There are now 1,530,150 articles in the English Wikipedia, of which more than 600 are mostly my own work.

What I'm doing on Wikipedia

• Links to my articles
  
  

I am a Wikiholic, and proud of it! I have made more than 21,000 edits to over 5,000 unique pages, and on 14 September 2006, when my edit count had just passed 20,000, Daniel Bryant awarded me the Tireless Contributor Barnstar.

I have been a registered member of the Wikipedia community since January 3, 2004. I actually discovered Wikipedia late in 2001 or early in 2002, curiously enough through the Esperanta Vikipedio, while searching the web for Esperanto resources, which were then scanty. I did not sign up, however; I was a slow starter in recognizing the value of the project. I rediscovered Wikipedia in late October 2003, while doing a Google search for materials relating to Soong Mei-ling (Madame Chiang Kai-shek), following her recent death at the age of 106. This time, I began to rate the project a little more highly. I made a few anonymous edits here and there, before deciding to "commit myself" by registering formally on the third day of 2004.

My contributions

By 4 February 2006, I had clocked up more than 18,000 edits to more than four thousand unique pages, putting me among the top 200 editors by total edit count and, if you ignore the bots, by article-space edit count. Time constraints curtailed my participation from the end of March to mid-August, so when the list was next updated, on 23 September, my placing on the list had dropped by 75 places, to 243rd. I think I'm climbing again, with over 850 edits in the last month. My current edit count stands at just over 21,000 as of 31 October.

Over 14,000 of my edits are in the main article space. Although the great majority of my edits have involved maintenance work, I am also one of the heavier contributors of full-length articles; to date, there are over 600 that are mostly my own work, and over 70 others to which I've made a major contribution.

Fiji project

Over 70 percent of the articles to which I have made a significant contribution are connected with the Fiji project I undertook in February 2004. Almost 95 percent of these articles are either original contributions, or articles that I have more or less completely rewritten; when I joined Wikipedia there was so little material on that topic that I had to start almost from scratch. I am determined to ensure that whoever contributes to Fiji-related articles in the future will not have that problem!

I have two main reasons for undertaking the Fiji project. First of all, I have a passionate interest in that country, although I have yet to visit it. Secondly, it has been said that the English Wikipedia has a built-in bias towards countries with a high number of internet users, among whom English is natively or at least competently spoken. Wikipedias in other languages reflect a similar bias towards countries where they are widely spoken by a large population with internet access. Every Wikipedia has a dearth of articles about small nations, especially of those that do not use the language of the particular Wikipedia project in question. The only solution to this imbalance is for Wikipedians to take an interest in smaller nations and adopt them. Accordingly, when my goals for the Fiji-project have been met, I will adopt another small nation, probably another Pacific Island nation, to write about. As of now, the project is still far from finished.

Even now, I would estimate that over 80 percent of Wikipedia's Fiji-related material is my own work, but this figure is starting to decrease. When I came back to Wikipedia in August 2006, after five months of being mostly away, I was delighted to find that a significant number of articles had been added by other contributors. Laulad (formerly Sanaya) has been submitting and editing articles on Lauan chiefs, while Girmitya has put a lot of research into the history of the Indo-Fijian community and has written articles about some of its leading personalities and organizations. Xorkl000 (who kindly awarded me the Barnstar of National Merit on 25 September 2005 for my work on Fiji) continues to keep an eye on Fiji-related topics for factual inaccuracies and POV. In addition, a number of users have been making anonymous contributions. So, the Fijian "department" on Wikipedia is no longer such a lonely place to work.

Other Wiki-roles

Of course, there are a number of other topics to which I turn whenever I need a wikiholiday from my Fiji project. Most of these concern political affairs and biographies. In the second half of 2004, I took some time out to cover the Pitcairn sexual assault trial of 2004, which shook the tiny island to the core, and of necessity added some touches to related articles as well. In addition, I spent quite some time in early 2005 updating a considerable number of Lebanese-related articles, and also contributed some of my own, as the national uprising known as the Cedar Revolution stimulated worldwide public interest and brought about an urgent need for a comprehensive, reliable, and up-to-date resource. Unfortunately, I found that many of the articles concerning Lebanon were two or three years out of date, many were biased towards a particular POV, and some were downright inaccurate. Worst of all, many significant political figures and movements in Lebanon were not documented in Wikipedia. I decided to play a part in rectifying that situation. There are currently over 40 Lebanese articles that I've edited significantly; of these, about 25 are mostly my own work.

I am also one of the volunteers helping out on the Multilingual statistics page. I designed one of the tables found there and redesigned two of the others. I help to keep an eye on the monthly statistics for the 200 or so languages in which Wikipedia now operates.

One topic about which you might expect to find material written by me is New Zealand, but as of now, there are a mere handful of New Zealand-related articles that I've had anything to do with. This is not for lack of interest in my homeland, but mostly an acknowledgement that there is already a considerable number of eminently qualified Wikipedians from New Zealand working in that department. As my own time is limited, I prefer mostly to leave it to them pursue what they are doing so well, while I concentrate on filling gaps in the content, such as Fiji-related material, in which fewer writers have been taking an interest.

Sister projects

I have a passion not only for Wikipedia, but for its "sister projects" as well. Time constraints have prevented me from playing as active a role in them as I would like; I don't have enough time to do everything that I would like to do for Wikipedia, let alone for the sister projects. Nevertheless, I have made more than 500 edits on Wikiquote, where I have compiled quotes for about 50 individuals, and have also uploaded a number of documents to Wikisource. I have contributed 3 reports to Wikinews, but if and when time permits, I would like to play a more active role in that project. I have also made the odd contribution to Wikipedias in other languages, but have given up submitting electronically translated articles, as machines produce too many errors, and one Italian kindly told me that the translation device I used was a "terrible fish."

Wiki-policy

I became a sysop, otherwise called an Administrator, on 3 July 2004 - six months to the day after I became a Wikipedian. I have expressed my thanks here to the 23 people who recognized my passion for this project and voted for me. I feel honoured to have a role in building this incredible online resource, which I envisage as ultimately consisting of literally billions of articles worked on by millions of editors in the world's 6,500 languages. As of 1 September 2006, the total Wikipedia project consists of over 5 million articles in 229 languages. That is indeed a great achievement that all of us should be proud of, but the time will come when we will look back and see it as no more than a small stepping stone to something that will have grown so huge that we cannot presently conceive of it.

A certain creative tension exists among Wikipedians who describe themselves as inclusionists and deletionists, respectively. I long avoided taking a stand, concurring with Australian evangelist John Smith's summarizing of his own political inclinations as a bird that has both a right wing and a left wing. I would now say, however, that I have come to lean increasingly towards the inclusionist position, though not rabidly so. I still have a "deletionist wing," especially when it comes to material that I consider to be pornographic. I take a negative view of editors, whom I consider vandals, who insist on uploading reviews (euphemistically code-named "articles") on every latest pornographic movie that hits the video industry.

My personal ambition as a Wikipedian is to become the undisputed number-one contributor of quality articles to Wikipedia.

Other projects

A multitude of wiki projects now dot the internet, many if not most of them using Mediawiki software and emulating the administrative structure pioneered by Wikipedia. I welcome that, and participate in a number of them, including Wikimapia, a project to annotate Google Maps with notes contributed by users through a wiki interface. I am sceptical, however, of projects whose stated aims are to supplant Wikipedia, such as Larry Sanger's Citizendium project, a proposed fork and supposed "improvement" of Wikipedia. Its restrictive editorial policy is likely to stifle development, and the abolition of categories is a retrograde step. What the organizers of Citizendium are forgetting is that an encyclopedia is written by editors, but for readers, and their proposal to abolish an invaluable aid to navigation, thereby making each article its own stand-alone category (as they put it) will do nothing to create a user-friendly interface.

But perhaps the most serious oversight on the part of the Citizendium people is that initial perfection rarely wins in the market place. The now-forgotten Beta video system and the Apple computer were superior to the VHS and IBM models, respectively. Endless fine-tuning tends to create projects that are artistically beautiful, but unworkable, and I suspect that Citizendium will be no exception. Its greatest weakness will be its initial inability to attract a large pool of contributors. A larger number of lurkers from Wikipedia will, however, peruse the newly created articles on Citizendium and scavenge them. Given the public profile of Wikipedia, readers are far more likely to find the articles on Wikipedia than where they are originally posted, and Citizendium editors will be left wondering what they are working for and why.

I mean no ill will towards Citizendium or the people involved in the project. But my doubts are real, and, I think, well-founded. I feel differently about projects like Wikinfo, whose editorial policy is designed to allow points of view not permitted on Wikipedia, thereby providing an alternative resource that complements Wikipedia without attempting to replace it, as is seen in the continued participation in Wikipedia by Fred Bauder, Wikinfo's founder. Larry Sanger, by contrast, has severed his links with Wikipedia. All the best to him - but I honestly think the best for him is to go back to the drawing board and redesign his project fundamentally.

An Award Awarded for work of Fiji related articles. Someone had to do it eventually, so here it is for your work on Fiji. --Xorkl000 11:21, 25 September 2005 (UTC)		The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
		I notice from your userpage that, as of today, you have made 20,000 edits on the English Wikipedia. This is an extraordinary effort, and I am happy to present you the Tireless Contributor Barnstar for your unwavering additions to Wikipedia, which are of both the highest level of quantity and, most importantly, quality. Daniel.Bryant 09:46, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

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