User:Coder Dan

enThis user is a native speaker of the English language.

Hi, my name is Dan. I used to contribute to Wikipedia in a variety of ways, but I've given up because ignorant or malicious editors have resisted or undone so much of my work. Wikipedia desperately needs adult supervision.

For newbies

• Wikipedia:Cheatsheet
• Tony1's writing tutorials
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style
• Style guidelines for film articles
• How to write a plot summary

Plot summaries

Film plot summaries I've worked on

#  50 First Dates A  Absolute Power – Angel – Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) B  Beauty and the Beast (1991) – A Bill of Divorcement C  The Cat and the Canary (1939) – Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen D  Dial M for Murder E  Emma (1996) F  Fargo – The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) G  Galaxy Quest – George of the Jungle – Ghost World H  Hands Across the Table – Hang 'Em High – Herbie: Fully Loaded – High Plains Drifter – Hold Back the Dawn – The Hot Chick – Houseboat I  If You Could Only Cook – The Incredibles J  Jumanji K  Kim Possible: A Sitch in Time L  Last Action Hero – Legally Blonde – Life-Size – Little Nicky – Love Me Tonight M  The Mad Miss Manton – Monsters, Inc. – My Sassy Girl (2008) N  The Naked Edge O  Once Upon a Time in the West – Only You (1994) – The Outsiders P  The Parent Trap (1998) – Pay It Forward – People Will Talk – The Princess Bride – Prudence and the Pill – The Pumpkin Eater R  The Rat Race – Real Genius – Rear Window – Red Dust – The Redhead from Wyoming S  Scooby-Doo – The Searchers – See No Evil, Hear No Evil – Silver Streak – Sky High (2005) – Smiley Face – Spider-Man – A Star Is Born (1937) – Sunset Boulevard T  Tango & Cash – Terror by Night – Tiger Bay (1959) – The Time Machine (2002) – Timecop V  Vivacious Lady W  Wait Until Dark – Welcome to the Dollhouse – Westworld – While You Were Sleeping – Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Wikipedia has a quality problem

Wikipedia is plagued with problems in grammar, writing style, and organization. Too many editors lack the skills, and in some cases the maturity, that should be required to contribute to an encyclopedia. This is especially a problem with anonymous editors, but it also applies to registered wikipedians, including administrators.

Bad English

• If your password only contains letters or only numbers, ...
• the word "claim" can imply that a statement is incorrect
• Fundamentally an action–drama, the characters grapple ...
• Taking place in 1840s England, Cedric Brown has seven children
• The film currently garners an 82% approval rating
• the film currently garners an 87% approval rating
• That series meets the criteria ... Subsequently a list is warranted.
• Based on 112 reviews collected by the film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 22% of critics gave the film a positive review.
• critically panned, with an 11% negative rating
• she is too embarrassed. (editor deleted the effect of embarrassment)
• the husband and wife ... who owns the dog
• The trio track Singer down, who tells them ...
• ... Appearance Generators, a device ...

Bad style

• Unrelated ideas

• Partially inspired by the novel The Scarlet Letter, the film was shot at Screen Gems studios.
• Based on a true story, the film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival
• influenced by Atlas Shrugged and the Watchmen, it was written and directed by Brad Bird

• duplicated text in Westworld plot summary

Categories

• no common parent category for combined "Anime and Manga" categories
• deletion of Love Me Tonight from 1930s musical films category with no subcategory to replace it
• Categories for countries and species are named as sets but treated as topics. Each of these should be divided into two categories, a set with a plural name and a topic with a singular name. For example, Category:Dog should be created as a parent of Category:Dogs, and all topical content should be moved from cat:Dogs into cat:Dog.
• There's a widespread confusion between categories (abstract sets) and category listings (Wikipedia web pages). Many editors seem to think that articles cease to be members of a parent category when they are "diffused" into child categories. This reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what categories are.
• trying to implement software changes through editing processes (awkward and unreliable)

• Categories as associations

• Leprechaun films: Horror, science fiction, and comedy; serial killer films

Extremes and inconsistency

Editors often work at cross purposes. Sometimes they prefer opposite extremes over reasonable compromises.

• Names of starring actors listed in the lede of film articles:
    One editor adds redundant first names in the plot summary
    while another removes the names altogether.

Churning

Sometimes editors replace high-quality text with text in their own personal writing style, which in many cases is worse than the original.

• complete rewrite of The Incredibles plot summary (rewritten by an administrator, much worse than the previous version)
• complete rewrite of Kim Possible: A Sitch in Time plot summary (anonymous editor, gratuitous changes, incoherent, too many details and quotations)

Excessive detail in plot summaries

• Wait Until Dark