User:Bhadani/Rendezvous with Wikipedia:the first year

 Bhadani



Greetings to all !!! I am here as a volunteer for about one year and have done more than 20,000 edits covering 12,900 plus distinct pages; creating new stubs and pages at least one daily on an average; and have been reading and watching innumerable pages and edits. I would like to share my experience with the community members and the users of Wikipedia.

A message
COPY OF MY MESSAGE OF 5th March 2006 to Jimbo Wales, the founder and the president of the Wikimedia Foundation

Greetings: My respectful greetings to you. I feel privileged and happy to speak to you who initiated the Project. And, so in the 12th month of my wiki-sojourn (with 16,500 plus edits to more than 10,000 distinct pages, and creating several hundread new stubs and pages, on an average of at least one per day!), I reached  here to record my feelings  on a day on which I had decided to say a final goodbye to the Project wikipedia. I am glad that the destiny has willed otherwise! A bureacrate’s immediate intervention and the love and affection of the wiki-community prevented me to run away. Please allow me a little indulgence to share with you certain thoughts which have been disturbing me for sometime, and they are there in the section:  Sabotage of Wikipedia. With best regards. {signed/Bhadani}

The ideal Wikipedian
Copied from the user page of SlimVirgin without her permission! I had always endevoured to follow the standard set by her. My overdue thanks to her!!!


 * 1) Be nice. Praise people when you see things being done well. Write personal notes to people on their talk pages saying what a good edit such-and-such was. You can make someone's day with some positive feedback.
 * 2) Don't engage in unnecessary personal criticism or personal attacks. At the same time, let people know that you're able and willing to stand up for yourself and your edits, but not to the point of being obnoxious.
 * 3) Try to be reasonable. If you establish a reputation as a reasonable editor, people will forgive you almost any other quirk. Try not to get on your high horse over an issue. Don't become a single-issue editor. And when you see that an argument has gone decisively against you, walk away no matter how annoyed you are. Never disrupt Wikipedia to make a point.
 * 4) Read No original research, Neutral point of view, Verifiability (policies), Reliable sources (guideline), and Cite sources (style guide), and stick to them even when it's killing you.
 * 5) Vote for responsible people to become administrators, even if you disagree with them politically.
 * 6) Vote for articles that are going through the featured-article process. Read them carefully, make constructive suggestions, and give praise where it's due, because it really is harder than it looks to get an article through that peer review.
 * 7) Try to steer an article that you've written to featured-article status. It's hard work, but it will establish you as a serious editor.
 * 8) Don't criticize admins unduly and don't jump on admin-attack bandwagons. It's easy to make mistakes as an admin, so be generous in your dealings with them. You'll usually find that they, in turn, will be generous in their dealings with you.
 * 9) Try to avoid revert wars. Never violate 3RR. Be self-limiting in how many times you revert a page in a day. Try to get consensus on talk before reverting. If you do revert without prior discussion, explain why on talk.
 * 10) Contribute well-researched, well-referenced content, no matter how humble, to the encyclopedia, and discuss your edits on talk pages. Don't spend all your time on talk, but don't closet yourself away in the encyclopedia either. This is a community. Be part of it.

Sabotage of Wikipedia
I am sharing this with utmost good faith. My intuition says that there may be a number of editors who are marauding the length and breadth of Wikipedia with a view to disrupt its functioning. Wikipedia must have a system to record real identities (albeit not disclosed to all but kept confidential with the records of Wikipedia Foundation) of users after they attain a particular hierarchical level, say, the level of being administrators. This has become an imperative requirement, as behind the thick veil of anonymity (I mean the users with user names giving no clue to their identities) hiding like the proverbial black sheep who may be doing disruption to Wikipedia by their overt or covert action. The system of identification is currently ensured for certain other levels in the hierarchical levels. If we do not ensure this, may be, we are not doing full justice to the donors who pay Wikipedia Foundation to build an encyclopedia. I have a premonition that some such editors may be under the pay roll of some organizations that are inimical to Wikipedia. I think that I shall be proved wrong in my opinion and judgment, and ultimately no Wikipedains shall be traced to be acting in the manner described by me and the name of Wikipedia Foundation shall remain unblemished.


 * See also
 * Industrial Sabotage of Wikipedia
 * Raul's laws
 * Wikipedia - Better than the Best


 * Rejoinder: (added on 14.03.2007)
 * Really sad

Lessons

 * Everyone, including me, always assumes good faith. Nevertheless, problems arise when an experienced editor chooses to edit with a new user name, and takes the shelter of being a newcomer.
 * In the name of replacing POV, another POV may creep into even without inserting a comma or a full stop.
 * True wikipedians do not leave like this: a true wikipedian has the ability and tenacity to work collaboratively and constructively, in an environment of trust, goodwill, and mutual respect.
 * Was he right? May be... as I was forced to decide (on 5th March 2006) to leave... but returned... is wikipedia an addiction?

wiki-toddler!



 * A message received from Nichalp on 15th June 2005 about my first edit: Your first edit was on 24-Mar-2005; 20:08 IST to the Jharkhand article..
 * When I was new here, an entry created by me about my father (Hariram) was deleted, which DS, at his own initiative,  got   undeleted (by Mikkalai) and placed the same into my userspace. I convey my thanks to them.
 * These two edits show that I began here with few words about the location and the family I belong to, and now (12th January 2005), I find that Project wikipedia has also become a part of my life.
 * Please also see the page of user Mahuri, a user name which I had created on 23rd March, 2005, and with this I did only 5 edits to the page Mahuri. I have also done only one edit as the user User:Bhadani@bhadani.com. All this was done when I was a wiki-toddler!
 * You are most welcome to contact me at bhadani@bhadani.com - though, I look into this mailbox only once in awhile.

Wikinotes

 * Completed four months on 24th July 2005, with around 4000 edits, and on that day, I was the 564th most active English Wikipedian.
 * 24th November 2005: eight months with 8000+ edits.
 * I am entering the year 2006 with 10,000+ edits, and resolve to be more active editor-administrator.
 * Here is my current edit counts, which include creation of a number of new articles and several stubs, major expansion, and the pride of being associated with wikipedia and the wiki-community.
 * Added on 9th March 2006: I wished to complete 20,000 edits before completion of one year of my wiki-life: I feel sad that I may not reach the objective due to reasons available in the history of this page.
 * Time is dynamic...added on 16th March 2006: history or geography can not deter a true Wikipedian to continue building the Project.

Do things differently
There is an adage that successful people do things differently. I am not very successful person, but I have collected certain gems which I saw somewhere in the Web. They are part of collection by a lady named Laura Bergells. Few of them are presented below:


 * Entrance & Exits: My final exit shall be my greatest entrance.
 * Mouth & Ears: My ears aren’t made to shut, but my mouth is.
 * Mouth & Ears: The tongue is only a few inches from the brain, but to hear some people talk, you’d think the two were miles apart.
 * Press conferences: Silence is often misinterpreted, but never misquoted.
 * Infinite possibilities: I can accept finite disappointment, but I won’t lose infinite hope.
 * Speed of light: What light? I’m still looking for the tunnel!!
 * New ideas: Our ideas are like children – no matter how much you admire somebody else’s, you still love your own the best.
 * New ideas: An optimist takes the cold water thrown on new ideas, heats it with enthusiasm and uses the steam to push them ahead.
 * Truth: The truth does not depend on a consensus of opinion.
 * Ship: Noah didn’t wait for his ship to come in. . . . He built it!
 * Ships: ship in the harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are for.
 * Ships: All the water in the world could not sink a ship unless it got inside. In the same way, all the evil in the world could never sink your soul unless you let it in.
 * Job well done: The reward for a job well done is the opportunity to do more work.
 * Karma: The rain falls on the just and the unjust. But mostly on the just, because the unjust have stolen their umbrellas.
 * Karma: You feel right when you do right.
 * Mind games: My mind not only wanders, sometimes it leaves me completely.
 * Troubles: Troubles come to pass, but the do not come to stay.
 * Troubles: Live through the tough times: the only way to the other side is through it.
 * Worries: Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of sorrow; it empties today of strength.
 * Yesterday: I love you more than yesterday. Yesterday, you got on my nerves.
 * Rock Bottom: When the going gets tough. . . Get tougher!
 * Rock Bottom: The end is not near. Learn to cope.
 * Rock Bottom: When things are bad, I can take comfort in the thought that they can always get worse. And when things get worse, I find hope in the idea that things are so bad they have to get better.
 * Thankfulness: Something to be thankful for is that you’re here to be thankful.
 * Destiny: Choice, not chance, determines destiny.
 * Destiny: Don’t worry about the world ending today. It’s already tomorrow in China.
 * Grace: Tact is not only saying the right thing at the right time, but also to leave unsaid the wrong thing a tempting moment.
 * Complaining: It’s not the mountain that wears me out – it’s the grain of sand in my shoe.
 * Shouting: Shouting and screaming to get people to perform is like using the horn to steer your car.

Something more
Sir Winston Churchill was not aware that a class of people collectively called Wikipedians shall emerge and they shall collectively be building an encyclopedia that will represent the sum total of human knowledge. He was also not aware that while involved in this process, the volunteers shall also be doing several other things to manage the show, including providing to some of them with certain administrative tools to function more effectively to protect the credibility of the Project. We, who are part of the Project in any capacity, may learn from some of the words of Churchill:


 * 1) I cannot pretend to feel impartial about colors. I rejoice with the brilliant ones and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.
 * 2) A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
 * 3) Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
 * 4) Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
 * 5) There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is half of them are true.
 * 6) To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.
 * 7) I have always felt that a politician is to be judged by the animosities he excites among his opponents.
 * 8) When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.
 * 9) Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.
 * 10) I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.