User:Best O Fortuna


 * Where is the Life we have lost in living?
 * Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
 * Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
 * ~ T. S. Eliot - from: Choruses from The Rock (1934)

Well, I am very discouraged with Wikipedia. I had read lots of negative articles about it. But, since I was on vacation I thought I would try to edit. I read some of the Help sections, looked around, and started to edit. But, then I get accused of Conflict of Interest. I thought I was making good quality edits. But, I guess not.

I have never even been to Fortuna, California. I chose this user name for two reasons:

1) Fortuna is Spanish for "Fortune", and I wanted the "Best Of" fortune.

2) My late uncle worked in Fortuna for 40 years, and since I had never made it there, I wanted to learn more about the city, and as kind of a tribute to him, pass some of that on to the Fortuna article, and maybe the surrounding area in Humboldt County.

I am guessing that there is so much vandalism on here that good contributors and administrators, maybe unconsciously, start assuming "bad faith", because they are bombarded with negative edits. Maybe these veteran contributors and administrators should look through the edits by new users, to see what they are actually doing, before assuming certain things, 1) based on the user name, and 2) based the articles edited. My cousins name is Sydney, and haven forbid he edit the Sydney article.

Well, again, I thought I was making quality changes here, but I guess not. In looking through hundreds of articles here on Wikipedia, I see thousands of errors, inconsistent formatting, poor English, spelling, grammar, etc. And even though mine may not be the best, it is better than a lot of contributors here. There are a ton of crappy edits here. I am guessing that most people don't read any of the tutorials before they begin to edit. They just start adding their own unique formatting and layout. If you actually study education, you will find that people can learn better if there is some consistency in the layout. What if you bought a set of Encyclopedia Britannica and all of the articles had a different format? This confuses the reader and deters their ability to learn. It is easier to learn about "x" if you don't have to learn about how to decipher the information because of the presentation.