User:JBW

• At 14:14 GMT on the 13th of April 2022, I had made 0.01538% of all the edits to the English language Wikipedia.
• At 12:34 GMT on the 24th of December 2022, this had risen to 0.01542%.
• At 32:34 GMT on the 6th of February 2023, it had reached 0.01546%.

Pronouns: he, she, it, they, them, which, that, one, him, her, we, you, us, what, whatever, whichever, ... some choices may surprise me, but I won't be offended by whatever you choose.

I created this account on 1 August 2006, and made my first edit on 11 August 2006. I created the account because one day I tried to edit at the local library, but found the IP was blocked because of vandalism. I think I had previously made a few edits anonymously, but I don't remember anything about those edits.

I originally used the user name JamesBWatson, but I was unhappy with a username which looked like a real name but wasn't, so on 19 September 2019 I had my user name changed to JBW, which also has the advantage of being quicker to type.

I started making very small edits, mostly minor corrections when I noticed errors in articles, but before long I came to make more substantial edits to articles. I have created a few new articles, but this has never been a major part of my editing. As time passed I gradually found that problems I found led me into other areas, including reverting vandalism, discussions on policy and administrative issues. Eventually there came a time when vandalism fighting was the main focus of my work. I was then asked by an administrator who had seen my anti-vandalism work to consider becoming an administrator myself, so that I could deal directly with vandals, instead of reporting them for someone else to follow up. I became an administrator on 21 June 2010.

I try hard to be welcoming to good faith new users, believing it is worth the effort of trying to explain why a contribution is unacceptable, rather than simply throwing a link to a guideline. Unfortunately I don't always live up to the standards I would like to, and sometimes slip into being less welcoming than I think I should, but I get enough thanks to know that I sometimes do succeed. When dealing with new users I am a very strong believer in avoiding the use of opaque acronyms. Yes, it takes longer to type "[[WP:COI|conflict of interest]]" than "[[WP:COI]]", or "[[WP:BIO|the notability guideline for people]]" than "[[WP:BIO]]", but if the purpose is to help the editor, not simply to dismiss them, it is worth the effort.

Wikipedia gets an enormous amount of use. This is not only because there is a lot of stuff here, but also because on the whole most of it is of a fairly good quality. Wikipedia would not have the amount of success it has unless most of its material was of a reasonably high quality. Unfortunately, in an encyclopaedia which anyone can edit, a lot of the editing is not of a good quality. Wikipedia's success therefore depends to a great extent on a large number of volunteers who give up a considerable amount of their own time to clean things up, improve the quality of what is there, and remove what is not so good. Some Wikipedians choose not to spend time on that, but to concentrate only on writing new content. That is absolutely fine, but sometimes those who make that choice disparage and vilify the work of others who make a different choice, and that is not absolutely fine. Writing content and cleaning up what is there are both essential and constructive parts of building the encyclopaedia. Some people make balanced contributions to both areas, others choose to concentrate on one area or the other. Whichever choice we make we can all respect others who contribute in different ways.