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Gone Fishin' edit
This is a notice that, though I'd always like to continue editing, I'm on a de facto hiatus. Somewhere around 2012 I stopped finding the time to edit and take part in the community. I still like to edit when I see something I can quickly fix, but that is now rare. And large contributions like the ones I'd been planning below have stopped. As soon as I find the time I'll be more active, but that time is not in sight yet. I also moved to Pennsylvania, so I can't participate in DC meetups, though I reserve the right to pop in if I'm in the area!
Old text edit
Who am I? edit
I am an avid Wikipedia reader. I read much more than I edit. I read almost every day, [too] often for hours. As for editing, in 2009 I averaged 8 edits per month, just to give you an idea. I'd like to find the time to contribute more substantially, though.
Why do I edit? edit
Mainly, I'm just a big fan. You can learn an incredible amount on these pages, from what Westphalian sovereignty is to how nuclear power plants work to what the internet infrastructure is.
And there's a multitude of smaller topics that you never knew about but which are fascinating. To give just a few examples I'd name the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the Omphalos hypothesis, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, and Kowloon Walled City. And these are still far from trivia. Because of the standard of notability, most articles you run across will educate you on some significant facet of our world.
We've got a nascent Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy here, just as the web always had the potential to be. This is why I list this site high on my personal reasons for why it's already the future.
So that's why I edit. I think this project is an incredibly positive development in society and I relish any opportunity to further it.
Have I messed something up? edit
Then it's probably simply out of ignorance. Please revert and, if you could, let me know what I did wrong. There's a lot of policies and I'm no wikilaw expert yet.
Announcement: Working on a new article, Help Wanted edit
Famous urban explorer. As you can see from my links there, he's been written up many times by newspapers and magazines. He even co-hosted a short-lived Discovery Channel show on his vocation. If you have anything to contribute, your help would be much appreciated.
Also, here's another idea I just had. I don't have any content or references yet, but a quick Google search shows it will easily pass notability criteria.
Oh, and here's an interesting citation for HBO's stance.
Ok here's another with actual statistics.
And another good analysis.
Soapbox: Wikipedia, I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down. edit
I've really been getting frustrated with Wikipedia lately. It's because so many articles are written so that they are incomprehensible to anyone who's come there to learn about a subject. To put it more bluntly, it often seems that articles aren't written for anyone's benefit except those who already know about the subject. I used to be a huge fan of learning about a whole new field through Wikipedia, but I find myself doing that less and less. I actually go elsewhere to learn things sometimes! I know! The very idea!
A pretty good example is the "what the internet infrastructure is" topic I referred to in my little essay above (written a while ago now). It took a long time and going back and forth between many articles before I could even glean a major feature of the modern internet: the fact that since many of us live behind routers, we aren't actually on the public internet (we're on private networks). I look at those articles now and yes, I understand what they're saying, but that's because I already know what they're "trying" to tell you.
I think the problem is both an abundance of jargon and a tendency to spend most of the article obsessing over little details and distinctions before we've established a general-terms overview. Before you can understand the exact definition, it really really helps to know what sort of thing we're talking about, what it's usually like, and what people usually mean when they use the term.
I just don't understand what the point is of what we're doing here if not to educate the non-knowledgeable. Reminding experts of the details is useful, I suppose, but is that all we want to be?
/rant.
Just had to get that off my mind, I guess. Also, the first step to doing something about it is to at least get talking about it first. If you have thoughts, pro- or anti-, or are even interested in taking action, feel free to leave me a note. For now I'll direct your attention to a fantastic essay I just discovered: Wikipedia:Readers first. Gives me hope that others are interested in this too.
Update: I've found my home! Wikipedia:Make technical articles understandable (or WP:MTAA for short!) seems to be exactly what I'm talking about. Someone else gets it!
Also, I've started to do actual, constructive work to change this state of affairs. So that helps a lot.
Great article or Greatest article? edit
And now for some needed levity. There is an article on this here Wikipedia called Rotating locomotion in living systems. It is a long, well-cited, very complete discussion that can be summarized as "Why animals don't have wheels." I am a fan of this. That is all.
areas of interest edit
- I have a B.S. in molecular biology, so that's my one accredited area of expertise.
- Another area where I have some academic knowledge is the world of global energy sources, especially bioethanol.
- Related to the above topics, I attended Georgetown for four years, and know quite a bit about the history of the campus.
- Then I moved to "real" D.C. and learned the same stuff about the wider city - the physical history of the place.
- Also, I've spent way too much time procrastinating on the intertubes, resulting in a great familiarity with the webcomic community. Ok, let me clarify: the quality webcomic community. Nothing to do with the vast hordes of horrible webcomics.
- Tech
- Much as I try to keep my distance, I'm usually nauseatingly current on tech news. My blog & periodical intake is flush with terms like HTML5, Chrome OS, The Long Tail, new media and yes even those twitspace and youface sites.
- Another side of this coin is my anthropological interest in those real denizens of the internet, or more accurately the internets*. Look, for instance, at the roiling pot of creativity and culture creation that is 4chan. Or the spontaneous organization of these people into the amoeba-like organization Anonymous. Or, for a slightly different angle read/listen to danah boyd describe academic research on how young people use the internet.
- And finally, in my further online procrastination I've come to embrace and explore all the wonderful things Google brings to our world.
*also known as the intertubes, interwebs, intertron, interwebs, interblag, intertweets, the tubes, or (rarely), the interbutts.
to do edit
Other pending actions edit
Posted in talk page, waiting for approval/objections edit
- Talk:Document Object Model#Explaining what the DOM is without being vague - my version has been reviewed; need to incorporate & respond
- Talk:Windows Presentation Foundation#Plain language description of what it is - inserting one clarifying sentence into the lead; waiting on peer review & approval
- Talk:DNA sequencing#Graph of plummeting sequencing costs - adding genome.gov/sequencingcosts graph to the article; waiting for objections
- Talk:Border Gateway Protocol#Explantion of how internet routing works - explaining internet packet routing
- Talk:Domain Name System#Let's add a simple, introductory example?
Ideas bin: edit
- Ballistic missile#Depressed trajectory - Replace the image there with Figure 2 from Gronlund and Wright (1992)
- Faculty of 1000 - Revert (mostly) to the version before User:EleanorF1000's contributions, which made it less well-written (and may result from COI).
- ***DNA sequencing*** IMPORTANT Ok so people want this article to be understandable (see the talk page). And I could make that happen. This is probably going to be the first place laymen come when trying to find out what sequencing is, so I could have a very significant impact. So: Priority #1.
- Rage comics - step 1: add the references from AfD to article
- Sleigh Bells - add good reference: Sleigh Bells' Alexis Krauss on Her Girl Group Past and Their Relationship With M.I.A.
- Talk:Uniform Resource Identifier#Misleading Venn Diagram in a different way - see if the guy responds about my new diagram draft
- Talk:Antiretroviral drug#Let's start writing history, okay? - Graph of AIDS deaths in the 90's. Actually, the more important place to put this is in the fledgling History section of AIDS.
- Talk:Men In Hats#Found interview - to be used later?
- Oops, n/m, I forgot it was a webcomic and thus ineligible for article status.
- Talk:Penny Arcade (webcomic)#PATV as a source? - (answer was yes, treat like one of their blog posts)
- Talk:Jason Calacanis/Archives/2012#Doing justice to the contrarian - find instances and sources for him being a contrarian & add section?
- Talk:Love (The Beatles album)#Identifying Samples: Let me put it in these terms - Add notice at top of talk page that it's been decided not to allow unsourced info on the identity of samples, and link to The Beatles Wikia as an alternative. But first, reformat the page on The Beatles Wikia to easily accommodate additions, like the Night Ripper page.
- Talk:Google search#Add a History/Timeline of Search's development - adding a History section, including real time push initiative
- Deep Throat & Watergate scandal - parking space photo, specify the garage & space it took place in using this source
- Playing the Building - expand, adopt?
- ROFLCon - Write "External Links" references into article, move to "References" section
Potential work edit
- Submarine-launched ballistic missiles - find info on their development & add to article (very little on that topic in any article right now)
- Helacyton gartleri - Van Valen article - find applicable places to apply this newfound info
- Red Digital Cinema Camera Company - add info about the impact on and adoption in the industry (from articles I've seen) (Wired?)
Outdent edit
(I didn't know where else to put this)
- This is useful for resetting the indent of a thread on talk pages!
See?
There's a template for it: {{outdent|::::}}
(the number of colons should be the same as the number of indents of the preceding text). You can also use the simple version: {{outdent}}
See Also edit
a blog where I write about anything that interests me (mostly frivolous fun things from the internet)
Internal Links edit
(mostly for my own purposes)
English
personal editing milestones
major edits
- old versions of this page: