Principally interested in federal and provincial/territorial elections in Canada since Confederation, and biographical information on individuals who have run for or have been elected to office. Wikipedia is but one of the many sources I have used to build a database on this topic over the years; in return, if some of those other sources expand on or correct what currently appears in Wikipedia, I believe that sharing my findings is the right thing to do.

Pet peeves on Wikipedia

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  1. When someone edits an article to correct grammar, but in fact introduces a grammatical error.
  • I get annoyed by those who think that a run-on sentence is simply a sentence that is too long. (It's in fact a sentence that has two independent clauses that run together without proper punctuation or appropriate conjunctions.)
  • My eyes bleed whenever people capitalize nouns with the belief that it makes those words more important, or as if nouns are capitalized as they always are in German.
  • I cry a little bit as the realization that many have forgotten how to use semicolons and colons sinks in.
  • People who don't understand (or refuse to understand) what having a "neutral point of view" means.
    • Corollary: Bad faith edits.
  • The fact that anybody without an account on Wikipedia can edit anything (I'm looking at you, edits by anonymous IPs!).
    • Exception: Useful good faith edits.
    • I get really annoyed with partisans who either love or detest the federal Liberals and change the "PC" nominal abbrevation in a Canadian political figure's bio to "Lib," thinking that PC stands for "Progressive Conservative" when in fact it stands for "Privy Council."
    • I fume when anyone can have the audicity to abbreviate the current federal Conservatives "PC."
  • People who think Wikipedia is like LinkedIn, and leave messages in the Talk area thinking the subject of the article is going to respond to them.
  • People who confuse "encyclopedia" and "news feed." Wikipedia is meant to be the former, not the latter. Biographies of living people should be amplified with a view on the long term.