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User:The Bipolar Anon-IP Gnome

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Outside the box is where I live!

— Kara "Starbuck" Thrace

Just to vouchsafe my street cred, I was born in 1950, and I was pushing bits in Fortran (and using E-mail on ARPANET) back in the mid-70s … I have forgotten how to use more programming languages than most programmers ever learn (like APL, Forth, Lisp, Smalltalk, and SNOBOL) … and yes, I am an "expert dialectician and grammarian" who is perhaps Too Much in love with the sound of their own voice. (Who says that purple prose is a Bad Thing? You maybe could learn a thing or two from Joseph Goebbels. ;-) — The Bipolar Anon-IP Gnome (talk) 07:37, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Anonymous WikiGnome or Sockpuppet?

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It is easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.

— Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, USN

OK, time to make the public declaration … I suffer from schizoaffective disorder, which sometimes manifests as borderline dissociative identity disorder … in simple English, it means that my manic-depression can manifest itself in a Jekyll and Hyde kind of way … sometimes my Evil Twin overpowers me, and I can't always keep them away from the keyboard.

While passing the time surfing Wikipedia, sometimes I'm compelled to revert some obvious vandalism, or I'll see something that makes me just go Monkish and I'll start looking for ISBNs on Amazon.com and adding {{cite book}} templates to references … then I'll start looking at other articles, and what started out innocently enough takes a wrong turn, and Father of Orphans (aka, "He Who Takes No Prisoners") becomes the dominant personality.

It's like a normal adult and their hyperactive, anal retentive inner child are sharing the same IP address and passwords … think Dr. Monk and Mr. T … one "suffer fools gladly", the other "pities the fool!" (You know that little voice in your head that tells you to do things you know that you shouldn't do? Well, sometimes I listen to it, which wouldn't be so bad if I didn't also let it speak out loud through my mouth.)

At least by not using my registered account, I can keep my Very Bad half from turning into a Real Flaming WikiTroll when they don their Cloak of Righteous Indignation (they're anonymous, so the other WikiTrolls ignore them) … like I said, there's both an "adult" and a "child" using this broadband connection, so my apologies for any disruptions … I stand by the vast majority of my edit history as a WikiGnome and new pages patroller, with no apologies for any of my reverts of what I considered Vanispamcruftisement, non-neutral point of view, or original research.

Which brings me to a recent incident … my ISP changes my IP address at random intervals, and because I'm anal retentive about signing my posts on Talk pages, I sometimes slip and use the current IP signature while logged in … and that's when someone jumps on me for being a sockpuppet. But since I am not creating another account, and do not engage in any of the forbidden practices (although I may occasionally Comment on an AfD to point out an overlooked issue or related article), I resent the implication that I am acting in Bad Faith.

It's pretty easy for someone to track down the various IP addresses I've used since I "resigned" several months ago, and to be quite honest, it's people who have nothing better to do than actually perform such a background search that frighten me … I'm not running around trying to influence opinions … my Other Half has engaged in some disruptive behavior, and for using the veil of anonymity to avoid professional embarrassment, I plead guilty as charged … but none of those issues are ever revisited from a different IP address … and specifically because anonymous user opinions are discounted in most discussions, I am not tempted to participate in them.

Before I discovered the Dark Side of Wikipedia, and lost faith in the Noble Dream, I registered my real first name and created a User page with links to some of my websites … as it happens, I have an international reputation in a field that most people don't even know exists, and you can get my resume by doing a Google search of just my first name, because I'm a single-name celebrity, like Cher, Mo'Nique, or Shamu … in fact, at least half of the first ten results that are returned will refer to me (with my resume at the top of the list), including my Wikipedia User and Talk pages.

The point is, "If I can't be myself, then I don't want to be somebody else," so having an account with a name like The Bipolar Anon-IP Gnome (talk · contribs) is really no different from using a public access terminal at my local library … my Verizon DSL connection is a "floating" IP address, and it changes at random intervals … I may keep an address for a month, or for only a few hours during hurricane season when power outages are more frequent.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Wikipedia is a codependent enabler of my dysfunction, but as an anonymous WikiGnome, I am able to make contributions without exposing myself to opportunities for mischief, even if that sounds counter-intuitive.

So, if you have "found" me, then I say, "Congratulations! Now, please, just go away and leave me alone." — My Real Name 10:21, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Templates that I have created

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Current OCD fixations

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Bookmarks

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Protocols for deletion warnings

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Moved to Flag templates for deletion warnings — 21:08, 10 February 2008 (UTC) Wikipedia:FLAG-/templates

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