User:Radiomanlaughs

Me

Radiomanlaughs is a member of the MIT Class of 2003. He still proudly wears his brass rat, knowing that it plus his watch constitute two of the three pieces of jewelry he ever needs to own.

With interests widely spread across many topics, he hopes to contribute in as many places as possible in the Wikipedia community. It is also widely rumored that his near-OCD and fastidious relationship with the English language will result is many edits in the name of clarity and proper grammar.

Currently a drone for a government drone in Washington, D.C., RadiomanLaughs hopes to return to law school some day soon and introduce his OCD to the legal system.

He is married to his beautiful wife Amanda, a brilliant law student in Nashville, TN.

My Toolbox

Since I like to edit, refine, and generally muck about in the world that is wiki, I'm storing my most-used special links here:

Start Pages

• New
• Updates
• Disambiguation
• Stubs
• Requests

Code Snippets

• {{db|This is an article about [WHATEVER] that does not [[Wikipedia:Deletion_of_vanity_articles|assert]] the [[WP:BIO|importance or significance]] of the subject. Detail in talk.}}

My Positions

I have, throughout my discussion on Wikipedia articles, supported different opinions on definitions and implementations of Wikipedia standards. Below you will find my most current position on Wikipedia mechanics. I list these here so that I maintain a non-hypocritical stance in these topics, and so that others involves in discussions with me can clearly understand my position.

Categorization

1. I forward the argument having two, or even three articles that fit into a category does not justify creating it. Categories exist to organize and group articles together when the association wouldn't be obvious otherwise. If the title of a category is such that simply searching for it would return everything in the category, even if the "collection" didn't exist, then the category is superfluous. I put forward that to create a category, one would have to find a number of organization that makes a simple exchange of links unwieldy, at that least one of these articles is not obviously part of the category.

   The contrast (and exception) to this statement is that if searching for the category title returns more than should exist in the category, the category should also exist to differentiate it from the non-related articles.

2. Creating categories at an overly detailed level defeats the purpose of the category itself. Anyone already knowledgeable enough to seek out a category with a specific and unique title (mythical example: category "Wikipedia contributors with a username beginning with "Radio") will have, in finding the category, already discovered everything that could be contained within it. Categories must be a generalization intent on grouping information together that would not be obvious otherwise.
3. I Strongly believe in the following statement, extracted from Wikipedia:Categorization "Be careful of NPOV when creating or filling categories. Unless it is self-evident and uncontroversial that something belongs in a category, it should not be put into a category"

   I caveat this with the following: Instead of the article not being put into that category, the category structure should have it's definitions tightened, to make it clear and uncontroversial as to which category an article belongs.