User:Will Lakeman

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[edit] Welcome

Greetings, and welcome to my user page. I haven't got round to making it look nice yet, but give me some time. I am relatively new to the Wikipedia, I have been using the site for the last couple of years but have restricted myself to the anonymous editing of grammar and syntax with the occasional factual correction, usually in articles related to music. However, I am currently writing about the Wikipedia (see section on research below) and am planning to start work on a number of articles once I get my head round the various style guides.

[edit] Interests

My particular interests are music, film, photography and cultural politics. I am particularly interested in drum and bass or jungle music, as I grew up pretty much in parallel with this genre of music. Consequently, I am in the process of creating a Drum and Bass Cleanup Crew to improve the representation of drum and bass music on the Wikipedia. I hope to accomplish this through peaceful, friendly cooperation to improve both the factual content and language of all drum and bass related articles.

I also have a particular interest in working on certain political articles, particularly those related to or surrounding issues of Media bias, globalisation and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I hope to help improve these pages though cooperating with like-minded, but politically opposed, editors to create pages that encourage the reader to do more research. I am of the opinion that an article does not succeed unless the reader sees it as a prompt to a greater investigation of a challenging topic. I think my political opinions are fairly obvious, the most important being a healthy cynicism towards authority figures, organisations and media from every part of the political spectrum.

As a student of Media and Cultural Studies, I am also interested in addressing incidences of bias within the Wikipedia. Traditionally, these might be expected to mirror the bias inherent in the mass media and Academia of the first world which represent the sources for much of the information added to the project. However, I am also of the opinion that the Wikipedia displays a unique bias which proceeds from the sharp polarisation of contributors around certain controversial topics. In practice, this means that certain debates are conducted in terms defined by the political spectrum of the Anglophone country in which they originate, and may unconsciously ignore global perspectives.

[edit] Please contact me!

I can always be contacted via the email button in the toolbox to the left (although anecdotal evidence suggests isn't particularly reliable), or via my talk page. Sadly, I am logged into the internet for about 14 hours a day, five days a week, so you can always contact me pretty quickly, and I try to reply to everybody.

WikiProject Countering systemic bias open tasks
This project creates new articles and improves neglected ones.


[edit] Wikipedia Research: The Wikipedia as a model for the communal recording and discussion of human knowledge

I am a postgraduate student at the University of Sussex, Brighton, England, where I am taking an MA in Media & Cultural Studies.

I am currently researching an article on online democracy (or rather, online communities), and am using the Wikipedia as my main case study. Any input, related to any matter, would be more than welcome. I have been using the Wikipedia for around two years, and have mostly restricted my editing activity to grammar, punctuation and spelling edits (made anonymously) as I have some experience of working as a proofreader. Ironically, this page is almost undoubtedly full of typos.

Since creating this user page, a number of people have been kind enough to contact me to offer their opinions on my topics. I haven't got things clear yet as to exactly what I want to write, but I decided to post up my early ideas in the hope that they would be corrected, Wiki-style. Even the few comments that I have received so far have convinced me that this was a good idea.

[edit] Drum and bass cleanup crew

I am trying to get a group of people together to improve the representation of drum and bass and jungle music on the Wikipedia. By improve I mean the performance of janitorial tasks such as improving grammar and page layout and including artist photos and details of labels, major releases and radio work. I am of the opinion that minority forms of music are often poorly represented on the Wikipedia (at least in comparison to more popular styles) because the majority of the work is often carried out by a very small number of people and seldom improved once the original article has been created.

I'm going to do a lot more work on this over the next couple of weeks, but I propose to

  1. create a list of articles that require work, detailing what work is required
  2. liaise between different editors from the drum and bass community
  3. expand the list of useful links below
  4. create a list of books which are useful for people interested in writing about drum and bass

If you're interested, please contact me via my talk page. Any suggestions, opinions, links or any other useful material will be gratefully received.

[edit] Drum and bass 'to do' list (please add any articles you think need work)

    • Roni Size Article deleted due to copyvio, now just a pitiful stub on dnb legend :(
    • Bad Company
    • DJ Friction (disambiguation needed
    • Jungle (music) Redirect needed? Introduction gives link to DnB and it has now got a section dealing with the origins of the term. Themindset 21:42, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
    • Digital No article yet, will need to be added to the disambiguation page
    • DJ Zinc Stub. Added a little here illWill 00:20, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Bingo Beats Stub
    • Congo Natty Rebel MC bio stops in 90s, also lists him as artist but not record label
    • tramen Nice entry, I'll add a few links to other dnb pages later.
      • Oh, go on then :) Only place that links to it so far is this page, though... (Stevekeiretsu, but forgot to login)
    • Juicebox records Great article on Gerald, nothing on his label
    • Particularly shocking that there's nothing on any of these classic labels:
    • Metalheadz Added more detail, maybe a picture and selected discography might be good. Also, information on the Blue Note nights if anybody has it. illWill 00:10, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • Moving Shadow ditto, although nice that somebody has put in a list of artists.
    • 31 records
    • Actually, maybe just go though every one of the lables listed on Drum and bass record labels. This could take a while.
    • Jump-Up Needs expansion, mention of chart success of remixes etc.
    • Lemon D no article! The Dillinja article could probably also do with some work

Cityhopper78 09:16, 14 September 2006 (UTC) hey Will ,Martin from the UEA waveney crew here (aka compleeetelyy crazy) .I dont know how to contact u ,coz the email link isnt working .If u still use this page ,pls let me know .

[edit] Useful links for drum and bass articles

    • drum and bass The main Wikipedia article on the genre. Has improved greatly since I first started using the Wikipedia (nothing to do with me though) :)
    • Rolldabeats - an enormous online discography that functions as the drum and bass version of IMDB I'm of the opinion that artist articles should link here as standard
    • http://www.dogsonacid.com Dogsonacid, the world's largest drum and bass forum. Not a good idea to post about the Wikipedia there as, sadly, vandalism is often carried out by a small minority of users. The site is very useful for research and discussion though. It has been suggested that 'The Grid' section of the forum might be more receptive to Wikipedia requests.
    • http://www.subvertcentral.com Subvert Central is a very interesting drum and bass forum which hosts a lot of serious discussion related to the genre, as well as other forms of music and political/cultural discussion.

[edit] from Template:B0h

I found this template here, and it made me laugh, so I included it.

This article is about to drop.
Make some noise for the rewind.


[edit] Users interested in working to clean up drum and bass articles and create new ones (please add your name here)

  • Me (obviously) illWill
  • Themindset 17:40, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Stevekeiretsu 17:54, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
  •  grm_wnr Esc 00:06, 13 August 2005 (UTC) (only just noticed this cooperation, drop me a line if it's still active)
  • Kalli