Alison Wheeler was elected as the founding Chair of Wiki Educational Resources Ltd in January 2006, the legal name of the first Wikimedia UK chapter. In addition to British English (en-GB) and American English (en-US) she can also get by in French and German most of the time having worked across the whole of Europe for major US and UK companies as a business consultant and program manager. She has been involved with Wikimedia and the Foundation since March 2004.

"Sometimes I'm the lightening^[1] rod, Sometimes I'm the spark!"

One of the aspects of the 'lightning rod' approach is that it serves to draw out those who otherwise try to hide in the shadows where they can act against our improvement and development of this free encyclopaedia with impunity. Whilst many of those who have commented upon my recent edits are entirely innocent it is clear that others were not^[2]. It is clear to me that responses to my edits and answers have, sadly, served to confirm my suspicions in that respect and identify some individuals as biased and actively seeking to make things difficult for me where ever they can (ie trolling). Whilst I hate to admit defeat and give them the appearance of success they really do not deserve, I shall consider my position awhile.

Is that people would spend less time on prettifying their userpages, or seeking to delete articles or useful information on pages, and actually spend their time here *adding* to "the sum of all human knowledge". The Wikimedia Foundation and its allied Chapters fund this operation through thousands of individual donations, and editing the content in order to increase that record of knowledge is and will always be far more important than getting hung up on 'process' and 'policy'. The only policy that matters is to *add useful stuff*.

I can do no better than to quote someone who wrote a comment on one of my blogs:

"Deleting stuff is really stupid, there´s been a few times I've looked things up on wp, and it´s had ´marked for deletion´ pasted over it, I've felt lucky to get there and find the info I wanted before the vandals who run lurk there wiped it. Often I don´t need to know a lot of in depth detail so even a stub is enough to be really useful.

"Probably a good many people who actually *use* the site find things out just want as much info as possible, so long as it´s accurate it doesn't matter if it´s not complete so long as the gaps are marked. Most people won´t have an account and don´t have time to get into a long argument with some troll who spends their life being negative rather than actually contributing content and filling in the gaps."

Another commenter had noted:

"Then again, it may just be naivety on my part in assuming that an encyclopædia is about amassing as much knowledge as possible."

Indeed.

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or ping me on the Fedi at @AlisonW@fedimon.uk

By training I've been in the computer field (trainer, programmer, analyst, systems & business consultant) since 1976, including major FTSE250 and Fortune 500 multi-national companies up to Head of Department and IT Director levels as well as self-employment and a board member of start-up companies. This included reviewing and designing systems for banks, insurance companies, and government departments. During the time as the worldwide Internet Program Manager for CHSE I travelled a great deal to every country in Scandinavia, Eastern and Western Europe, using my language skills, and have also consulted to various companies educating then about internationalisation and localisation issues in web interfaces - which isn't just about the text of a language! Now, I'm retired with time to do more enjoyable things ...