me_and (sometimes rendered Me and for technical reasons) has been a Wikipedia editor since 2005. He is a WikiOgre, meaning he will switch between high and low levels of editing activity with little warning or apparent cause, depending on life outside of Wikipedia. Nonetheless he will always (eventually) see messages on his talk page.
As a long-standing editor, me_and occasionally considers adminship as an additional way to help the community, but he does not currently have those privileges. He does have pending change reviewer permissions.
For the avoidance of doubt, me_and is a single person; he is the only user of this Wikipedia account, and he has no other Wikipedia accounts. He has used this handle since the late 1990s, and despite the confusion it occasionally causes, he continues to use it for reasons of continuity.
me_and performs a variety of work on Wikipedia. He can frequently be found tidying up article formatting and style, particularly relating to citations, and will also work on content in areas where he has subject expertise, such as in the areas of software development or IP telephony.
Since 2013, me_and has been enjoying writing biographies of notable LGBT people, based off lists such as The Independent on Sunday's "Rainbow List" and The Guardian/Square Peg Media's "World Pride Power List". These articles include Paris Lees, the existence of which Lees has stated helped her get in touch with her long-lost grandfather.[1]
Conflicts of interest
me_and tends to focus editing on areas of particular interest to him, but it is worth noting that he has particular conflicts of interest in certain areas. To help maintain a neutral point of view, he tries to always include reliable sources for changes that have any chance of being controversial, regardless of whether there is any possible conflict of interest.
In the event that another Wikipedia editor thinks me_and is breaching Wikipedia's conflict of interest guidelines, me_and is happy for that editor to revert the edits as a first step without discussing it first. Nonetheless, he would appreciate a message on his talk page if such a revert is necessary.
He has contacted the subjects of some of the biographical articles he has written, to let them know the article exists, to reassure them about Wikipedia's "Biographies of living persons" policy, or to ask them if they would be willing to provide a photograph suitable for Wikipedia. As a result of this, me_and has occasionally made changes to articles at the subject's request, but only when the changes have been obviously uncontroversial, or have been supported by independent, reliable sources (and he has refused to make changes he could not verify met these criteria).
Financial conflicts and paid editing
me_and is an employee of Metaswitch as a software developer. In general, editing Wikipedia is not part of his job and he receive no reward from Metaswitch for doing so.
In 2015, the company's marketing department contacted me_and for help as an experienced Wikipedia editor. As a result, as of September 2015[update] me_and is working on improving the article on work time. He is still absolutely committed to maintaining neutral point of view and remaining in line with the rules on conflicts of interest and paid editing.
In this, me_and considers his role as being essentially that of a minor Wikipedian in Residence; it is far from being his primary role in the company, but other than bringing other editors on-site, he is already fulfilling the core characteristics of a Wikipedian in Residence – liaising between the company and the community, helping the company understand Wikipedia and Wikipedia processes, encouraging others to become editors, etc etc.
As of September 2015[update], me_and has not made any paid edits to article space, but has begun editing at User:me_and/Metaswitch on company time. Any paid edits he makes will be clearly flagged as such (and it can accordingly be assumed that any edits that aren't clearly flagged are not paid edits), and he strongly advocates for other editors within the company to do similarly. Additionally, he will make any potentially controversial edits through the edit request process.
Current and future projects
me_and maintains a list of things he is either currently working on or is planning on working on in the near future. As of 29 September 2015[update], that list is as follows:
Write articles for red links on Dastan Kasmamytov (at a very brief glance, they all look like they meet the general notability guideline, although that hasn't been thoroughly checked)
Global Forum on MSM & HIV
Eurasian Coalition on Male Health
Kyrgyz Indigo
Labrys (organization)
Bishkek Feminist Collective SQ
Notable contributions
Articles started
The below articles are ones that were initially created by me_and.
The below articles are those where me_and made a significant contribution to the content of an article, either through his initial article write-up, or through a significant rewrite of the article.
To help editing Wikipedia, me_and has created a small number of useful tools:
User:me_and/Common citations has lists of citations that me_and may want again for projects he is working on, including both displayed versions and code versions ready to copy-paste. Thanks to transclusion trickery, there are different subpages to provide different date formats for compliance with the Manual of Style.
