"I am consciously motivated by the prospect of goal attainment." — Interview speech in case I ever want to work with idiots
I don't like it, but occasionally I am forced to time travel.
By way of introduction
Portrait of the Editor as a Man Concerned with Online Anonymity, 2016, at White Rocks overlook within the George Washington National Forest
Seems this editing thing is maybe less of a 'phase' than I thought (hoped?). So, may as well be cordial and give a bit of background, my editing interests, and a few unasked-for opinions.
I began editing back in 2006, focusing on science-fiction related articles, particularly award-winning and New Wave science fiction novels from the 1960s and 70s. I enjoyed locating and uploading first-edition cover art for these books, and many still stand. However, I got extremely frustrated by several poorly programmed bots that were determined to delete my contributions simply because their machine logic couldn't understand my hand-rolled file summaries, which were completely WP:NFCC-compliant despite not being enclosed in a fancy template. This caused me to leave after just a few months, and I did not return for about seven years.
What brought me back was an article so terrible, I couldn't help but make some snide comments on the talk page. That comment is embarrassing, and I suppose easy enough to find in my contribs, but somehow checking my crusty ol' watchlist scratched an itch I didn't even know I still had. I began editing articles about some local parks...
These days, I mostly edit and create articles related to protected areas and geographic features (mostly rivers and islands), with a focus on subjects in New York state, where I'm originally from. Lately, I've started turning my attentions to places in Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland, in an effort to more formally adopt the area I now call home. I enjoy fixing up articles that are the result of hundreds of uncoordinated contributions over the years, and forming them into a coherent, structured article. However, I also believe that short articles can and should contain valuable information, and one of my major peeves with wiki culture is the idea that article length is any indication whatsoever of article quality.
I am a staunch believer in WP:V. Although I admit that my reliance on web-based (reliable) sources isn't always optimal, I do believe that a major function of a Wikipedia article is to quickly guide interested readers to additional information - for which an online source is darn efficient. To be honest, I don't hardly trust a word that I read here, but I do love the new resources that I find through this site. I also believe primary sources for some subjects are acceptable, even preferred; for basic information regarding public properties, I'm going to trust the management agency more than a popular newspaper article, where authors tend to round figures or approximate.
I sorta miss the talk culture of this place that declined during my time away, so by all means, leave me a message if you so choose, especially if you think any of my edits could use improvement! (Unless it's about en-dashes. Seriously, addressing a single 'Citation needed' tag is worth more than ten thousand dash/hyphen corrections, and you know it.[1])
Did-Done-Did
Bolding indicates those articles I'm especially fond of; I don't go for the DYK/GA/FA scene so this is all I can do to point out contributions I spent way too much time on
For your excellent work creating articles on the State Parks of New York state. Thanks very much for your excellent work, it is quite impressive! Carrite (talk) 14:52, 17 April 2015 (UTC)
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