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 | This user has been editing Wikipedia for more than ten years. |
I started editing Wikipedia around 2006, but for years my contributions remained infrequent and generally minor. In 2010 I started making more substantial contributions and in 2011 I finally got around to registering as an autoconfirmed user. At about 21,000 live edits since then, I'm still not exactly a heavy hitter in terms of volume, but I consider myself a Wikipedian through-and-through and take great pride in the accomplishments of this community -- not just in terms of our content, but also with regard to the way of getting things done (and getting on with each-other) that we've developed. I try to make myself broadly useful in a variety of areas of contribution and feel I have a thorough understanding of how this little project of ours operates.
Activity
I contribute largely in the areas of...
| Science
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Life sciences
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Mostly in topics relating to ecology, evolution, natural history, taxonomy/phylogeny, sociobiology, physiology (the physiology of the sensory systems especially), neuroscience, medicine, botany, and zoology/ethology.
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| Cognitive sciences
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With particular interest in evolutionary psychology, environmental psychology, biopsychology, cognitive psychology, social psychology, perception/sensation, memory, emotion, nativism, semiotics, and the computational and modular models of the mind.
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| Linguistics
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Particularly historical/comparative linguistics, syntax, semantics, cognitive linguistics, neurolinguistics, universal grammar, and translation.
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| Physical sciences
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A small part of my contributions and mostly limited to astronomy and cosmology, but with occasional minor contributions to various subfields of physics and chemistry.
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| Philosophy
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With a focus on ontology, naturalism, determinism, logic, and epistemology.
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| Humanities
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History
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...in which my contributions are all over the place, reflecting my general love of the subject in regard to every era, people, and locality it can be applied to. These interests parlay with interest and work in related fields of pre-history, current events, and geography.
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| The arts
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Narrative arts: literature, film, television, and theatre.
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| Performing arts: music and dance (and many other forms of human movement).
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| Visual arts: both traditional and digital approaches to painting, drawing, and sculpture, amongst other mediums.
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| Games: from ancient to modern.
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| Ideological and social topics
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...in many areas, but particularly with regard to those intersecting with humanism, human rights, women's rights, non-violence, and some light edits to other areas of politics where they connect with above topics.
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| Discussion and Community
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I also contribute widely through a variety of process pages:
- I spend a good deal of time on RfC discussions and in article talk space generally.
- I try to make time now and again for various of the other routine work concerning pending changes reviews, new page reviews, AfD, AfC, requested translations, requested articles, GA nominations, community and policy discussion areas, ANI and other noticeboards, and even SPI, when necessary.
- I also frequently contribute guidance at the reference desks and often find it one of the more rewarding experiences on Wikipedia, especially when I can marry it to general editing of an article brought to mind in the discussion.
- I'm a member of a handful of Wikiprojects relating to some of the topics I contribute to in mainspace.
- I venture on rare occasion to the Wikipedias of other languages to translate/transwiki the occasional article.
- I hit up our sister projects on occasion, particularly Meta, Commons and Wiktionary.
- I do some ever-so-slightly more technical work with templates and complex tables wherever I find something that could use the attention, either while pursuing the above or encountering the issue through community forums.
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Looking Forward
Presuming I can wrangle some of those pesky and numerous other life obligations, I'm hoping to broaden my contributions into some significant new areas.
- I've already begun to engage in the daunting process of reviving some flagging WikiProjects which I think are far too underdeveloped for the importance of their subject matter. This is part of a broader interest in editor retention efforts. I'm going to be requesting mass-mailer privileges for this purpose very soon.
- I hope to start contributing some free license photographic content to the project in the near future.
- I've got a truly monstrous back-log of content contributions that I've committed myself to seeing through first, but I may well eventually see about whether the community would judge me to be a good candidate for a mop.
If any of the above areas are of interest to you and you have an uphill task within them, or really any subject or process, do not hesitate to drop me a line; collaboration is more than half the fun. :)
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