User:dawnseeker2000
| — Wikipedian ♂ — | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Country |  United States | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Current location | Portland, Oregon | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sexuality | Yes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Family and friends | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Pets | Budgies | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Education and employment | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Occupation | Administrative assistant | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hobbies, interests, and beliefs | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Politics | Center-left | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Movies | A Patch of Blue, Days of Heaven, The Good, the Bad, the Weird, and the trilogy of death from Alejandro Iñárritu | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Account statistics | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Joined | June 1, 2006 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Administrator | No | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Edit count | 450K (suggested interpretation: higher edit counts may indicate a more advanced level of insight) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I've been editing for a little over ten years, and I must admit that it's somewhat of a weird thing being involved with this project. No one else that I know IRL does this, so that makes the activity one that I do in solitude. Only rarely do I share what I'm doing with non-Wikipedia people. Are there other activities or hobbies that people do that are so sequestered? Probably, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.
I would say that as time has progressed, I've gotten more and more involved in editing. I guess you could say that my interests in the different aspects of the website has matured or developed over time. As a person, I've done the same. Maybe that's not saying much (or maybe it is) but I'm certain that I'm a vastly different person now than I was in 2007. That may not be your experience, but it certainly is mine.
Since July 2019 I've expanded my use of AWB quite a bit and that is pretty much all I do now. I'm working through all the articles that are tagged with dmy dates and running a module that verifies all dates are consistent. Boring, I know, but using, creating, and finding bugs in existing or freshly-developed regex scripts is satisfying and fun. There's an artistic quality to it that I've gotten to love. So, given the very large volume of articles that use dmy, I will be doing this activity for the next couple of years unless I burn out. That's a likely possibility. In that case, I would love to return to creating and modifying the earthquake articles and lists. More on that later.
The last couple of years (bulk editing)
My editing in 2019 and 2020 has taken an uptick in volume. The edit count is (to me, anyway) rising very rapidly. There are many types of errors that can be made here and those of us that edit in bulk with semi-auto tools like AWB are prone to making errors in bulk. The way we handle those errors is the same: in bulk. The categories that some of us watch are rarely empty.
The categories that I always have open in a browser window and that I help clear are:
- Category:CS1 errors: redundant parameter
- Category:Articles with missing files
- Category:Pages using duplicate arguments in template calls
Earthquake articles
When I started here in January 2007 I was ready and willing to write, but before joining WP:Earthquakes in January 2012, there really wasn't much to write about. I found little projects here and there, but nothing compared to what I've been able to do with the earthquake articles. As opposed to just telling everyone how many people were squished, I found that it's satisfying to be able to tell a complete story about some of these incidents. There have been many articles that are lacking basic details and I found that an editor like myself can do a lot of damage with just an elementary understanding of seismology, so that is what I have been doing for the last couple of years. I know that people with traditional ideas of art won't understand this, but that's what the construction of these articles has become to me. A stack of books, a couple of subscriptions, and some spreadsheet-based catalogs have provided enough material to keep me going.
Speaking of material, I would definitely say that I’ve been lucky with a few of these articles that I’ve expanded. How these articles turn out in terms of completeness and readability (especially with regard to how the different elements are tied together) really comes down to the sources. Since all I’m really doing is paraphrasing them, it really depends on whether 1) they’re readily translatable by a novice and 2) if they compliment each other in some form. If neither of these two factors exist, the article is going to be on the crappy side, but if everything comes together, a very nice article can result.
Editing via browser
Since jumping in head first with all this material that I'd been curious about for so long, I found myself making mistakes. Some of them were not caught for a long time, and I've been getting better, but you'll still see some blunders. Early on, I expanded an article and about two years later it was nominated for GA. When I reread the material, I was horrified that people were actually reading (or trying to) read it. I found that a portion was unreadable and very hard to make sense of, so I spent some time rewriting or removing some of it. That was in 2014. I've been much more cautious about getting ahead of myself these days, but it still happens. I'm a student at this stuff, and it's self paced and slow (I'm a low energy person). And by the way, I had the luxury of having those that came before me to learn about the style and content for these types of articles. All I’ve really done is applied what I learned on a large scale.
These days mistakes are usually because I've gotten ahead of myself somehow and have blurted something in an edit summary. A lot of times it's something that I haven't figured out yet, and by typing what I'm thinking for the first time and hitting save, I realize that what I'd written maybe wasn't quite right. We can't go back and change an edit summary (which I prefer everyone use every time – at least in the article space) but there have been occasions where it's been necessary to go back and rewrite something in an article because it was lacking.
I've had some mistakes, but this one was regrettable as soon as I hit that rollback button. I had the unfortunate distinction of being at home one evening working my watchlist when it appears that Manuel Berberian made his one and only edit to the English Wikipedia. I reverted the edit. At the time, I was unaware, but when I realized who it was that I had crossed paths with, I wished that I could redo that moment. Berberian is an Iranian-Armenian scientist that has had a long career in seismology and is arguably the preeminent seismologist regarding the tectonics of Iran. How cool would it be to sit down and have a cup of coffee with that guy. Anyway, whats done is done, and one of the only things that I could do to make myself feel better was to pick up a copy of his most recent books. Sigh.
AWB
The times on WP where I’ve been very active with content creation may have peaked. I was extremely active expanding existing articles or starting new articles from 2012–2014. Beginning in early 2015, I began experiencing a series of difficulties that have prevented me from continuing to write at that pace. What I’ve been doing to fill my time instead has been to rely on AWB more, and it's part of the reason for my high edit count. I used to run just about anything through it, but lately I’m a little more particular about which types of articles are modified and why. It's not that I've given up on content creation—it's far more satisfying than doing menial but helpful AWB runs—but right now it’s really just about a lack of focus. I still have quite a few articles that I'd like to expand or create.
My workstation
Since April 2017 I have been running a first generation AMD Zen processor with a B350 (cheap) mainboard. It has done what I've wanted it to pretty well, but at three years old, I started to look for possible upgrades, and realized the error that I made by going with such a cheap chipset. It is limited in what it can do in terms of heat dissipation, power delivery, and features. When AMD Ryzen was first offered, I went with what AMD labeled a "performance" range CPU—the Ryzen 7 1700. With a power consumption of only 65 watts, it's performance really can't be all that great, but for whatever reason I decided on an economical purchase even though I was gainfully employed at the time. The processor runs at 3 GHz, with "boost" speeds to 3.7 GHz. The firmware on the board allows the RAM to run at 3200 MHz, and that is probably what has helped the system run good for what I do here.
Nearing the end of 2020, I found myself wanting or needing an upgrade, so I began looking at options. That is when I discovered that the board with the B350 chipset was not a super good idea, but also learned that it would support AMD's later Ryzen processors, so what I did was bought a Ryzen 2700X, which is a Zen+ part and not a second generation unit, and it runs at 3.7 GHz with boosts to 4.3 GHz. This speed comes at a cost of power consumption and heat generation. The initial board I had didn't do either very well, so I invested in a proper X570 board with some extra features and heat dissipation capabilities in 2021. I rely on the database dumps to do the AWB work that I've been focusing on. That means lots of decompressing and a ton of database scans. Both are intense processes and that is the reason for wanting additional horsepower. And by the way, these are minor incremental improvements, but it gives me an excuse to play with new hardware.
Voice communication
One thing that I've noticed is the difficulty in communicating with other editors. Typing is fine, I suppose, for very minor issues, like if the editors are already mostly on the same page. For moderately difficult exchanges though, I think that having a conversation by voice would be extraordinarily nice. Think, for example, of a time when you may have said something with one meaning in mind, yet the other party interpreted your words in an unexpected way. Those kinds of issues that are present with simplex (one way) communication can be frustrating to really unpleasant. With a two way medium, you can just interrupt to clarify. I guess it's pretty obvious that I don't care to type long winded communications to people on here. I've asked several people to call me in the last year or so, but they refused. It would have been really productive though.
2020 update
I've been working to get back on track with many of life's stressors (work, relationships, housing, vehicles) for the last couple of years. The end of 2017 was rock bottom, but I'm now seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. For example, I've successfully reestablished a relationship that went sour in early 2015. That is probably the most important thing right now (I took her to see my father in June). Proper employment will come, but the relationship issue was literally killing me. Other aspects of my struggles will certainly fall into place with enough time. Does all of this affect my ability to produce content on WP? Yes. My dependence on AWB has hit an all-time high these last few months, with edit rates around twice what I'm accustomed to. I've been working on articles that don't get a lot of attention, but I aspire to return to creating and expanding a number of earthquake articles as soon as I am able.
WP:Earthquakes
Adventures on two wheels
I ride a 1985 Honda Sabre 700. It does have a 16 valve 4-cylinder V4 and is considered a muscle bike, but it is old, heavy, and (relatively) underpowered. A woman that I met at work used to ride with me on the back & she called it a rocket (and it's still a head turner). It's getting pretty rare to see one in decent condition, especially with the Hondaline fairing. In February 2020, I got a used bicycle. It's the first I've had in about fifteen years, and I am having a blast with it. It's a two-year-old Jamis Coda Sport and I guess it's considered an "urban/adventure" style. Haven't had this much fun in quite some time. I'm putting about thirty to sixty miles per week on it, and it shows. I'm way behind on basic maintenance on it.