User:Aidan9382

Me and my work

Hey! I'm Aidan, and I'm from the UK. Most of my work on Wikipedia is WikiGnome work, however I sometimes tread into WikiElf territory. I'm much more on the technical side of things, so I'm likely to pop up in template and module discussions, however I tread across nearly every major discussion board from time to time. I always watch pages ive been across, and I watch most users i come across permenantly, so I may accidental start stalking your page.

The rest of my work commonly involves cleaning up after other editor's changes, probably because its not exactly right. If a recent edit I've done in response to one of yours seems to be a bit confusing, feel free to ask me for a further explenation. Don't worry - If I havent left you a notice on your talk page, it probably isn't a major or reoccuring issue, so dont panic - and if it is, never fear, I've always got time to clear up after someone, its no problem.

If you are having trouble trying to get something to work, if something is starting to spew out a little junk, or if you think some template out there could use a bit of attention, I'm always available to take a look. Just ask. The less technical issues left, the better.

If you are curious about what work I try handle, a list of pages important to me can be found at my /Bookmarks page. Any of my current or previous test work can be found at my /SafeEnvironmentTesting (SET) page. When it comes to templates and modules, I've made particular improvements to Module:Excerpt, and Module:Sports results, as well as a bit of assistance to do with citation issues and some more minor edits to other modules and templates like minor bug fixing.

Important Information

(To all) I own 2 other accounts, Aidan9382-Bot and Permless, both in line with WP:VALIDALT. All manual edits will be made on this account and this account only. Further information on those accounts can be found at their respective user pages. All questions about said accounts should be directed to my talk page here.

(To CheckUsers or similar) I actively host small services like TOR nodes from my home IP. These services are protected to prevent using them like a proxy (E.g. full-deny exit policy for TOR). If you believe one of my services have gone awry and my IP is proving to be concerning, please contact me immediately in private via email (or any other available private channel) and ensure to give me a {{ygm}}. I will address the issue when possible and return anything I find.

(To all) If, for whatever reason, my email is unavailable for use, and you require private contact with me, I can be contacted on discord under the name "oef#4032" (Account ID 260016427900076033). I am in the Wikimedia Community discord, and my wikipedia account is linked to my discord account. You can use .whois [UserId] with the WikiAuthBot to verify you are reaching out to the right person. Please ensure you are very clear why you are contacting me over discord, as I am in many large discords and occassionally recieve junk or useless DMs from random users. If the matter is not private and is important to wikipedia, I may request it is brought to my talk page instead. Other methods of contacting me are not available at this time. Please only use these alternative methods if neither my talk page nor email work.

Too cosmetic?

Since most of my work is to do with the fine tuning of templates and formatting, my edits may start to seem cosmetic at some points. If you think my edits are passing this line, feel free to ask me on my talk page why I'm doing the changes I'm doing. I'll probably have an explenation ready, and if not, It'll save me some time avoiding the rest of the cosmetic edits, so its a win-win.

Before you ask about my potentially cosmetic edits, please keep in mind that edits like:

Removing excessive spacing outside of templates and HTML tags (E.g. Hey there sir vs Hey there sir),
Swapping templates to a similar but slightly different version (E.g. {{pp}} to {{pp-vandalism}}), and
Replacing deprecated content with the new functionally identical version

Are not (normally) cosmetic, as these may present changes to the formatting or improve the categorisation or convenience of certain elements.

However, edits like:

Changing padding around templates (E.g. {{done|Done}} to {{done | Done}}) unless overly excessive, or
Swapping templates for another version named differently but equal in functionallity (E.g. {{talkref}} vs {{reftalk}})

are cosmetic, and shouldn't be taking place by themselves.

Please note that some edits I make may include cosmetic side-effects. These are normally for consistency or ease of editing for other editors, and should always come along-side useful edits. If you believe that some of the cosmetic side effects I am including are also proving to be too problematic, please tell me.