From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Fundamental Question How should knowledge be conveyed to others? Should complex topics be simplified? What is the purpose of an encyclopedia? Should someone who has no mathematical skills be able to come to a math article (algebra for instance) and come away knowing how to do algebra? Or should Wikipedia editors take a hands-off approach by filling articles purely with information, data, and knowledge? Are there any existing Wikipedia policies and practices that may be used as clues to answer these questions? These questions have been tugging away at me for some time now. Maybe they can be answered, maybe not.
Hi! My name is Matt (b. September 12, 1980). I live in central North Carolina in a sort of small town. It is as boring as one anyway. I am a transfer student trying to decide on a final field of study. I think I may have the list narrowed down to include music, sociology, or art. I am here so that I may improve my poor grammar in order to pass my English classes and to find something to which I can devote some of my time. For fun, I rework Engrish articles to see if I can make some sense of them! My first ever contribution was on July 24, 2004 and the page was Veno Pilon. Actually, my first ever true contributions were vandalisms! I have since been reformed and now I understand the importance of this project!! I spend a lot of time just hitting random and making minor edits to grammar, punctuation, and formatting. I have not yet settled on one particular niche in Wikipedia. This thing is so vast I could not possibly understand it even with the time I have been here. Some activities that I have dipped my feet into in the past are: Disambiguation, VfD, Grammar patrol, and Vandalism patrol.
Check this out! This is awesome! Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups This tool will display a fast loading popup presenting various editing shortcuts when you hover over a page link! Eliminates the need to load that page! Includes as a summary the first few sentences of the article! Can work in other wikis too as long as you add it to your .js file at those wikis.
At times I imagine that the Opera web browser was created for editing Wikipedia! First there is the password wand. All you have to do when you come to a sign-in page is click the wand button and instantly you're signed-in! When Opera does have to close unexpectedly (if you have windows, ahem) it remembers all of your last tabs that you had open! Wikipedia editors all know that multiple tabs are a must. You can save 'Notes' which are accessible through the right click menu! So, if you have a handful of common summaries, templates, or tags that you add several times a day they are right there at your fingertips. Opera is awesome! Plus, Opera is the originator of tabs and other such features that are in other popular web browsers. Opera comes built in with tabs and mouse gestures. Also, it is smaller even with the built in features than Firefox is when it is 'empty'.
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This user provides information using user boxes to contact other Wikipedians with similar interests. |
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[edit] Favorite links
[edit] Articles of which to keep track
[edit] Articles and such that I have contributed
YAY! And I thought I would never find anything to contribute!
- Glow
- Birds of My Neighborhood
- Christ Is My Hope
- Small Planes
- Befriended
- Now the Day is Over
Template:NDegrees Template for future use.
Wikipedia:Checkers Play the American variant of this popular game! No longer with us on this mortal plane, sadly.- Category:Historic houses in North Carolina Created category per user request.
- RfA Ideology Analysis An ambitious project that seeks to analyze most of the adminships that were successful and those that were not successful. So far some very interesting and insightful conclusions have been drawn even at this early stage!
[edit] Userboxes
There are so many that I gave them their own heading! I borrowed elements of this table layout from Halflife28
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| usa |
If this user has en-N followed by 30 non-language userboxes, then they are probably an American. |
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| Interests |
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| prog-1 |
This user is a beginner programmer. |
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| Wikipedia |
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| ubx-5 |
This user uses entirely too many userboxes. |
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This user is not a Wikipedia administrator but would like to be one someday. |
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This user believes that a user's edit count does not necessarily reflect on the value of their contributions to Wikipedia. |
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| Music |
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| band-3 |
This user loves the band Sophia Travis. |
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This user likes all types of music. |
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| Humor & Misc. |
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This user took different MBTI tests and discovered that they had multiple personalities, so they're a bit confused. |
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This user's time zone is GMT-5. |
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| ' |
This user believes in the existence of Zoom Zoom. |
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This user has a sense of humour
and shows it in their userboxes. |
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| Grammar |
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| snuk |
This user says snuck. |
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| with, at, in, for, to... |
This user has no opinion about ending a sentence with a preposition. |
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| who |
This user prefers using who for both the object and subject case. Who does it hurt to simplify things? |
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| its/it's |
It's really not that hard to use each word in its proper manner. |
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| AIM-0 |
This user does not understand or have any interest in txt/AOLer. |
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[edit] Toolbox
