User:CComMack



About Me
I live in Manayunk, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, having grown up in Fairfield, Ohio. I'm a WikiOgre, who occasionally writes unbrilliant but (I think) not too bad prose about things that interest me, mainly transportation. I am an active contributor to WikiProject Trains, a worthy project that has yet to tap into its huge potential, given the number of obsessed railfen there are out there who know far more than I do. I somehow got conned into founding WikiProject Philadelphia, and I encourage people with interests or ties to the Delaware Valley to come join and help out, and maybe join us at our next Meetup. In terms of janitorial work on Wikipedia, I mainly sort stubs, though I do correct misspellings and revert vandalism on the rare occasions I encounter it. I'm also a big fan of geotagging articles with coord

Although I do co-administer a (private, sorry) MediaWiki instance elsewhere, I have no position on the English Wikipedia or any other Wikimedia Foundation project beyond that of humble editor. While it might be nice to get the mop and bucket someday, I know I probably don't have a prayer of passing an RFA anytime soon, and the only point to a nomination would be to observe the various ways in which RFA is currently an intimidating trainwreck. And being just an editor is nice, sometimes.

The name comes from a long story from middle school days that I don't tell anymore. It has nothing at all to do with Commack, New York. Stop asking me.

A combination of delayed sleep phase syndrome and non-24 hour sleep phase syndrome often lead me to edit Wikipedia at very odd hours, given my location. Do not be alarmed by the timestamps on my edits; they are not a server glitch. This is a recognized sleep disorder, though I am proving annoyingly resistant to treatment since my diagnosis in 2001. Wikipedia provides a good way for me to while away the hours when nobody else is awake.

I encourage people to edit this page, and to leave me messages or ask me questions on my talk page.

I'm creating a subpage for userboxen that I don't actually want cluttering my main userpage. It is my intention to subst: any userbox that does not indicate language, geography, or WikiProject.

Personal wikihistory
My first edit to the English Wikipedia was made on 5 February, 2004, to the article Northeast Corridor. It wasn't a great edit, but I and the article have come a long way since then. :-) More recently, I've hit some milestones.

The main reasons why I don't have more edits are slow typing speed and a tendency to be a little perfectionistic in my editing habits, including appropriately prolific use of the "Preview" button, a habit I hope catches on.

I was on wikibreak from 5 December 2005 to 9 January 2006.

I have an account on the Latin Wikipedia, but only because I speak Wikipedian, not Latin. :-) (Really, it's kinda easy, given a basic knowledge of Latin roots, and being tipped off that the term for stub is 'stipula', to do some janitorial work. It's fun, and a nice exercise of the brain when I want to take a break from reading policy pages over here.)

I also have an account on Wikimedia Commons, a project I deeply believe in, and encourage everyone to contribute Free media to. However, this account is currently for discussion purposes only, as I do not own a camera. :-/

I haven't been keeping track of articles I've written, and I'm sure I could count them on my fingers, but the first such article was Shore Line East, which I'm somewhat gratified to find survives mostly intact even after being worked on by other, very knowledgeable editors.

Recently I have, at the prompting of User:David Gerard, been keeping an eye on CSD A7 nominations. I've salvaged a few articles from the chopper so far, and you should too, if you ever find an article in more need of fixing than deletion. I'm not a wild-eyed inclusionist, I just think A7 is vague in ways that can and do lead to trouble.

Extracurricular activities
I'm a moderator co-host (they mean the same thing) at the Wikback, a Wikipedia-focused message board started by User:UninvitedCompany. It has a very high signal-to-noise ratio so far (much higher than wikiEN-l, IMNSHO), and I take my responsibility for keeping it that way very seriously. I realize I will inevitably screw up the job, but am striving to do so as rarely as is possible. :-) I encourage people to take a look around there; I encourage anyone who has an issue with anything I say or do there to use the private message feature there to contact me.

Useful things

 * Every editor on Wikipedia, especially those doing things like stub sorting, should bookmark Cat Scan, an excellent tool that allows searching for the intersection of categories, among other nifty tricks.
 * Many thanks to the tireless sysadmins who have restored full toolserver functionality! Huzzah!
 * /Trust, a part of the Trust network
 * /Nominations
 * The Team Cymru IP to ASN Lookup Page, useful for matching an IP to an ISP, worldwide.

Licensing
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 '''I recognize that this user page belongs to the Wikipedia project and not to me personally. As such, I recognize that I am expected to respectfully abide by community standards as to the presentation and content of this page, and that if I do not like these guidelines, I am welcome either to engage in reasonable discussion about it, to publish my material elsewhere, or to leave the project.'''

la:Usor:CComMack