Posts Tagged ‘xyrael.net’
Happenings
Well, I got my last mocks result and I don’t think I’ll post it on the other post because it’s a failure. I received a B in statistics; I originally thought it was an A according to the mark on the front of the paper but unfortunately I misread. I did expect it, but I really need to sort it out because I want to do double maths next year. These mock results are okay, and I’m now pretty sure of how much revision I need to do in order to replicate them – some of them are very surprising and I’m not sure I can achieve them again. To be fair, many (but not all) of the mock papers we sat were reasonably easy and we’d seen some of the questions before. In other aspects of school, I’m doing rather well with completing the ridiculus quantities of coursework that we have to do. I’m very much on target and often ahead in the ones I have left. My ICT concerns me slightly because there is a lot to do and I don’t want to make any mistakes.
I’ve finally got DnD started again at school and this is good because I am getting several more people into the game. Things have gone well so far: we have a lot of roleplaying going on with the rather stereotypical party, and combat isn’t really an issue – this is good for me because I don’t have to pretend to have a strategic mindset for the monsters, because I’m running things. We’re having just over an hour once a week and this is a sensible amount because we can get a reasonable amount done. I’m never sure, however, what to do about the largish number of people I have who would like to join, because more people can slow things down to such an extent that the game stops being particularly entertaining. This is why I’m limiting numbers quite strictly and we may have two people playing one character to a certain extent.
Yesterday two teams of two, including myself, were supposed to be going to the regional heat of the Oxford Schools Debating Competition in Bradford. This failed miserably. It’s a rather long story, but adult after adult pulled out of taking us and eventually the snow finished off the last (I don’t blame her – there were severe weather warnings out and she was ill). This meant that we couldn’t go and attempt to win something, which was a real shame. We are however not giving up and are continuing our practice sessions for the british parlimentary style of debating after school on most Fridays to prepare for other competitions, which there will be.
I’ve been thinking about the collaborative nature of blogs, or rather how much more so they are becoming. I’d really like to make this blog more about a general topic or something rather than me personally and what I get up to, but of course to do such a thing you need a very focussed interest that you can find enough to write about – I don’t really have such a thing right now. Ah well – there is always the possibility of splitting this blog into more than one. Another point is that this site is personal, and it’s under the domain that it is. Whatever the case, I do need to update more – this most is reasonably convoluted due to the fact that I have had a build up of things to say. I think I need to make it habitual.
Mediation Committee
Well, it’s official – I’ve joined the English Wikipedia’s Mediation Commitee, the official organisation for solving disputes in a peaceful manner. This means I will be putting a fair chunk of wikitime into trying to get people to work together to make the encyclopedia better. Mediations there usually involve incredibly verbose ramblings down talkpages, spiralling slowly into incivility. However, it’s my job to attempt to detangle said mess and improve things for everyone.
Wikipedia has a pretty solid dispute resolution system but the ‘official’ (in other words, last resort) routes are committee mediation and then if all else fails the sister arbitration committee, which has the power to start forcing solutions. Mediators are only there to suggest and nudge, which is great. We have a well developed system that generally works.
You will probably have noticed that the site has been redesigned again. I’m not going to explain it all as I have already done so on the about page. Go there, read, consume, understand. Gain knowledge of my unentertaining self.