- At 14:14 GMT on the 13th of April 2022, I had made 0.01538% of all the edits to the English language Wikipedia.
- At 12:34 GMT on the 24th of December 2022, this had risen to 0.01542%.
- At 32:34 GMT on the 6th of February 2023, it had reached 0.01546%.
- At 8:55 GMT on the 6th of October 2024 I had made a total of 201,743 edits (including deleted edits), 0.01621% of the total, or 1 in 6,171 of all edits.
- Pronouns: he, she, it, they, them, which, that, one, him, her, we, you, us, what, whatever, whichever, ... some choices may surprise me, but I won't be offended by whatever you choose.
 | This user has been on Wikipedia for 18 years, 3 months and 20 days. |
 | This user has been an admin for
14 years and 5 months. |
I created this account on 1 August 2006, and made my first edit on 11 August 2006. I created the account because one day I tried to edit at the local library, but found the IP was blocked because of vandalism. I think I had previously made a few edits anonymously, but I don't remember anything about those edits.
I originally used the user name JamesBWatson, but I was unhappy with a username which looked like a real name but wasn't, so on 19 September 2019 I had my user name changed to JBW, which also has the advantage of being quicker to type.
I started making very small edits, mostly minor corrections when I noticed errors in articles, but before long I came to make more substantial edits to articles. I have created a few new articles, but this has never been a major part of my editing. As time passed I gradually found that problems I found led me into other areas, including reverting vandalism, discussions on policy and administrative issues. Eventually there came a time when vandalism fighting was the main focus of my work. I was then asked by an administrator who had seen my anti-vandalism work to consider becoming an administrator myself, so that I could deal directly with vandals, instead of reporting them for someone else to follow up. I became an administrator on 21 June 2010.
I try hard to be welcoming to good faith new users, believing it is worth the effort of trying to explain why a contribution is unacceptable, rather than simply throwing a link to a guideline. Unfortunately I don't always live up to the standards I would like to, and sometimes slip into being less welcoming than I think I should, but I get enough thanks to know that I sometimes do succeed. When dealing with new users I am a very strong believer in avoiding the use of opaque acronyms. Yes, it takes longer to type "[[WP:COI|conflict of interest]]" than "[[WP:COI]]", or "[[WP:BIO|the notability guideline for people]]" than "[[WP:BIO]]", but if the purpose is to help the editor, not simply to dismiss them, it is worth the effort.
Wikipedia gets an enormous amount of use. This is not only because there is a lot of stuff here, but also because on the whole most of it is of a fairly good quality. Wikipedia would not have the amount of success it has unless most of its material was of a reasonably high quality. Unfortunately, in an encyclopaedia which anyone can edit, a lot of the editing is not of a good quality. Wikipedia's success therefore depends to a great extent on a large number of volunteers who give up a considerable amount of their own time to clean things up, improve the quality of what is there, and remove what is not so good. Some Wikipedians choose not to spend time on that, but to concentrate only on writing new content. That is absolutely fine, but sometimes those who make that choice disparage and vilify the work of others who make a different choice, and that is not absolutely fine. Writing content and cleaning up what is there are both essential and constructive parts of building the encyclopaedia. Some people make balanced contributions to both areas, others choose to concentrate on one area or the other. Whichever choice we make we can all respect others who contribute in different ways.
Other accounts
- In my early days on Wikipedia I created a number of alternative accounts. Each of them was created for a specific purpose, but it turned out that apart from one account I rarely or never used any of them, and I have long since lost the passwords to them, so I will never use them again. The one exception is JBW3, which I have continued to use reasonably frequently since I created the account in September 2015. That account exists for use when I need to make large numbers of automated edits, almost always mass reverts of sockpuppet edits. In that situation I use that account in order to prevent huge numbers of automatic edits swamping the user history of my main account, which would be likely to make it difficult for editors to find more significant edits in the history.
- The following are other alternative accounts. As far as I know this is a complete list, but if I created some account in 2007 or thereabouts, never used it, and forgot all about it, I apologise for omitting it from this list. As I said above, I have lost the passwords to all of these accounts, so they are purely historical.
- JamesAWatson was set up with the intention that I would use it in insecure environments, such as public computers, where access to an admin account might be problematic. For a while I very occasionally used it. I created the account JamesCWatson when I had forgotten the password to JamesAWatson, but I then found the password, so I never used JamesCWatson.
- JBW test account was created to see how blocks look to blocked editors, so that I can be in a better position to advise them when there is a need to refer to the messages that are displayed to blocked users. JBW test account 2 was created for the same purpose after I lost the password to JBW test account.
- JBW moved test was likewise created to see how account renames look to the renamed user.
- JamesBWatson2 was used only to edit IP block notices.
- JBWunconfirmed was created for a test of semiprotection, where I needed an unconfirmed account for the test.
- Other accounts with similar names are not mine. In most cases thay are impersonation accounts or troll accounts, but a few of them were legitimate accounts created before mine. Impersonation & troll accounts include, but are not necessarily restricted to: Special:Contributions/JBW againn, JamesBWaston, JamesBWastonKhan, JamesBWatsan, JamesBWatsen, JamesBWatson "This talk page is currently protected due to persistent trolling", JamesBWatson Bongwarrior, JamesBWatson Butt Pirate, JamesBWatson Genghis Khan, JamesBWatson Genghis Khan Supreme, JamesBWatson Gogo Dodo, JamesBWatson I will sue you if you do not unprotect your talk page, JamesBWatson JamesBWatson, JamesBWatson JamesBWatson JamesBWatson, JamesBWatson Kangxi Emperor, JamesBWatson Mongol Royal, JamesBWatson Oshwah, JamesBWatson Passengerpigeon, JamesBWatson Widr JamesBWatson, JamesBWatson Widr JamesBWatson Long term abuse, JamesBWatson alt account, JamesBWatson and Royer2356 , JamesBWatson is retarded, JamesBWatson is very smart, JamesBWatson loves Genghis Khan, JamesBWatson loves WP Deny, JamesBWatson sucks dick, JamesBWatson the dixkhead who banned me, JamesBWatson1, JamesBWatsonFuckAnus, JamesBWatsonJamesBWatsonOshwah, JamesBWatsonSucks, JamesBWatsonSucksShit, JamesBWatsoniornoJamesBWatson2, JamesBWatsonisgay, JamesBWatsonornoJamesBWatson1, JamesBWetsen, JBWatchesyouAll, JBW vs Wacky Wars, JBW versus Wacky Wars, JBW sock 17, JBW and Alexf, JBW again, JBW II, JBW Genghis Khan, JBW 118, JBW (sock), JBW (public), BW (alternate). On the other hand JamesBW is a legitimate account nothing to do with me. There are dozens of accounts unconnected to me with user names beginning "JBW" which are, as far as I know, perfectly legitimate accounts, but I will not attempt to list them all.