Right, let's get this over with. You're looking at a Wikipedia user page.
It is not an encyclopedia article. It's not the place for a spirited debate about one, either. If you've stumbled upon this anywhere other than the digital halls of Wikipedia, you're looking at a mirror site. That means it's likely stale, and the user this page is allegedly about has no connection to whatever back-alley of the internet you're currently in. The original, for what it's worth, is located at [en.wikipedia.org). Don't get lost.
Here are some links for the perpetually busy: Recent Changes Signpost, Wikipedia:Press coverage 2025, and a staggering 285+ Signpost articles. Knock yourself out.
• Deadlines rendered in UTC, because the universe doesn't care about your time zone. The current time is a completely arbitrary 2025-11-19 08:23:35 ( • v • t • e )
Writing: 22 November 00:01 (3 days left; 25%)
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Publishing: 23 November 00:01 (4 days left; 30%)
There are 2 days, 15 hours, 37 minutes and 25 seconds until the next self-imposed moment of panic. You can (refresh) if watching a countdown is your idea of a good time.
The Signpost
The hub of it all, apparently. • The Signpost (talk · chat, if you're feeling social)
• About (The mission statement.) • Archives (Where old news goes to rest.) • Subscribe (If you want more of this in your life. An interesting choice.)
• Newsroom (talk) • Coordination (Herding cats, professionally.) • Submissions (The slush pile.) • Suggestions (The wish list.)
• Writing • Content + resources (Rules for the aspiring.) • Formatting (How to make the words look right.) • (cheatsheet) (For those with short attention spans.) • Style (The elusive art of not sounding like a robot.) • Technical (talk) (The nuts and bolts.)
Recent changes, for the truly dedicated: main · talk
• Newsletters ( • v • t • e )
A Curated Collection of Human Wisdom and Folly
"Information appears to stew out of me naturally, like the precious ottar of roses out of the otter."
- Mark Twain, from Roughing It (p. iv). A rather fragrant, if messy, metaphor for the creative process.
"Every fool aspired to be a knave."
- From Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, p.50. A timeless observation on the trajectory of ambition.
"Give fools their gold, and knaves their power; let fortune's bubbles rise and fall; who sows a field, or trains a flower, or plants a tree, is more than all."
- John Greenleaf Whittier. A lovely sentiment for a world that consistently rewards the knaves and ignores the gardeners.
"Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains… an unuprooted small corner of evil."
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, from The Gulag Archipelago, Part 4, Chapter 1, “The Ascent.” The inconvenient, messy truth that ruins all the simple narratives.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." [1]
- Upton Sinclair. The foundational principle of modern civilization, elegantly stated.
• If you feel an overwhelming need to get in touch, you can email me here. Please consider the possibility that you don't.
A piece by Ben Shahn, a Register to Vote poster for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) from 1946. A relic from a time when people thought voting might change things. Below, Chopin's Polonaise op. 40 no 1, as performed by Luis Sarro. Because a little drama is necessary.
The date is November 19, 2025. The current UTC time and date can be found by clicking here (refresh), if you've lost track. It's easy to do.
- A quote attributed to Bayard Rustin. A noble and often perilous pastime.
Ongoing Debates and Discussions
A glimpse into the sausage-making process. Partake if you must. • Centralized discussion
• Blurbs for recent deaths In the News (Crafting epitaphs by committee.) • What should happen to speedy deletion criterion X3? (An argument over the rules of digital incineration.) • New GA quick fail criterion for AI (Trying to teach the old guard about the new ghosts in the machine.) • Amending process to retain adminship after recall (A discussion on how to fire the volunteers.) • Writing articles with large language models (The future is here, and it's written by a vaguely sentient algorithm.) • Admin recall check-in (More procedural wrangling.)
For a more comprehensive list of ongoing arguments, see the dashboard.
(• view • edit • history • watch • archive • talk • purge)
The English Wikipedia by the Numbers
A statistical snapshot of this collaborative obsession. • MediaWiki version: 1.46.0-wmf.2 (e49d3f6) • Content articles: 7,092,576 (And yet, the one you need is probably a stub.) • Total pages: 64,492,645 (Most of which are arguments.) • Uploaded files: 953,212 • Edits: 1,318,276,301 (A monument to human persistence.) • Registered users: 50,200,267 (Of whom 224,120 have been active in the past month, which is... a number.) and 829 administrators (The janitors.)
• Data as of 08:23, 19 November 2025 (UTC). • You can update it, if these numbers are what you live for.
Help stop paid editing. A noble, if likely futile, quest. If you have brilliant ideas on how to slay this dragon, please leave them at Wikipedia talk:Paid-contribution disclosure. If you've spotted specific instances of corporate shilling, note them at WP:COIN.
Show another photo I uploaded to Commons. Go on. It's a surprise every time.
Defy censorship. Because information, like water, finds a way. Or so they say.
How better to illustrate the concept of a pocket calculator than with a working, interactive calculator? It's a stunningly literal interpretation. Go ahead, do some math. I'll wait.
0 MCMRM−M+C±%√789÷456×123−0.=+00000000
A Few Personal Curiosities
- Some favorites of mine: A curated list of things that presumably bring this user some semblance of joy.
- Pennsylvania counties (clickable map): Because sometimes you just need to point at a map.
- Edits by namespace as of June 1, 2025: A pie chart of one's digital life. 60,447 total edits on en-Wikipedia. (This, of course, doesn't include the 8,799 files uploaded to Commons, because that's a separate obsession.) • Article (53.4%) • Wikipedia (including talk pages) (24.3%) • Article talk (7.10%) • User (including talk pages) (14.7%) • Other (0.50%)
| "Let Truth and Error Grapple." | Tell me about it. | Wikipedia Monument in Poland | Percentage of NRHP sites illustrated, by county. See Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Progress. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Guardianship | Mormon cricket |
Travels
A log of places this user has been. A geographical footprint.
Born and raised: ... Lived for years: ... Lived for months: ... Other countries visited: ... States/Provinces lived in: ... Cities lived in: ... Ethnic heritage: ...
The Digital Attic
A collection of personal links, because even digital lives need a junk drawer. • User:Smallbones/To Do List • User:Smallbones/DYKs (A trophy case for "Did You Know" entries.) • User:Smallbones/Pix from talk page (Feel free to add any photos you'd like. A bold invitation.) • User:Smallbones/Barnstars (Awards for digital labor.) • User:Smallbones/Articles created (The legacy.)
Why is Wikipedia important?
A collection of testimonials, in case you were having doubts.
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"It’s almost impossible to imagine life without Wikipedia" — Godwin, Richard (February 22, 2018). "Why Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is the good guy of tech". Evening Standard. A statement that is both a testament to its utility and a deeply sad commentary on the state of our collective memory.
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"If Wikipedia is good enough for the Archivist of the United States, maybe it should be good enough for you." — Wikimania 2012 Closing Plenary by David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, see especially (15:00-16:00), and (22:50 - end). A compelling, if slightly bureaucratic, endorsement.
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"“If we want to get high-quality information to all the world’s population, Wikipedia is not just a viable option, but the only viable option.” — Dr. Amin Azzam, professor at the University of California at San Francisco School of Medicine on assigning medical students to write Wikipedia articles, quoted in the New York Times. When something is the only option, it's less a compliment and more a diagnosis of a systemic problem.
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"Wikipedia is more important as an information resource than any other single institution. We need to accept that and figure out how to work with it." — The Kinetic Museum, (11:00-11:15), Koven J. Smith, August, 2012. A statement of resigned acceptance.
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"Wikipedia is the best approximation of a complete account of knowledge we’ve ever seen. "It’s also the most robust. The most easily accessed. And the safest. It exists on servers around the world so, unlike the library at Alexandria, it can’t be burned down." — Emily Dreyfuss, Wired, October 10, 2014. Calling it un-burnable feels like a challenge, doesn't it?
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"At any given moment, right now, if you go to Wikipedia you're going to find the most comprehensive article on Barack Obama. You're not going to find it on the Washington Post or the New York Times, you're going to find it on Wikipedia. Why? Because all of these people care about information have gone there to edit it and re-edit it and add as much information as they can." — Jose Antonio Vargas, Reporter for the Washington Post. A testament to the power of collective, decentralized obsession. • Vargas, Jose Antonio (January 6, 2009). "The Internet and the Presidency (9:42–10:10)" (Streaming audio (Real Player)). Here and Now . WBUR. Retrieved January 6, 2009.
Why shouldn't PR agents edit Wikipedia?
A question that shouldn't need asking, yet here we are.
"Show me a PR person who is 'accurate' and 'truthful,' and I'll show you a PR person who is unemployed. "The reason companies or governments hire oodles of PR people is because PR people are trained to be slickly untruthful or half-truthful. Misinformation and disinformation are the coin of the realm ..."
- CBS Legal analyst Andrew Cohen, The Flak over Flacks, May 7, 2009. He's not wrong.
Drafts and Abandoned Projects
Where ideas go to wait. draft(s): • User:Smallbones/drafts • User:Smallbones/draft2 • User:Smallbones/Chester County • User:Smallbones/NRHP1 Camden • User:Smallbones/NRHP2 Lancaster • User:Smallbones/NRHP3 NW DC
Gone, not forgotten: This editor is an Auspicious Looshpah and is entitled to display this Book of All Knowledge with Secret Appendix. Whatever that means.
needed articles: • Frank Gallo (Is this the sculptor, the leadership author, or the guitarist? Details matter.) • Chicago Stock Exchange Building (1893-1971) (check dates, please.) • Anna G. Ellsworth Smith or is it Leavitt Smith? (What hath God wrought!) • [1]
Articles of interest
A curated list of digital rabbit holes. The numbers are... page views? Importance metrics? Who knows. The Canadian Scottish Regiment (Princess Mary's), 780 • Philadelphia Museum of Art, B (doesn't yet deserve it), 8785 • Tulip mania, FA, 205,000 • Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, GA, 5,000 • Seth Kinman, GA, DYK, 1,400 • Option (finance),ex-GA, 56,985, needs work • Algorithmic trading, 20,000 • Barrington Hills, Illinois, 980 • Brandywine Creek (Christina River) 1,269 • David G. Booth, DYK, 1,030 • Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame, 257 • College of Physicians of Philadelphia, DYK, 367 • Cumberland Valley Railroad, DYK, 795 • Shields Green, 332 • Bernard Madoff, 2 x ITN, 348,100 • Alexander McClure, 350 • Media, Pennsylvania, 2,086 • MOOCs, 110,000 • Nazino affair, DYK, 2,200 • Newlin Mill Complex, DYK, 259 • Novodevichy Cemetery, 2,749 • Peter Pronovost, DYK, 1,300 • St. Andrew's Anglican Church, Moscow, DYK, 250 • George Soros, 58,084 • Star Gazers' Stone, DYK, 500 • Richard Leroy Walters, DYK, 242 • We Didn't Start the Fire, 39,637
Truth and Liberty Enlightening the World. Lofty concepts.
National Register of Historic Places
A very specific interest. • National Register of Historic Places listings in Pennsylvania • National Register of Historic Places listings in Delaware • National Register of Historic Places listings in New Jersey • National Register of Historic Places listings in the United States • List of bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania • Portal:National Register of Historic Places • User:Jameslwoodward/Architectural photography • Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Editor help • Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places • WikiProject Watchlist – A list of all recent changes (similar to your watchlist) of articles within this project • List of Pennsylvania state historical markers • Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/GSA federal building links • Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Unused images
2 for 1?
An attempt at cosmic balancing. "Following the example of another Wikipedian, I'm seeing if I can write 2 woman's biographies for every male's. I'm sure I have a long way to go, but here is where I stand now." An admirable, if Sisyphean, task. The scoreboard follows.
Female (17) • Erin Arvedlund • Nancy T. Chang • Chrysti the Wordsmith • Melissa Minnich Coleman • Audrey Cooper • Michelle Dorrance • Mary Ann Hall • Nathalia Holt • Margo Humphrey • Rebecca Lukens • Cordelia Ray • Henrietta Ray • Margaret E. M. Tolbert • Harriet Tracy • Alexa Wilding -- • Emily Sargent • Yola Letellier • Rochelle Walensky
Male (27) • John J. Almy • Patrick Awuah, Jr. • Matvei Berman • David G. Booth • Moe Brooker • Andrew Caspersen • Richard L. Duchossois • John Ferguson (New York politician) • Joseph S. Forte • James Newton Gloucester • Shields Green • Coenraad Liebrecht Temminck Groll • Angelo Haligiannis • Steven Hoffenberg • Seth Kinman • Bernard Madoff • Alexander McClure • Robert Morin (librarian) • Evan Morris • Bass Otis • Danny Pang (financier) • Peter Pronovost • Dale Schroeder • Richard Leroy Walters • Frederick Watts • Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich • Holbrook Working
Userboxes: A Collection of Labels
| This user writes for The Signpost. | Wag more, bark less, Don't bite. |
| The English Wikipedia has 7,092,576 articles. | This user is against the practice of paid editing on Wikipedia. |
| This user has photographed 1868 sites on the National Register of Historic Places. | This Wikipedian joined Wikipedia on November 28, 2005 (19 years, 11 months, 3 weeks and 1 day ago). A life sentence. |
| This user thinks that registration should be required to edit articles. An optimist. | Editing Wikipedia is something this user does as a hobby. |
| 52,000+ This user has made more than 52,000 contributions to Wikipedia. | 1612 This user is ranked 1612 on the list of Wikipedians by number of edits. |
| 0.0027% This user has created 195 of the 7,092,576 articles on the English Language Wikipedia. | 2.5 This user has 2.5 centijimbos. |
| GLAM / smarthistory project contributor | GLAM / Delaware Art Museum project contributor |
| This user is a fan of Frank Furness. | This user disapproves of mindless PR firm sockpuppets spreading paid POV around Wikipedia. |
| This user has visited 46 of the 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. 46 | The valiant return triple crown. |
A barnstar. Because your opinion is, apparently, more important than you think. And a sticker for voting in an election. Smallbones (smalltalk) 17:32, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
The Signs Are Not Looking Good
A gallery of earthly absurdities.
| Sign in Orta, Italy | Bosnia | St. Thomas, USVI | St. Johns, USVI |
|---|---|---|---|
| Huntingdon, PA | Claymont, Delaware | Please! | Congratulations |
| Don't get caught like a deer in the headlights. Are you a target? |
Say what?
Further evidence that the world is a strange place.
| Signpost in Cross Roads, Pennsylvania | It's obvious why | Amish-area parking lot | Why Geiger counters? |
|---|---|---|---|
| I'm just clueless on this one | So that's where they go! | Etc., etc. |
Beware of
A visual warning list.
| The Big Duck | Strange object in Juniata Terrace, Pennsylvania | Air Mail, 1937 |
Even more so
| Nikolai Antipov, Joseph Stalin, Sergei Kirov, Nikolai Shvernik, Nikolai Komarov |
|---|
The signs are looking good
A flicker of hope, perhaps.
| Required reading | The Signpost | Notice the "Please" and "Thank you" | Washington crossing Delaware |
|---|---|---|---|
| Down in the boondocks | Sports vs. academics at Princeton | He loved his work | Poligraf Poligrafovich loved his hat |
| Now, more than ever | Francisco de Goya - Dogs Chasing a Cat on a Man on a Donkey. Which one is the editor of The Signpost? |
Adverts
A study in persuasion.
| What is an advertisement? | from Honest John's Used Car Lot | Truth in Advertising | Free ice water 9333 miles (ad at the South Pole) |
|---|
Don't forget to archive
A crucial piece of advice. Archive things at archive.org. If someone hadn't, we would have missed this gem of spectacular irony:
The Owner's Name is on the Door
In an era of faceless organizations owned by other equally faceless organizations, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC harks back to an earlier era in the financial world: The owner's name is on the door. Clients know that Bernard Madoff has a personal interest in maintaining the unblemished record of value, fair-dealing, and high ethical standards that has always been the firm's hallmark. — Bernard Madoff (archived December 14, 2008)
• web.archive.org • web.archive.org [2]
"Sometimes I wonder whether I've ever accomplished anything on Wikipedia. Thanks for the prompt Slim" - An existential crisis, prompted.
Check everyday
A routine for the dedicated. • Wikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic Places/Unused images • WT:NRHP
Other
The digital junk drawer. [3] cnbc.com • 2020 paid editing series • Forbes - Here Are The Biggest Billionaire Scandals Of 2020 • File:Jimmy Wales July 2010 crop.jpg • User:Brumski/paid editing adverts from 2009 [4] • [5] • citation hunt [6] [7] [8] [9] • the worst and best NFL plays of all time and it's the same player • Jim Marshall obit [10] • Smallbones user-subpages • Labels • Reviewer • Google Art videos • Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2015 [11]FIST • 18-15 • 18-12
And now, a formula: netQuality = 0.75articlequality+0.25imagequality where articlequality = (startorhigher+0.5stubs+0.25unassessed-0.5untagged-0.75NRISonly)/listings imagequality = images/listings I'm sure this is deeply meaningful to someone.
New Deal Art ownership GSA spec.lib.vt.edu • Map all coordinates using OpenStreetMap Download coordinates as KML 42°18′N 81°21′W / 42.30°N 81.35°W / 42.30; -81.35 • 42°18′N 74°36′W / 42.30°N 74.60°W / 42.30; -74.60 • 39°18′N 81°21′W / 39.30°N 81.35°W / 39.30; -81.35 • 39°18′N 74°36′W / 39.30°N 74.60°W / 39.30; -74.60
lcpalbumproject.org Nicole poll labs • for future • Category:Living people • Wikipedia:List of paid editing companies • Random NRHP page (Not what I'm looking for! A common refrain.) • User:Edward/TED speakers with photo links • [12] page views in multiple languages (takes awhile) • Special:Permalink/564142881 • en.wikipedia.org • stats.grok.se • Google pd books • ORES general • Ores article quality • Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Companies • matthew christopher • Signpost 2015 survey • [13] • Wikipedia:Writing about women
• ^ Sinclair, Upton (1994). I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked . Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 109. ISBN 978-0-520-08197-0 .