I'm a person. I think. A male person, interested in all manner of stuff from molecular biology to quantum physics, through cricket, history, politics, literature and linguistics. Words, language and communication remain of fundamental interest to me, and could perhaps be described as my speciality. Aside from that, I'm the epitome of the 'Jack of all trades, master of none' philosophy: I live to learn and pass on the information I have gleaned, usually forgetting all but the most relevant of facts myself in the process.
My head is filled with volumes of information that is largely irrelevant in a day-to-day setting, but I hope ultimately to preserve this information through sharing it and writing it down while I'm thinking about it, in places like Wikipedia, with the hope that one day, it will prove to be of value to someone else.
I think that's why I decided originally to be a journalist: to inform and to educate at the same time is kinda cool! The responsibility is huge, though: I don't want to have to toe any party line, adopt any particular stance or restrict my work in any other way, but professionally it seems that this is what I must do.
The flow of information should not be restricted in this manner, the only 'gatekeepers' of knowledge should be every single one of us, and the information supplied needs to be impartial and open-minded. How can we make a better world if the information we need to survive is shared between an elite few and barred from the rest of the world's population?
Wikipedia is, I believe, the answer. Until it gets bought by some corporation with specific other interests of their own, we can all merrily construct perhaps the largest repository of knowledge the world has ever known; freely available to all and unswayed by economics, politics and power, and try, in our little way, to re-build the world.
I originally built the Bulwell page from scratch, adding to it whenever I had a spare five minutes or a new fact to share, although it has since been edited so much and so badly that I'm now ashamed to put my name to it. This manner of construction and deconstruction in favour of cynical adverts and irrelevance means the page is in a constant state of revision. Give me a year (or someone else interested enough to help me with the authoring) and I'll give you a site worth awarding!
I'm working on the East Midlands English page, too, as well as dozens of others.
Apart from that, I use Wikipedia a lot myself for research, and find I end up removing a bit of POV here, re-writing a bit there and adding to it all as I go. I'm a bugger for grammar, and I hate the kinda page with a list of dis-jointed facts (eg Blah is in the town of Blahville. Blahville is in Blahland. It is Blah in Blahville. There is a Blah in Blahville. And a blah. There is also a blah in Blah. There is a blah, too. etc etc). Although we all have our own opinion and bias, an Encyclopedia should be strictly neutral. Otherwise, we'd may as well sell up to Murdoch now!
Personally, I write across all boundaries, writing song lyrics, scripts for tv and radio, poems, raps and short stories, as well as producing and writing music, playing piano and keyboard and generally wasting my time and talents.
.svg){kind=small}
.svg){kind=small}
