User:Bearian/Portfolio

I hope is that in 2026:

1. Wikipedia can be for everyone. Knowledge should be free and truthful. It should not be a crime to edit Wikipedia.
2. We limit vandalism, defamation liability, LLMs, paid editing, and conflicts of interest.
3. We focus on quality over quantity in articles.
4. We protect our charitable status.
5. We can continue to be as collaborative as we have been in the past 2 years or so, which greatly reduces stress and edit wars.

• In some cases, this means deleting articles that don't contribute to these goals, especially BLPs.
• I have just a wee bit of Schadenfreude that every single one of our biggest critics, from New Delhi to Palm Beach and West 17th Street, is in Those Files.

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

Any one of these issues is a reputation risk; combined these are concerns about our long-term safety and viability:

1. Scams over undisclosed paid editing. See Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Scam warning
2. Deprecated mainstream media, with the rise of content creators, all of varying degrees of reliability.
3. Attacks by the extremely wealthy, reactionary, and powerful, who look upon our very existence as a repository of information and truth as dangerous.
4. Backlog of 15 years of 70,000 unsourced articles, especially geographical stubs. This hurts our credibility and vandalism sneaks in. (C-----S-----46 and D---B------ did serious harm.)

• See Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2025-01-15/In the media.
• See also newyorker.com Elon Musk also has a problem with Wikipedia and DOGE wants to appoint teams to monitor non-profits and also eliminating Harvard's tax exemption. Then, in May 2025, Trump announced that it would forbid Harvard from allowing international students to attend the university; the trustees of Harvard then sued.
• See this report on Congress investigating is now. H/T Wildfireupdateman. See also here, with heartening commentary.
• See here for how law firms are paying their staff to edit Wikipedia articles to cover up scandals
• See this report (pdf) for how information warfare has come to Wikipedia.
• See also the attacks on philanthropy.
• See also this story about Senator Theodore Cruz alleging bias.
• See further Speech Wars by Politico.
• Finally, PM Modi of India has given "notice" to Wikipedia.

Solutions

• Add different sides of opinions, to make an article more neutral; for example, I edited Participation trophy to add opinions (justifications and criticisms) and citations to make the article comply WP:NPOV. Each citation doesn't have to be neutral, but the article overall has to be so. Not every opinion is equal or worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia, but a survey of opinion is usually appropriate.
• The editors who are not here to create an encyclopedia are a disaster waiting to happen, because we have the ADL, New York Post, Elon Musk, and the Heritage Foundation all trolling us to catch us in a trap so that Trump can revoke our 501(c)(3) status. I'm willing to work with the ADL, because their report has identified some things we can do better. In particular, I agree that "Wikipedia needs to do far more to address anti-Jewish and anti-Israel bias and coordination." However, almost all of their suggested strategies are not realistic solutions.
• Source reliably all articles that lack any sources, for example, Category:Articles lacking sources from December 2009. We have an ongoing discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles. The current project is at Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced articles/Backlog drives/June 2025, through which I personally sourced 90 articles. "By the end of the drive, we reached 49,028, a net decrease of 9,509 and surpassing our goal of getting under 50,000."
• Assess all stubs for quality and importance, for example Category:Stub-Class law articles. User:Nettrom was especially helpful on creating User:Nettrom/sandbox/WikiProject Law stub predictions.
• Any controversial proposed deletion must be taken to AfD, which allows for due process (7 days' time minimum, widely followed, and allows discussion and ATD). This specifically would prevent certain topics from getting deleted or censored without debate, and prevent discrimination.
• Gently remind people paying for Wikipedia articles that Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_not_Crunchbase.
• Work with organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League and editors to ensure NPOV on topics such as antisemitism, feminism, and racial justice.
• The Anti-Disinformation Repository is a good resource.
• At WP:AfD and WP:Prod, !vote to delete autobiographies that can't be fixed without starting from scratch, with detailed reasoning; but if they can be fixed with normal editing processes, then doing so as quickly as possible as the consensus will allow.
• Follow procedures for each WikiProject, such as what WP Medicine did; see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2025-07-18/WikiProject_report.
• Wikipedia:Don't feed the nabobs.
• Wikipedia:Quality control.
• Bottom line: To paraphrase what I wrote at a WP:AfD, one of the biggest legitimate complaints about Wikipedia is that we have become a go-to place for separatists and irredentists. Of course there's also the paid editing, AI, unsourced BLPs, etc. When you boil down all of my current concerns it's that powerful interests want to use these articles as an excuse to destroy us. If we don't clean up our act, then they will clean us up.

This is an assorted list of things done and to do.

My WP:AfD stats list is .

My articles created in the past 30 days is here: .

At the end of 2013, I softened up, after an off-wiki email exchange with another editor. By the end of 2014, I retired. My block log is here: . Regarding user names, I did not block them unless they were already reported to WP:UAA, see , or are seriously obnoxious.

• Regarding the issue of my supposed consensus-violating inclusionism at RFA and AFD, I did the research to confirm or to deny it, see User_talk:Bearian#My_recent_record.2C_for_the_record. I am not much more inclusionist than the average Wikipedian. For the period May 1 to 11, 2011, I was in line with the consensus on WP:RFA exactly 100 % of the time, and on WP:AfD a bit over 92 % of the time. As of May 2017, I was more deletionist, but still in line at about 95 % of the time. As of August 2024, I have voted about 68 % for deletion, 19 % to keep, and 23 % other options or merely commenting, and in line with the majority 95 % of the time.

• I have had 406.8 edits per recent page patrolled, per User:Snottywong/Patrollers. Bearian (talk) 19:28, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

• I have sometimes made edits from IP User talk:24.97.138.94. Bearian (talk) 20:04, 9 March 2010 (UTC) See Special:Contributions/24.97.138.94. Bearian (talk) 15:15, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

• I attended the frist Wiknic on August 11, 2007.

Images from the NYC Wiknic:

• I attended the NYC Wikiconference 2009 and met Jimbo Wales.
• I attended two chapter meetings, one at Columbia University and one at new York University, around 2009-2011.
• I attended the June 25, 2011 Wiknic at Norman's Landscape, with my fiancee'.
• I attended the Art + Feminism Wikithon on early 2017 at MoMA.
• Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/May_2020.
• Wikimania NYC in 2023 and 2025, and smaller gatherings.
• WM North America in 2025.

• RfA declined first on 8/9/07 at and , and declined for the time being, but said "I'll consider" on 8/30/07 at .

• I retired as an admin in December 2014.

• Please do not edit this; it has expired; this is for reference only: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Bearian.

(I'm cross posting this here from my AfD page and a talk with a newbie.) Some articles appear to be AI, but it's actually just lazy, clichéd writing, poorly sourced. Unsolicited advice to young writers: find your sources and evidence first, then write.

I have been a teacher for over 20 years at every level. I learned early on, and then taught my students:

1. First find the sources, information, and current knowledge. Collect what is known. Start with (a) tertiary sources like Wikipedia, then (b) secondary sources like textbooks, and finally (c) primary sources like scholarly journals and news stories.
2. Then do whatever experiment, calculation, or experience what you are investigating. Solve the problem.
3. Then write an essay, paper, or report based on that research and you experience, solution, or experiment.

In life, online, and in school, stick with those three ordered steps. Don't skip step 1 a, b, and c.