User:Beingzoe

zoe somebody is fairly new to the Wikipedia community, but excited to contribute.

Reason for creating an account
While Googling one day, I visited a link for the topic I was searching for at the time. The article I landed on was well written, succinct, and extremely useful to my search. For some that reason I stopped to actually take note of what site this information was coming from. Hmmm, Wikipedia. Though I had heard of Wikipedia before, even intentionally visited, it hadn't all snapped into place until that moment; for nearly every important search I had done in the past weeks, Wikipedia was in the top ten results. In that moment I had become fully conscious of Wikipedia.

Future plans for Wikipedia
First of all the Feng Shui is all wrong and we really need to get rid of that grotesque art on the third floor. But apart from that I don't see much else changing. You don't snore or get up before noon do you? Oh, and I swear I will never make jokes like this in any article I edit, apart from my own user page. But someday I will have your corner office!

Seriously though
I have been utilizing the resources here so much recently for a writing project that I'm working on, that I felt like I really needed to give a little. As I am a little strapped for cash at this time, I will have to pay in hard labor.

Wikiphilosophy
I jumped into editing initially as an anonymous user just doing typos. Finally while doing research for my book, I came across an entry for the digital revolution that was fairly well developed, but had one shallow section. That was my first foray into actually writing for the Wiki. Since doing so I have done a fair amount of reading on policy, style, guidelines, etc... before proceeding further.

The goal and philosophy of Wiki seems to me spot on. Though I was interested to start reading some of the debates on what to include and not include; especially those involving deciding what to delete. However, the concept of notability attracted my attention most.

On the surface decreeing that an article involve something noteworthy, and clearly defining what constitutes being noteworthy, seems quite straight forward. But then reading the debates and spending some time really examining the Wiki beyond simply reading existing articles, I realized how not straight forward the notability factor was.

While on one level it makes sense not to include a bio for every person alive, if not simply because of a navigation problem (ignoring storage considerations altogether), the fact remains that some great stories of human achievement (success/failure, overcoming/succumbing, hate/love) occur beneath the radar of any standard of being noteworthy. This becomes even more true on a global scale much less a national scale. The only example I have at this moment in my head would be the man who drove a tractor hundreds of miles to reconcile with a brother he hadn't spoken to in years. That journey likely only had a profound impact directly on the handful of people that he encountered. However, that impact could have been multplied over and over if the affected people then altered their course of existence. (There is a David Lynch Film inspired by this true story; Also in this example I believe that the man may have been on the news; the film and news coverage must be left out of consideration for this example argument). This would be a case to me where the event itself wasn't noteworthy as to it's affect on history. Nobody outside of the people who directly knew this person will likely know about it in a significant number of years. But it can be argued that such human behavior says a lot about both how people live in a given time period, and also the uniqueness of the human experience; and the distinct possibility that a handful people were distinctly affected enough to change the course of their lives having an unmeasurable impact on our world.

I hope to create a better example in the future.

Thus, I would say I am definitely of the camp less concerned with the notability of an incident than the potential impact of having at some point, any time in the future having learned about even the most minor, but unique experience or person.

Obviously I am still new here, and I have no real intention in jumping headlong into the fray, but I thought I would share my thoughts on article inclusion based on the criteria of uniqueness, regardless of notability. For all I know there is already a philosophy/guideline of inclusion based on uniqueness.

This philosophy is included on my user page simply to clarify how and why I might add/edit certain articles, especially in regards to deletion.

As an amateur storyteller especially, the thought of having an all-encompassing resource for researching and at times stumbling onto obscure trivia is titillating.

Questionable Articles?
Before I wandered off to bed I thought I would check on the Wiki and try and learn something new about how the whole thing work. On this evening I learned about the new page patrol. While watching new pages being added at an almost alarming rate I came across several such as those listed below:


 * Dungeon Studios
 * Weemee
 * Pronto Software

For the Dungeon Studios and Weemee my intial reaction was to vote them for deletion. Pronto Software on the other hand is an odd one, because the article was really not an article and somewhat incoherent, and simply having a company doesn't seem noteworthy or unique. But then I don't really know anything about Pronto Software nor felt inclined at that moment to look them up. However, it also occurred to me that I am still new here and I am still learning the ways of the world. So I am listing these three articles here just to see what happens to them when and if they are seen by others in the community. If nothing happens I will make an actual inquiry somewhere to learn more.

More random questionables

 * Slam buckra (at least I know that I am not alone in my thoughts)
 * Lastknights

Conclusion
I welcome your correspondence as I am obviously very lonely.

merry day, Beingzoe 10:57, 22 January 2006 (UTC)