User:AbstractIllusions

About me
I work slowly. I do not edit my field of expertise because I'm a little too close to that and it probably will lead to POV editing and needless conflicts. To avoid this, I edit my side-interests primarily. These change regularly, but right now are West African history, turn of century baseball, and places I am visiting soon. Took a break from January 2015 until June 2016, I highly recommend it.

Some articles I edited

 * Anlu and Takembeng
 * Art in Sierra Leone
 * French Sudan/Soudan which became part of the Mali Federation and then the Union of African States
 * Hawad
 * Kisra legend
 * Kojo Tovalou Houénou (important figure in the History of the Kingdom of Dahomey) who was married to Roberta Dodd Crawford who studied with N. Clark Smith
 * Komenda Wars
 * Morris Industrial School for Indians
 * Nyarroh who was kidnapped by Ndawa
 * Panyarring
 * Pope Anastasius II
 * Presidential Council (Benin)
 * Rassemblement Démocratique Africain
 * Slavery in Mali and Slavery in Niger and some of the other Slavery in Africa articles.
 * State formation
 * William Clarence Matthews
 * 1963 Togolese coup d'état

AFD Thoughts
Since I weigh in on a few AFDs, figured I'd be transparent about my process:
 * I do not read the article in question at first. I think this is sometimes misleading and so I start with a search in a couple of databases to see if I can ascertain notability through the results in them.
 * Then I read the discussion and follow any evidence presented for keep or delete.
 * Then I read the article and see where that leads me.
 * Finally, I give it a best vote. My general rule of thumb is: A topic is probably not notable if a Wikipedia stub/start class article would be the best thing written about the topic. This is a helpful way to figure out if a topic has significant coverage or simply marginal mentions. This is imperfect and I won't be 100% faithful to it, but it is just sorta my guide.
 * I follow all AfD discussions in which I participate and will gladly change votes based on other ideas later presented. I might even flip back.
 * Philosophically, I'm probably closer to an inclusionist, but who thinks that depth is preferable to breadth while including as much information as possible. So, that leads me towards being a deletionist, I guess. I couldn't care less about these.