User:Lquilter/overview
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[edit] What I Do at & for Wikipedia
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Wikipedia:Babel
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- What I do & why I do it -
- Organize information - Categorization, organization, and presentation of information in useful ways; particularly working on category structure, standards, and relation to other aspects of Wikipedia organization (lists, indexes, portals, seriesboxes, templates). This is my librarian persona coming to the fore. (WP:CATP ... WP:CFD ... cats need attn ... people need cats ... no cats ... uncatted pages)
- Fix-ups - Compulsive fixing-up whenever I see problems.
- Writing & editing articles - Substantive work on articles of particular interest to me, from the real to the unreal: science, science fiction, copyright. This includes starting articles that don't exist but should and improving articles. I don't track stars & plusses because I don't own articles. (GA noms)
- Referencing articles - Adding references & further research sections; an encyclopedia is a great place to start research and in my view this is perhaps the most important feature of any encyclopedia article. (REF)
- Engage in civil conversations with people of good faith even when they are wrong, especially if they are newbies. <g> Harmonious editing makes Wikipedia a welcoming and productive project. Pile-on and "me-too" assents in AFD and CFD are not useful, and can be frankly unfriendly, and I try to avoid them, unless (a) there needs to be a clear second; (b) someone else has said something beautifully that wholly expresses my feelings. Welcoming & providing helpful advice to people who are doing good work (or trying to) also helps encourage the good. Helping wikipedians.
- Remedying systemic bias is one of my core concerns. Systemic biases at Wikipedia result from a lack of diversity in the pool of contributors, and lead to a poorer encyclopedia. A larger and more diverse pool of contributors will enhance Wikipedia's coverage of pre-Internet era topics, non-English language topics, topics of interest to senior citizens, academic subjects (cf. pop culture), humanities (cf. science & technology). It will also help remedy neutral point of view problems and make policies and guidelines better, fairer, more informed, and more realistic. The best way to remedy systemic biases is to cultivate a diverse pool of editors with a wide variety of subject expertises, skill levels, and interests. In addition to countering systemic bias through work here on Wikipedia, I do a certain amount of real-world propagandizing of wiki-editing, setting up wikis & teaching wiki-skills, and welcoming of newbies. (Also, it's systemic, not systematic, which is another thing entirely.) (CSB, Jmabel's essay on SB)
- Vandal patrol, particularly reverting vandalism on the frequently targeted biographical articles of women and people of color. Vandalism that is racist, misogynistic, or homophobic, is not just disruptive in the ordinary course of affairs, but also discourages contributions to — and use of — the encyclopedia. (aiv)
- Gnomery: Archiving & refactoring (with subheads & signatures) talk pages to make room for more dialog. Certain grammatical & punctuation errors really annoy me.
- Rescue - I sometimes rescue articles that ought not be deleted; these come to my attention thru systemic bias watches (e.g., academic deletion watch) or rather more quixotically. (CSD, AFD)
- Admin - Newly-minted administrator as of Jan. 30, 2008. (RFA) Will be attending admin school before I start wielding the awesome powers.
- How I got started -
- Starting in 2004-ish I began gnomishly fixing typos & grammatical problems that bugged me (e.g., comma splices). I also occasionally added little bits of data to articles on occasion, chosen at random from whatever I happen to be looking up that needs attention.
- In January 2005 I added a username. (Although, I have sometimes forgotten to log in if I'm just trying to make a quick grammar or punctuation fix; see my sockpuppets.) Also, I hardly ever remembered to put in an edit summary until I added confirm-without-edit-summary as my default option.
- 2006 onward: Much more significant editing, turned towards areas of specific interest and categorization issues. Also efforts to encourage and recruit people, particularly women, to work on Wikipedia.
- Somewhere in 2006 I caught a bad case of WikiFever. As of the end of 2006, I had a modest 5,000 edits; by Sept. 2007 that had doubled to approximately 10,000 edits, and -- geometric increase -- headed to 15,000 edits at end of November 2007 and 19,000+ at the end of December 2007. I hit 20,000 on Jan. 7, with this edit, which is altogether typical of my editing. Surely the fever will break soon? Editing levels fluctuate greatly based on real-life demands (or repression of dragonesque/ogress tendencies), but wikipediholism is in full swing during the winter months.
- See also LQ stats
- Wiki-philosophies and habits
- I'm of a primarily gnomish tendency, often wikigardening the categories. There may be some faery in the blood, since I work on style, but "beauty" -- I see beauty in structure, references, and clean grammatical prose. Not so much with the colors and graphics. Elvish tendencies come to the fore periodically too.
