Barnstars | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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people and places of British history Thank you for quality articles on places of historic and natural interest, such as St Denys' Church, Sleaford, and Dolebury Warren, and historic British figures such as Henry Fownes Luttrell, for being open to debate which "can lead to greater reflection and allow for improvements", and for "quietly get on with editing", ---Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:52, 1 December 2015 (UTC) you are an awesome Wikipedian!
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Reviews |
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Good Articles |
Dolebury Warren (passed) · The Crescent, Taunton (on review) |
Peer reviews |
Mami Kawada · Fall of the Western Roman Empire · Princess Alice of the United Kingdom |
Did You Know? |
Fenestraja plutonia (Passed, 2 March 2015) · Henry Aaron Hill (Passed, 5 March 2015) · Horace Batten (Passed, 1 April 2015) |
For a list of articles I have created or significantly expanded, please see my significant contributions. A partial list of current, future and potential projects can be found here.
Hello and welcome to my user page. I joined Wikipedia on 27 April 2014 and contributed my first article shortly afterwards. A researcher based in the UK, my academic background is in history and politics; I contribute to these areas, although rarely in relation to my real-world specialisms. I am frequently too busy off-line to edit regularly and my editing has recently become very sporadic, though I still check in often. When I get time, you'll usually find me creating or improving articles about British people, places and history.
My interests are varied. I've created hundreds of articles about a wide range of topics, focusing especially on academia, politics, military history and British places; a major achievement involved creating lists of Fellows of the British Academy, which has helped to turn many red links blue. I am also particularly happy with my work on topics about Lincolnshire; my main achievements in this area include getting Skegness to FA and Sleaford to GA (alongside bringing several other Sleaford articles to GA-level). I'm also glad to have transformed Robert Roberts (writer) from a one-sentence stub to an FA; Roberts is a fascinating, underappreciated figure and I hope this article goes a little way to introducing more people to his work. I am hoping to work a few more articles up to GA or FA standard, as time and resources allow.
I was drawn to editing because I grew frustrated to find so many Wikipedia articles which were missing or in a poor state. After a while, it dawned on me that "if you want something doing, do it yourself" so I got stuck in. To date, I have over 14,000 edits, most to the article space (>78%) and much of the rest is related to producing content (I used to draft in my userspace). I have created over 1,000 mainspace articles and substantially improved many others, mostly biographies or lists of notable people. I remain engaged in improving Wikipedia's patchy coverage of people in under-represented fields of British history, politics and society. I have also worked to improve our coverage of women and non-Anglophone people; I've created dozens of articles about women.
The following are some major achievements of mine:
As of September 2021, these are projects I intend to work on over time, often sporadically and to no schedule. Many of them are already ongoing. If anyone reads this and wants to help, please do!
I have been privileged to have access to academic libraries and many pay-walled online resources in the past, which I have used when editing Wikipedia; I considered this rewarding and hope that it helps to make knowledge more accessible to "ordinary" people across the world. Even if the topics I research sometimes seem esoteric or obscure, I believe that, if anything, those hard-to-research articles are the ones which give Wikipedia its strength. Anyone can Google a fact about the Roman Empire, but it was much harder to find stuff about, say, the agricultural historian G. E. Fussell before I created his article. Now it's there, with links to further reading. When you do this 1,000 times over, it's likely having a positive effect.
These days, I don't have ready access to as much online material, but I do have a good library of books and pamphlets about Lincolnshire and British history and still have access to many helpful resources. I also subscribe to the British Newspaper Archive.
When it comes to writing, I don't profess to be the best, but I have some recognised content under my belt (see right) and am always trying to improve. My initial efforts needed some copy-editing, but I've come a long way since then and have accrued real-world writing experience. I'd like to produce more high-quality stuff, but I rarely have the time for that sort of sustained effort. Hence, I've taken to making short articles (usually in sporadic batches) when I have free time.
I gather that most Wikiprojects are moribund and I see little point in adding my name to most, even in areas where I am active. Nevertheless, I am a member of the following:
My approach to Wikipedia is relatively simple: it would not be an encyclopaedia without content. That is central to its mission to deliver the sum of all knowledge to anyone for free. I believe firmly in that mission. I want to help make Wikipedia better and I believe that its articles have to be high-quality and scholarly for them to fulfil this aim. Yet when I joined my university, I was shocked at how much is stored behind castle-like walls (sometimes literally, sometimes digitally or financially). I want to help make knowledge free because I think it empowers people (though obviously I respect copyright and intellectual property, etc.) It's in my nature to quietly get on with editing or creating articles which are more obscure or in need of improving. Doing so tends to avoid conflicts with other editors, and I generally prefer to avoid conflict anyway. I am a believer that we should aim to communicate in a civil and, above all, constructive manner. There really is no need to be a jerk.