Greetings! You've reached the user page of Mindspillage, otherwise known as Kat Walsh. I'm a senior at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, majoring in math and music, concentrating on discrete math and music theory. I am a bassoonist and contrabassoonist, libertarian, extropian transhumanist, INTP, quiz bowler, agnostic atheist, and geek. I want to be a freelance genius when I grow up, but I'm looking to be a career academic focusing on music theory, cognitive science and logic, playing bassoon on street corners and having people pay me to go away. Currently, I'm hoping someone takes me on as a master's student in music theory. I love 20th century classical music, as you can tell from my contributions, and I am a stickler for correct spelling and punctuation, though sometimes I love commas and semicolons not wisely but too well. I use Wikipedia as a procrastinatory aid, which is great for helping Wikipedia take over the world, and terrible for my academic and social lives. (Though my significant other has finally gotten sucked in, after getting tired of me paraphrasing "sofixit" all the time when he asked me to go change something.)

Common sense

Because I've taken to ranting and raving about policy lately: The primary rule I go by is Use Common Sense. Which is a meta-rule that goes hand-in-hand with and Wikipedia:Ignore all rules, and supersedes all others. It goes with Wikipedia:Assume good faith as it is written, which states that one should assume good faith "until bad faith makes itself known". It goes with Wikipedia:Wikiquette and Wikipedia:Civility, because common sense states that working with people will get better results than working against them. It balances Wikipedia:No original research with Wikipedia:Common knowledge. It tempers the Wikipedia:Three-revert rule with discretion and good judgment. Use Common Sense governs all of these.

Written policy is good, particularly when it clarifies unwritten rules, making things more transparent. But the increasingly legalistic letter-of-the-law interpretations are disturbing. We are a community that exists to build an encyclopedia. Our primary purpose is to build that encyclopedia, and we cannot do it if the community is continually too busy sniping at each other and testing the rules to actually write articles. We cannot do it if we are so worried about possibly offending someone that contributors of proven good quality are driven off by trolls and POV-pushers. We cannot do it if new contributors are driven off by a Byzantine system of rules and made to feel like outsiders for not being intimately familiar with everything that has gone before. Use common sense.

Contact

You can email me by the sidebar link (which goes to mindspillage at gmail dot com), send an IM via AIM to LucidWaking, or leave me a message on my talk page. I am almost always in #wikipedia as mindspillage, but I'm usually not around paying attention. If you /msg me I'm likely to see it and return sooner. Also, as of 18 April 2005, I am an administrator. If you need admin assistance or just want the opinion of someone who ought to know what's going on, leave me a note. Note that if you need an admin to act *quickly* you might want to find someone else until I learn the ropes, as I'm likely to want to triple-check the policy to make sure I know when I'm supposed to use the buttons...

Articles I've started

Aaron Jay Kernis / Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do / Alvin Etler / Bassoon sonata / Cat and Girl / Closely related key / Daniel Dorff / Daniel Read / David Del Tredici / De Leon Springs State Park / Doctor Fun / Double reed / Extensional definition / Francisco Mignone / Frederick Fennell / Gordon Jacob / Intensional definition / Jan DeGaetani / Jean Françaix / John Barnes Chance / Jurriaan Andriessen / Keiko Abe / Lexical definition / Madeleine Dring / Multiphonic / Ostensive definition / Persuasive definition / Stipulative definition / Theoretical definition / Ruth Gipps / Vampire number / Vittorio Giannini / Willson Osborne /

Articles I've rewritten or added significant content to

Albert Szirmai / Alexandre Tansman / Bassoon / Concert band / Contrabassoon / Daniel Gorenstein / Eugène Bozza / Gadsby / Handstand / Hugo Wolf / L. Neil Smith / Lili Boulanger / List of web comics / Luigi Dallapiccola / Modulation / National Institutes of Health / Old Folks at Home / Precising definition / Quintet / Rebecca Clarke / Robert M. Pirsig / Stetson University / The Mind's I / Wind quintet

Current tasks

Attempting to graduate, after putting it off forever (well, what seems like it; I'm about 60 credits past the requirements even before this semester ends). Not that I won't spend more time here than I ought to, but far less than I'd like. I'll mostly be checking up on my watchlist to make sure no one has spewed garbage all over articles that I care about, and occasionally making corrections as I look things up. Will steal time for writing articles or categorizing when I can, of course.

This page is not protected

You can edit it. Particularly if you want to fix typos and links, or if you feel inclined to exercise your mad layout skills, or maybe even give a testimonial. I don't own this page. (As it happens, there are pages elsewhere I do own, and I leave them dormant to work on Wikipedia instead.) I will exercise final judgment on which changes I keep, of course...

Licensing

I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below—and you should too:

Notes to self

Because I never remember my IP address when I need it, it is here, for my own reference: 24.165.233.150

• To-do list, which I may or may not use as a guide to what I'll work on next
• Sandbox, so I don't actually have to remember said IP address quite so often