Grandmaster Editor
First-Class
and is entitled to display
this
Mithril Editor Star
with the
Neutronium Superstar hologram.
Prologue
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“...years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.”
t was a good day. A sunny summer afternoon was blazing, as sunny as it gets, and my colleague Shakib was getting excited about some business pitch or other. I don't remember which one, or if we managed to win it or not. To answer to his bullet-pointed questionnaire I turned to Google. I was feeling lucky that day, and I typed out - Bandarban - and voila, came up an Wikipedia page.
Act 01
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“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together...”
he first edit I made was in 5 May 2006 to the article on Bandarban District. I visited the page as a reader, and found that I knew more than the article had. So I expanded it, and largely left it there. Then I found that the the article on Shahbag, a stub back then, was being merged with Dhaka. I started working on article, eventually bringing it up to a featured article status. Working on that article is still the best times of my wikilife. There I met some of the people I consider as my dearest wikifriends - Dwaipayanc, Rama's Arrow, Nichalp, Bakasuprman, and, of course, Ragib, the only Bangladeshi admin back then. Fowler&fowler and Tony1 the great also lent their hands. Later, Ragib and I collaborated in many projects, including fighting Muraad Kahn, a single purpose editor and a sock master.
Shortly thereafter Tarif Ezaz took a drive to elevate the article on Bengali Language Movement, which happened largely in Shahbag, to a featured article status. I became involved. I also became a defender of the Dhaka article when its featured status faced delisting. Many of the articles I created were spin off from these few articles, including Muzharul Islam and Dhaka Club. I was never a major contributor to Bangladesh Liberation War, but I remained a curator for the article and related articles for long.
While working on Shahbag, I found that the area was originally built by the Dhaka Nawab Family. I ended up creating articles for the family and all of the successors. One of the successors played a major role in the History of aviation in Bangladesh. I embarked on that article immediately. It led me to the Biman Bangladesh Airlines article, and AA was in the middle of a major improvement drive. I ended up helping that article to a featured article status and successfully nominate AA for adminship. At one point, I also contributed significantly to Pakistani and Indian aviation articles.
I have been caught ever since, held by the power of this wonderful project of Wikimedia Foundation, hosted by Wikia and running on MediaWiki softwares, is truly the greatest of all Wikis and a crowning glory of Web 2.0. I soon found out that the Bangladesh entries on this free content encyclopedia needs massive help. So I volunteered, though not much has been achieved yet. Instead of focusing my efforts around my home country I have been rather busy with random articles or topics that tickled my fancy. Not a difficult job, as we have till today 6,821,825 articles to choose from.
Act 2
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“There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate...”
ne day I found that the article on Jayne Mansfield had too much on her personality and too little on her work. My involvement with that article started with an improvement request made on the talk page. Soon I became the primary editor for that article, and have so far brought it up to a GA status. I created a spin off from that article - Jayne Mansfield in popular culture. It was nominated twice for deletion. I started to improve fast enough to prove that the article has merit. It survived. I kept working on it, and it eventually became a separate Good Article. I also contributed significantly in sourcing media files for these articles. I also created or expanded articles on her kin and her works.
Another day I added a non-free image to the article on Riya Sen. There was an attempt to delete it for insufficient compliance. To increase the compliance quotient a created a more relevant article - Ananthabhadram. The image stayed, and I managed to work both articles up to GA status. Ms. Sen, her mother and sister all being movie stars I was next led to List of Hindi film clans. Later, by the way, I had the image deleted by my own initiative. Here I met Zora (who managed to teach me more about Wikipedia than anyone else), Bollyjeff, Kwamikagami and Dr. Blofeld. They are not exactly friends, but I do have fond memories of all. This also was the article where I met Hurricanehink.
Act 3
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“"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings."”
or a brief period I was very active with WikiProject Bangladesh. There, among other things, I started discussing a format and an ideal for Upazila articles. It led me to start working on a random Upazila. I chose Sitakunda Upazila. It is a GA now. I was creating new articles all along to address all the redlinks I made, but for this one I had to create species articles, including Bambusa vulgaris. That in turn led me to the Sundarbans article, which was almost solely about the West Bengal part back then.
At the project User:Armanaziz was very active, working on categorization and assessing, among other things. Exchanges with him led me to work on the two Nobel Peace Award winners of 2006 - Grameen Bank and Muhammad Yunus. The eventual collaboration lifted both articles to GA status. Him and I also collaborated to defend featured Bangladesh-related articles. Dhaka we could, Kazi Nazrul Islam and Shahbag we couldn't.
I don't even recall how I embarked on the Bikini article. But, so far it is the oldest Wikipedia article I have edited. It now is a good article. In the process I kept spinning out forks like History of the bikini (now another good article), Bikini in popular culture and Bikini variants, along with articles on individual variants and parts.
In 30 July 2008 I had my Wikimedia Global Account. So far I have logged into 66 Wikimedia projects, editing 13 of them. After the English Wikipedia, my home project, the next most contributed project is Wikimedia Commons (of course).
Epilogue
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“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned...”
hile stumbling around in the Wikipedia I have come face to face with all forms of Chinese martial arts - Eagle Claw (鷹爪派), Butterfly Sword (蝴蝶雙刀), Jeet Kune Do (截拳道), Lau Gar (劉家), Five Animals (五形), Silk reeling (纏絲功) or any form of Monkey Fu (isn't that obvious?). There are discrepancies,conflicting philosophies, contradictory evidence, confusing precedence, sneaky vandalism and... you get the point. It is interesting to find, though, the admins at odds. You know, consensus doesn't ever come easy.
Though I consider myself a polymath, I have suffered from a number of WikiDiseases at varying degrees - Academic Standards Disease, Wikinoia, Wikistress, Redlinkphobia, Link madness, Substub disease and Edit counting. I haven't suffered from Admnitis yet, because, you dummy, I'm not an administrator here. I don't think I ever will want to be one, not with my level of patience.