with, chances are you're reading his page. Most times I just forget to log in. However, I made sure to copy all the (mostly negative) comments I received while incognito to my own previously empty discussion page. This means that people who disagree with me on the quotation mark controversy will now know my e-mail address ... Oh no!

What I don't like on 'pedia

• Articles relating to Arab-Jewish relations. Someone always seems to dispute their neutrality, yet the articles mostly don't seem like POV, so that someone should probably learn to bury the hatchet.

• Articles written by East Europeans. This is quite strange as I am one myself. The Poland-related articles are almost guaranteed to contain misspellings and grammatical errors. Some Serbia-related articles present an obviously nationalist POV (it's obvious to me anyway, the historically-ignorant could easily be fooled). As for the Romania-related articles ... I once found an article containing the name "Iancu de Hunedoara". I don't remember if there was a link attached, but if there was one it wouldn't have lead anywhere. This important historical figure is known in English by the names "John Hunyadi" or "Janos Hunyadi" (his Hungarian name). I edited the article to reflect that.

• Postage stamps. Who would be that interested in the postage stamps of, say, the former colony of German East Africa? Except philatelists, of course. These sections add information, so I guess they should not be deleted, and I do find them mildly enjoyable as someone who used to collect stamps, but come on!

• POV. Adding it is bad enough (Sulu Sultanate was a fine example, until someone less amused than me deleted it), but when personal views actually replace useful information (consider Bioethics, for instance), I don't even know how to edit it; disposing of the junk would be dramatic, not to mention it would render the article pretty much a stub. Do you like stubs? I didn't think so.

• Geek culture. Like the postage stamps sections, articles about geek culture are enjoyable, yet too abundant and detailed. Imagine reading these 100 years from now, when few have ever heard of the X-Men. A more detailed history of South Africa would be more welcomed.

• Pop culture. Same complaints as above.

• Articles that contain a link to themselves.

Updates

Having been involved in a little quotation mark scandal, I've decided to leave them be. Unless I'll see something as obviously wrong as The novella was titled "Who Am I"? (I completely made that up), I'm not gonna touch it. I first thought this would be harder for me than being a kleptomaniac in a jewelry store, but I soon discovered that all it really leads to is less work.

Jesus-Christ-Mary-Mother-of-God! Check out Maximum Security. Geek culture overdose! There's also the painfully bad spelling, which I don't really have time to correct.

Well, I see someone edited the Bioethics article. Good job! NPOV may be boring, but this isn't an op-ed editorial.

I'm finally getting a vacation. It was well-deserved, believe me. The down side is that I'll be doing other things now (work, develop a tan, study a lot, learn how to drive, read, exercise), so I won't have that much time for Wikipedia. Don't expect to find me editing articles any time soon. I'll also be away from my college computer, so I made sure to put all my documents on a CD and erase them from my memory. The trouble is I just came across 4 articles that I would normally put on my huge list of articles that I will read one of these days. (I don't have time to read all the articles that arouse my interest.) Since my list is "unavailable", I'll put them here: neutron bomb, Fallout (computer game), relativistic kill vehicle, Goiâna accident.