I am a relatively new user here. I have a BA from Melbourne, Australia - but completed part of my degree in Riga, Latvia. I joined wikipedia with all the enthusiasm I have ever had. The idea of "human knowledge for human people" - a pay free and fundamentally anarchist site such as this excited me. I was quiet for the first month until I started weighing in.

But, well, I rapidly gave up on it. The value of a person's opinion depends entirely on his enthusiasm rather than any actual merit. I still like wikipedia, but I just do not have the time to be debating such ridiculous things like why sterilsastion of a race does count as genocide. It is exhausting and no amount of "I have linked the legal UN definition of genocide: read it" seems to persuade anyone.

There are a lot of well known criticisms of wikipedia, but my most hated is that references never seem to be checked. As long as they are linked it seems that people do not actually read the content and assume it to be valid.

I guess I am planning to keep my userboxes as a way of describing my life in 10 statements, and keep this page to discuss my current activities.

I write and edit in English-English rather than American-English but do think the two can exist peacefully in the same article, even the same sentence. I do get frustated when Americans 'correct spelling' especially of English or Australian articles.

Also note that I tend not to use DrDisco to sign, but rather: Disco 05:37, 3 September 2007 (UTC)