I am still pretty new at this, so I’m using Wikipedia:A Primer for newcomers to learn how to edit properly.
My real name is not going to be listed here, and I’m not posting a picture, being a human of the female persuasion who is doing something on the internet, but you can probably track it down if your google-fu is good enough. I have been contributing to Wikipedia since 19, September , 2013. I’ve gotten heavily into the Wikipedia Loves Monuments thing and have been submitting pictures of really, really obscure places around the Midwest for a couple of years now. Like I’ve driven past “road closed” signs to head out to “bridge condemned” to get a photo kind of thing, driven down private drives and probably trespassed, but I haven’t been caught yet. Adventure!
But, I also keep finding things missing in Wikipedia articles that I know about. So I’ve started improving articles by adding references or information. I’m even up to creating a few pages now that just don’t exist already.
I love the idea of crowd-sourced knowledge because all of us are smarter than any one of us. Also, the idea of putting a free – accurate - reference up online is one of the best uses of the internet ever.
I am committed to the principles of Wikipedia, especially the neutral point of view, and I’m a professional writer for a living, so I can manage to do a neutral style. However, I always appreciate constructive criticism.
I have degrees in History (B.A.), English (M.A.) and an M.B.A. I’ve been a professional teacher and lecturer. I know some stuff and what is a legitimate source in the real world. I’m learning the rules at Wikipedia. But I love me some primary source documentation. Nothing is better than straight from the horse’s mouth, IMHO.
I was born and raised in the Midwestern United States and have lived here all my life in various states. I have traveled to nearly every state in the union, however, and to several countries outside the U.S.
I am so nerdy that listing all of the things that interest me would take all day. I am a repository of obscure factoids. But I will primarily be editing or writing articles in the areas of History, Literature and Biography because I have legit expertise in those areas and keep finding things missing in articles I look up. Please let me know if signs of bias creep into anything I write and I will try to restrain myself from use of colorful descriptive language because that might inject bias into factual copy just by trying to add some flair.
I’m a politically active person, but I’m also a trained Historian. Trying to get at the truth of something is of greater import to me than any partisanship. Revisionist history makes me crazy and if I see you lying about something, I will mark your article for deletion so fast your head will swivel around like Linda Blair in the Exorcist. Or, I will just correct it and cite primary sources until the cows come home.
I’m not going to edit anything that will be a conflict of interest for me, unless someone is lying. If that happens, I’ll note it here.
But the Five Pillars and all Wikipedia policies will always apply to what I contribute.
Someday, I will fill in this stuff below as time allows. There are a LOT of pictures already.