This user is an administrator on the English Wikipedia. (verify) |
This user is female. |
This editor is a Senior Editor II and is entitled to display this Rhodium Editor Star. |
This user was born and raised in California. |
SD | This user lives in or hails from San Diego. |
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This user attends or attended Stanford University. |
This user contributes using an iMac. |
This user is a member of WikiProject San Diego. |
This user has contributed to 5 Good Articles on Wikipedia. |
This user has written or expanded 34 articles featured in the Did You Know section on the Main Page. |
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Contents
Things I've learned at Wikipedia
- When you become an administrator, your user talk page gets a lot more interesting.
- WP:Assume good faith can be a valuable approach in many circumstances of life, not just Wikipedia.
- Use "page preview" before saving an edit.
- Use the "thank" feature often.
- Check an article's history before proposing it for deletion.
- Look for a plausible redirect in lieu of deletion.
- Check new articles for copyright violations.
- The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can never work.[1]
- I used to have a dream that my computer would be as easy to use as my phone. And my dream came true. Now I don't understand my phone either.
- The bad news is, the guy who bullied you in school is still taking your lunch money. The good news is, he makes a pretty good Subway sandwich.
- Age improves with wine.
Wit? Wisdom? No, just puns.
- I was going to make a joke about sodium, but Na.
- If you've seen one shopping center, you've seen the mall.
- As any English major knows, Oscar was Wilde, but Thornton was Wilder.
- Beauty is in the eyes of the beer holder.
Country songs have the wittiest titles
- Is it cold in here, or is it just you?
- How can I miss you when you won't go away?
- She got the gold mine, I got the shaft
- I've got friends in low places
About me
I am a native Californian (5th generation no less). I grew up in Oakland, California, and now live in San Diego. I attended Oakland Technical High School and Stanford University. I have also lived in Los Angeles, Baltimore, New Orleans, and Honolulu.
On Wikipedia I mainly work on articles related to San Diego, particularly things having to do with San Diego history and San Diego neighborhoods. I also function as a Wikignome, cleaning up or proofreading articles that I come across. And I occasionally "rescue" an article which had been nominated for deletion, by adding sources to prove notability, or by rewriting to meet Wikipedia standards. Others who want to do this kind of thing could look for "unreferenced biographies of living persons" at Category:Unreferenced BLPs.
I've been hanging around Wikipedia off and on since 2006. I began editing in earnest in June 2009, when I saw articles about the San Diego Yacht Club and Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego that contained blatant errors of fact. I corrected those errors, and was hooked. Five short years later, I have become one of the 2,000 most active Wikipedians. Actually #1752 last time I looked, but who's counting? 0;-D (That's my personal smilie: an angelic grin.)
Articles created
Articles I've created or substantially expanded include:
- Point Loma, San Diego (a Good article)
- Midway, San Diego
- Old Town, San Diego
- Sunset Cliffs, San Diego
- La Playa, San Diego
- Shelter Island, San Diego
- Roseville-Fleetridge, San Diego
- Loma Portal, San Diego
- Bird Rock, San Diego
- Downtown San Diego
- Mission Valley, San Diego
- Barrio Logan, San Diego
- Sorrento Mesa, San Diego
- Swan Canyon, San Diego
- Camp Kearny
- California Quadrangle
- El Prado Complex
- San Diego Pride
- Fiesta del Pacifico
- Wonderland Amusement Park (San Diego)
- Rosecroft (San Diego)
- Medico-Dental Building
- San Diego Brewing Company
- Beer in San Diego County, California (a Good Article)
- May 2014 San Diego County wildfires
- St. John's Presbyterian Church (Berkeley, California)
- Griffith Park Zoo
- South San Francisco Hillside Sign
- Monarch School (San Diego)
- Gompers Preparatory Academy
- e3 Civic High School
- Serrano High School
- Chaparral High School (Phelan, California)
- Death Valley Academy
- Roble Hall
- Lane Medical Library
- The Cocktail Hour
- The Other Wise Man
- Chocoholic
- Assume a can opener
- Dial (soap)
- Garden State Fireworks
- Mountain Fire
- La Loca (opera)
- Belle Benchley
- Kenneth C. Brugger
- Wallace H. Clark, Jr.
- D. C. Collier
- C. Lockard Conley
- Roberto de la Madrid
- Nancy Dickey
- Gerry Driscoll
- Lin Farley
- Thomas B. Fitzpatrick
- Ronne Froman
- John K. Frost
- Justin Halpern
- John E. Hart
- Ben Hulse
- Grover Hutchins
- J. J. Isler
- Levi Cooper Lane
- William Walter Leake
- Charles L. Lewis (California politician)
- Henry T. Lynch
- Doug Manchester
- M. Brian Maple
- Bejun Mehta
- Walter R. Nickel
- D. Gregory Powell
- Dave Roberts (California politician)
- Alfred D. Robinson and Marion James Robinson (A Good Article)
- Fernando Sanford
- Scott Sherman (politician)
- Suzy Spafford
- Thomas Welton Stanford
- Marcus Stern (journalist)
- George Stevens (California politician)
- Salvador Torres
- Catalina Trail
- Fred Urquhart
- Aldred Scott Warthin
- Shirley Weber
- Harry M. Wegeforth
- John H. Yardley
- List of breweries in San Diego County, California
- List of presidents of the American Medical Association
Articles rescued
A partial list of articles I "rescued", by improving them after they had been nominated for deletion in an AfD (articles for deletion) discussion:
- Folie à Deux (winery)
- Benjamin Franklin Haynes
- James W. Maney
- Ghân-buri-Ghân
- Robert Boone
- Thomas William Ferguson
- William James Wanless
- Harry S.N. Greene
- Lucy Jefferson Lewis
- Kama'aina
- Del Cerro, San Diego
- Sunshine tax
- Kit Carson Park
- Frank Worth
- California Chaparral Institute
- Emil Frei
- Stephen Decatur Bross
- Hitler's Munich apartment
- Real Mex Restaurants
- The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky
- helped with Ika Hügel-Marshall (a Good Article)
- helped with Naomi Sager
- "Big Bay Boom incident," renamed and refocused to Big Bay Boom
- "The Wise Men," renamed and refocused to The Wise Men (book)
- "The Celebrity Source," renamed and refocused to Rita Tateel
- and 370 others, primarily articles which had been tagged as "unreferenced BLP" (unreferenced biography of a living person) - a tag which can result in their deletion.
Articles used for "Did you know...?"
Articles I wrote or expanded that were featured on the Wikipedia front page with "Did you know...?" items:
- Bejun Mehta (586 views)
- Old Town, San Diego (1,100 views)
- Camp Kearny (658 views)
- Salvador Torres (423 views)
- assisted with USS Recruit (TDE-1) (4,300 views)
- William Smeathers (997 views)
- assisted with Robert O. Peterson (2,400 views)
- Justin Halpern (3,700 views)
- Suzy Spafford (1,400 views)
- The Cocktail Hour (1,700 views)
- J. J. Isler (602 views - not bad considering it up was from 10 pm to 4 am during Christmas week!)
- Roberto de la Madrid (1,700 views)
- Gerry Driscoll (2,400 views)
- Ronne Froman (3,000 views)
- Dial (soap) (5,350 views - my first DYK to make it into the DYK Statistics page)
- Stanford University Libraries (The way the hook was written, it appeared to be about Jane Stanford rather than about the libraries. The library article got only 566 views, while the Jane Stanford article got 5,400.)
- assisted with La Playa Trail (1,900 views)
- Rosecroft (San Diego) (3,950 views)
- Chocoholism (2,265 views)
- John E. Hart (1,296 views)
- William Walter Leake (2,129 views)
- M. Brian Maple (only 861 views, although the other link in the DYK - "Woodstock of physics" - got 2500 views)
- Beer in San Diego County, California (712 views)
- Marcus Stern (journalist) (524 views)
- Henry T. Lynch (481 views)
- Aldred Scott Warthin (446 views)
- Doug Manchester (522 views)
- Fiesta del Pacifico (393 views)
- assisted with Main Quad (Stanford University) (2,154 views)
- History of Chinese Americans in Seattle (3,262 views)
- assisted with Ika Hügel-Marshall (6,051 views, my most-viewed DYK ever, and appropriately timed to appear during Black History Month)
- The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky (5,696 views, another one for the record books!)
- La Loca (opera) (683 views)
- helped with Naomi Sager (2,692 views)
Favorites
Some of my favorite Wikipedia pages include:
- All your base are belong to us
- Hotel toilet paper folding
- On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog
- Towel Day
- History of Wikipedia
- Wikipedia:Glossary
- Humorous glossary
- Wikipedia:How many Wikipedians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
- Wikipedia:Drop the stick and back slowly away from the horse carcass
- Wikipedia:"With all due respect..." (damn, this got deleted - but it was a great essay)
- Wikipedia:Wikiderata (a takeoff on Desiderata)
- Wikipedia:Last topic pool
- User:Antandrus/observations on Wikipedia behavior
- The Cynic's Guide to Wikipedia
- User:Valfontis/Valfontis' Law
Useful links
- Wikipedia:Copy-paste
- AfD stats
- Template:Adminstats/MelanieN
- user piechart
- Pages created counter
- Special:New pages feed
- Your logical fallacy is...
- California articles for cleanup