User:Vaoverland
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Barnstar of Diligence for tireless work on Wikipedia. Molotov
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Welcome to the home page for Wikipedian Vaoverland. I work from my home in Williamsburg, Virginia and have a background in ground transportation and tourism.
Almost 50 years ago, my parents made a substantial investment in our very own multi-volume copy of the World Book Encyclopedia, with the annual yearbooks added for 30 years. These treasures required hand-washing for a child to use. Although a bit dated and well-used, they still hold a place of importance in my home. I never bothered to read the World Book's article about an "encyclopedia" until recently.
- "An encyclopedia not only furnishes the reader with information, but also stimulates him to go still further in his search for knowledge."
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- World Book Encyclopedia, 1960
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With the modern wonder of the Internet, I hope that our Wikipedia work will bring that to others, even as I enjoy my small part. My interest and participation in Wikipedia began in late 2002. Since then I have learned a lot as I worked on and researched many articles. Areas of special interest for me include Virginia-related history, geography, and biographical topics and land transportation (highways, cars and buses, and railroads). I belong to a number of Wikipedia special projects, perhaps most notably, Wikipedia:WikiProject Virginia. More detail is on the page My Contributions.
I have been a Wikipedia administrator for several years. I enjoy helping others and expediting certain functions. As a part of my housekeeping duties with Wikipedia, I currently monitor via my watchlist about 3,500 articles for accuracy and quality, actively maintaining some of them with periodic additions. I try to check over any changes in any of them, and regarding inappropriate changes, these can be flagged for cleanup, improvement, or undone when they are entirely vandalism or foolishness, and not in good faith.
I prefer to work on content and not to be involved in controversial activities and conflicts between WP users, which occur occasionally as I suppose they do with all multi-person endeavors. On a more positive note, I have found that collaboration is one of the best things about Wikipedia. I try to be helpful to other contributors, and appreciate comments and communications which should be left on my Talk page (User Talk:Vaoverland).
Thanks, Mark in the Historic Triangle of Virginia.
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[edit] About Me
My real name is Mark Fisher, and my user name is Vaoverland. My career background of about 35 years has been in small business development, bus transportation, and tourism, mostly in Virginia. More information may be found at this page: User: Vaoverland About Me
[edit] My Contributions
For a detailed listing of my better contributions and collaborations, please see User: Vaoverland My Contributions.
[edit] Philosophy as a Wikipedia administrator
As of June 2008, there were 1,555 administrators on the English Wikipedia, 987 of them active. Briefly, here is a summary of my philosophy in this role.
I was one of the earlier people to band together to help create and build Wikipedia. I have been pro-Wikipedia and believe that I have interacted with other uses in ways that should be good for Wikipedia, including sensitive and nurturing interaction with newbies and luring in IP contributors to register. I would rather work on content than conflicts, but each are part of maintaining and improving Wikipedia.
Here are my three basics:
1. My own role, setting an example - Over the past few years, we have been raising the bar for credibility of Wikipedia content, and I am embracing that. I feel that I need to set an example, while continuing to try to improve the quality and volume of my work. My activities include helping and sometimes leading efforts in specific projects and articles and making sure we have quality, verifiability, and timely results.
2. Assisting, mentoring - I have occasionally been contacted by other Wikipedians for advice, and I find such request flattering, since I feel I am still learning myself. If I can help, I am glad to do so, or direct the request to another Wikipedian who can. I have met some fine folks in this manner. One example was an exceptionally bright high school student I met several years ago in an online school bus enthusiasts group, who began also working in Wikipedia. Although, we have yet to meet in person, over the past couple of years I have helped mentor him with Wikipedia as well as being an older "cyber-friend" with who I have common interests and complimentary computer skills. Benefit is mutual, as with a quick young mind he stimulates me intellectually as we help each other. I helped him informally with decisions about his choice of good schools of higher education, as with his academics and scholarships, he had the choice of several very good ones. This year he is a freshman at a major university, and is doing very well. His parents and friends including those with Wikipedia have much to be proud of. He and I both continue to contribute to Wikipedia virtually every day or night, despite his increased school load. He has also posted to mentor new users himself.
3. Mediation and Assistance - I try to be very evenhanded in assisting other and mediating disputes. I strive for moderate and reasonable actions, and I will mediate conflicts and respond to communications with a willingness to say "I am sorry" and/or "You were right" as well as gently try to make any points or criticisms (hopefully constructive) necessary. I am thankful others take responsibility for more complicated matters of dispute.
[edit] Researching and writing for Wikipedia
In January 2008, Eric Schmidt, chairman and chief executive officer of Google spoke to hundreds of Virginia college educators at a Virginia Business Higher Education Council forum about today's students. He said they gather information in a variety of ways, especially online, and not just through textbooks and lecture notes. The influence of the Internet will only grow, he said. He urged the educators to adapt to this. [1]
From my past work with touring school groups, I am aware that Wikipedia articles are used by some teachers as a basis for school projects and for our Standards of Learning program in Virginia's schools. Thus, when composing and editing articles, I find it useful to try to visualize students of middle school or high school age, and I try to keep the content factual and interesting to read, and include some good internal and external links, especially multimedia ones when available.
If the subject can be presented as an interesting and maybe even exciting story, I would like the reader to be able to relate to some of the emotions the people involved experienced, if that is appropriate in the encyclopedia setting.
Most of what I write for Wikipedia is compiled from multiple sources, including other Wikipedia articles, books, magazines and periodicals, special collections, information including some special collections held by organizations such as the U.S. Library of Congress, Virginia Historical Society, Library of Virginia, West Virginia Historical Society, Virginia Tech, University of Virginia, Richmond City Public Library, Williamsburg Regional Library, the College of William and Mary, Colonial Williamsburg and many others. I also do a lot of web searches on the Internet looking for specific information.
Depending upon my perception of the veracity of the information source, to the maximum extent possible, I try to verify something from more than a single source before including it in an article. I also look further when I find conflicting information, which usually amounts to misspelling or incorrect dates, particularly on older subjects and sources. I am grateful for the access I have to the writing of others, and try to cite sources as set forth in Wikipedia guidelines.
[edit] My interests and writing for Wikipedia
I am mostly focused on history and people, places and transportation subjects including buses, streetcars and railroads, and highways, bridges, etc. Geographically, I generally like topics with an orientation fairly close to Richmond, the Tri-Cities, the Historic Triangle, and Hampton Roads, all in Virginia. I also have some strong interests which extend into southern West Virginia.
Writing for Wikipedia provides an opportunity to learn more about subjects which are interesting to me, including a few which have been part of my life. In July, 1956, I recall hearing the news about the collision at sea and sinking of the SS Andrea Doria, even though I was only 5 years old at the time. I was a bit closer to another disaster I have written about. On January 13, 1982, I was in Washington, D.C. working with a cold weather-related bus transportation problem when Air Florida Flight 90 crashed into the 14th Street Bridge and plunged into the Potomac River. For about 15 years, I was a franchised dealer for Wayne Corporation, a now-defunct bus manufacturer and leader in safety engineering, so working on that article and related ones has been a labor-of-love so to speak.
Since reading H. Reid's The Virginian Railway during my high school years, the 600 mile-long Virginian Railway built by mining engineer William Nelson Page and industrialist financier Henry Huttleston Rogers has always been my favorite railroad, although I have also have an interest in the James River and Peninsula subdivisions of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (now CSX), which I have lived within earshot of almost continuously since 1958!
When I was a community college student, I worked part time at several local radio and television stations such as WFMV and WWBT-TV in Richmond. My work with charter buses and tours stimulated my continuing interest in the American Civil War, Colonial Williamsburg,and Jamestown as well as many of the historical sites such as the James River Plantations. Railroad research led me to learn a great deal about William Mahone, and his cultured wife Otelia B. Mahone, who named a number of railroad towns along the Norfolk and Petersburg Railroad from books she was reading written by Sir Walter Scott.
Back in 1992, I stopped my car to help an apparently wounded kitten lying in the roadway near my home in a freezing November rain. Its toes appeared badly mangled, although there was strangely no blood, so I took the little wet thing home and we called the emergency vet, expecting bad news. Instead, he pronounced the little kitty "A-OK". It turns out, she had extra toes and was a polydactyl cat, something I had never even heard of. She turned out to be unlike any other I have ever shared space with (no one "owns" a cat!). What began as a simple arbitrary act of decency enriched my life. Anyway, I learned that author Ernest Hemingway became so taken with these cats after he was given one as a gift by a ship's captain that he provided for those he lived with and their descendents to live in his former home in Key West, Florida. I wrote an article which many other Wikipedians have enhanced; (you can also learn about these amazing creatures at the preceding link).
In the course of writing on subjects such as these, I have learned more and other writers in turn have been stimulated to contributing more, and so forth.
[edit] Shortcomings in my WP work
I am generally more focused on content than format. I appreciate the editing of my work, especially misspelling and missing words (which spell checkers don't catch!). Images, templates and categories are other weak areas for me. I am seldom offended by edits of my work. To the best of my knowledge, only two articles I started (out of about 2,500 so far) have been voted for deletion, and I don't disagree with those decisions.
[edit] Presentation and licensing for use
I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:
| Multi-licensed with the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License versions 1.0 and 2.0 | ||
| I agree to multi-license my text contributions, unless otherwise stated, under the GFDL and the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license version 1.0 and version 2.0. Please be aware that other contributors might not do the same, so if you want to use my contributions under the Creative Commons terms, please check the CC dual-license and Multi-licensing guides. | ||
Vaoverland 21:48, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Talk pages
I often use an article's Talk page, and I am open to help or suggestions to make better articles for Wikipedia. That is more important to me than the need to change anything from the way I have done it. In other words, please HELP if you can make my work better, or guide me in doing so.
I am reminded that WP is all about collaboration. So, of course, it is always an "up" to see an article improved, whoever started or improved it.
[edit] Housekeeping duties
I currently monitor via my watchlist over 3,500 articles for quality and I actively maintain some of them with frequent additions. I try to check over any changes in any of them, and watch for vandalism. I very seldom get involved in other WP activities, such as deleting pages, categories, and templates.
[edit] Vandalism
I am very reluctant to edit or delete the work of others, but will revert vandalism whenever I see it, especially on pages on my WP watchlist. Much like many other Wikipedians, I find entries from anonymous IP addresses to be red flags for possible vandalism. You don't have to do much to get a WP user account and the cost is free. I find most edits by registered users are sincere.
EXAMPLE: If you edit the article on Lincoln's Gettysburg Address to add something stupid or mean such as "Lincoln was a tall idiot", it won't last long if I see it. On the other hand, if you were to type "Lincoln's Gettysburg address was 421 East Main Street", I might research whether old Abe ever lived in Pennsylvania before tampering with your edit.
[edit] Summary
I am enjoying the Wikipedia writing, and welcome suggestions. Please leave any messages at User talk:Vaoverland.
- Thanks to all,
- Mark Fisher
- Williamsburg, Virginia
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- updated Mark in Historic Triangle of Virginia (talk) 15:17, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
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