What I'm doing here
I am a Geotechnical Engineer living in Alameda, California.
I have substantially rewritten the Geotechnical Engineering article and articles about geotechnical engineering and concrete materials. I have created an article on R-value of soils, and one on Mineral hydration, and have made significant edits to landslide, peat, Shear stress, Direct Shear Test, Standard Penetration Test, Earthquake liquefaction, Calaveras Fault, Concrete, Portland cement, cement, pile, ground granulated blast furnace slag, and edited Elasticity (physics), Plasticity (physics), Permeability (fluid), and more.
I'm interested in politics, especially local politics. I have contributed to the articles on Ron Dellums, the Special election musical chairs which occurred in Oakland in 1998-99, and Alameda Measure A and, more globally, have contributed to the Democratic Party (United States), Republican Party (United States), Communist Party USA, racial segregation, anarcho-capitalism, activism, direct action (which needed significant edits), Álvaro Vargas Llosa, Mike Curb, Jerry Brown, McCarthyism, Independent cities, Neoconservatism and Charter school.
I'm also interested in my local area and its history, and have contributed to the articles on Oakland, Alameda, California, Alameda Unified School District, Victorian architecture, Californio, Port Chicago disaster, San Francisco Chronicle, and more. I've wandered into local educational institutions, and have created stub articles for College of Alameda and the Peralta Community College District, edited Feather River College to indicate its former connection to the PCCD, and created a short article/epitaph for D-Q University.
I dance, a variety of different forms. I've made minor edits to the article on Argentine Tango, have created the Irish stepdance article by splitting it off from the Irish dance article, and have made edits to both. I've worked a little on articles about Reel (dance), Slip jig and others.
I'm interested in quirky bits of history, and have started a reorgnaization of the List of extinct states, and made minor edits to a few articles I read while researching history for the list. I've been involved with the article on Republic of Ragusa, trying to keep it from being totally rewritten in bad English by Italian and Croatian ultra-nationalists, but have since given up on that article. I added a little bit to the article on Monongalia County, West Virginia, for reasons I don't entirely remember. I've added a little to articles on Delaware and Hundred (division) about Delaware's Hundreds.
I have an interest in articles about Colombia, and have edited that article, the article on Bogotá, D.C., Manizales, Honda, Tolima, Líbano, and Colombian Armed Conflict. I also have an interest in Greece, but have only worked on the articles on Ioannis Rallis and the Security Battalions.
I like chocolate and beer. I've written the article on the Mendocino Brewing Company, and done minor edits to associated articles, including United Beverages Group. I have created the List of chocolate manufacturers to help control the list in the Chocolate article, and edited articles on See's Candies, Guittard Chocolate Company, Lake Champlain Chocolates, Venchi.
I lived in the University Students' Cooperative Association, and have edited that article, and led the merger of most of the individual house articles into the main article.
Articles I've edited related to other interests:
LibraryThing, Rolling Down to Old Maui, Letter frequencies, ETAOIN SHRDLU, Home equity loan.
What are you doing here?
I used to think that Wikipedia was great, and would recommend it to folks who needed a way to absorb excess free time. I can't do that anymore.
Nowadays, I can't do that without a lot of hesitancy. Anyone who has useful knowledege and wants to edit Wikipedia needs to have a fairly thick skin, avoid anything but article editing, and whenever challenged by an administrator, bend over and take it like a man. The flame wars on political and other controversial articles are ridiculous, and anything that supports the left-wing shibboleth of the week or that some obscure nationalist or group has taken an interest in will be filled with aggressively defended crap. Administrators in general feel they are better, and more right, than users, and some significant number are rather hostile when asked about their actions, and will actively punish users who dare to question them.
Anyone who wants to edit needs to learn a large number of poorly-organized and not-always-clear policies and procedures in order to keep from getting jargon-filled and nasty warnings sent to them by admins who will condescend to them. This isn't what's supposed to be happening, but it is. I'm willing to deal with it, for now, but I'm not going to suggest that others do so.
- update: I've started editing at Citizendium. So far, it's been a much more rewarding effort, and I've scaled back my involvement here.
There is still too much political crap going on here, and some of it is structural to Wikipedia. I don't know that Wikipedia needs to be as extreme as Citizendium in requiring real names, but eliminating IP editing would be of enormous benefit to Wikipedia. The administrator problem continues, and will only be resolvable if it becomes significantly easier to remove administrators, or if they must stand for reconfirmation on a regular schedule, so that bad admins can actually be weeded out. Until the structural problems with Wikipedia are fixed, I'm limiting myself to mostly article maintenance, and cutting back on that.
- update #2, 2010-12-08
I came back for a while. When work got busy, I pulled back on working at Citizendium, which has its own problems. I was laid off recently, and had some free time, and started to edit here again. Something's changed at Wikipedia, for the better. I'm not sure what, but editing here isn't as bad as it used to be. As I return to work, my editing here will probably drop off again, because something which hasn't changed is that Wikipedia is an incredible time-suck.
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