User:Sympa

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User:Sympa

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[edit] Not everything you want to know about being a Wikipedian

I joined Wikipedia in September 2006. I have used Wikipedia for years, and have been fascinated by its incredibly rapid growth. Wikipedia has contributed immensely to my learning in numerous domains including history, current affairs, quantitative methods, and medicine. I thought it was about time I become a Wikipedian. After several months as a relatively active Wikipedian, my experience has been frustrating. And, I moved on to more productive endeavors. However, I remain grateful to the Wikipedian community that creates and maintains this wonderful repository of knowledge.

You may find that Wikipeding is not for everyone. If you are an analytical type that loves to provide value added information and insights, you will run head on against the no-original research principle. If you like to write book reviews, Wikipeding is nearly impossible in that endeavor. If you just convey what the book is about, you most probably still will run into the POV taboo. I wrote several articles on books, and attempted to make them as NPOV as possible. Per the Wikipedian community, I royally failed on all counts.

Wikipeding takes a very special mindset that entails detachment, patience, tolerance, and ultimate objectivity. Many Wikipedians are outstanding writers and editors and incredible debators and negotiators. I learned much from them. I also learned they were way out of my league.

For my part, I am perfectly happy retiring from the Wikipedian community. As mentioned, I remain a very active learner and reader of Wikipedia. When you read an article make sure you also read the discussion page because there is so much there. While the article is sometimes homogenized to death (it is so NPOV that there is nothing left), the Discussion is often prone to all out editorial wars. These are fascinating, and often where you learn many insights and pros and cons regarding controversial topics. I think the intellectual tension that exists on the discussion page coupled with the placid objectivity on the article page makes for a formidable combination unparalleled in any other encyclopedia I know.

Thus, I encourage anyone who has the mindset to become active Wikipedians as it is a wonderful way to increase the repository of human knowledge in one easy spot. But, make sure you don't go insane. Depending on the subject, you will run against the same half dozen of obsessed and extremely stubborn editors whose vocation is to spend all day on line and delete everything you have written within minutes. If you run into a situation like that. It is best to move on and let some other equally obsessed editors having at it with them.

If you are a mathematician, physicist, chemist, astrophysicist you should have a field day as a Wikipedian. Given the quantitative nature of these hard sciences, editorial wars are nonexistent. Discussion pages often don't even exist. If they do, it is from people studying the subject asking additional questions for clarifications. This can turn out into pretty satisfying teacher-student type communication.

[edit] My original contributions

[edit] Business & Economics
  • Stockholders' deficit. Answered requested article. Proposed to be merged. Article essentially disappeared and replaced by one on Retained Earnings. Have no explanation for what happend.
  • Macroeconomic policy instruments
  • Deindexation
  • Pros and Cons of the Euro. Answered requested article. Removed as redundant to broader entry.

[edit] Climatology
  • Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming. Article heavily censored, downsized, and eventually entirely deleted because the book was not considered notable enough. The related debate lasted from September 2006 to end of January 2007.

[edit] Psychology

[edit] Statistics
  • Kurtosis risk. Article deemed orphan in January 2007 because of inadequate number of links.
  • Skewness risk. Article deemed orphan in January 2007 because of inadequate number of links.

[edit] Material edits

[edit] Climatology

[edit] Sociology

[edit] Material discussions

[edit] Climatology