User:Chriswaterguy

About me:

Chris Watkins

What I do: Wiki & open knowledge consultant, and a director of the Appropedia Foundation, which runs Appropedia (Wikipedia article), wiki for sustainability, appropriate technology & international development. My Appropedia homepage says more about my passions - in particular, international development, water and sanitation, sustainability, global public health, appropriate technology & renewable energies.

Oh, Wikipedia...: I'm concerned that Wikipedia is losing its civility. I'm concerned that there's not enough encouragement, too much deletion rather than organized efforts to improve articles. I'd like to see deletion as a good faith process, transwikiing or moving pages to userspace rather than officiously deleting them.

Wikiholics unite: On Wikipedia, I've contributed more than 6000 edits, including 2800-ish in mainspace and 70-ish new articles. I do much more editing on Appropedia, though my main role there, as a director, is supporting the community and working on partnerships.

My blog: Pablo Garudaa Joint blog: Appropedia Foundation blog

More userboxes.

Very, very occasionally, I contribute to the Wikipedia in Indonesian (user page) and even more rarely, in Malay (user page).

The places:

Collaborations
WikiProject Climate change &middot; talk WikiProject Energy development &middot; talk WikiProject Water purification &middot; talk WikiProject Urban studies and planning &middot; talk WikiProject Countering systemic bias &middot; talk WikiProject Community &middot; talk

I sometimes post questions & point out problems in articles at: WikiProject Business and Economics &middot; talk.

To leave me a message, click the "talk" tab, or Use this link

Note sure what to do with this...More - interests and opinions.

Issues with help

 * Fixing Wikipedia's help pages one key to editor retention
 * Fixing Wikipedia's help pages one key to editor retention

pages

 * Ronald Coase - an economist with interesting ideas about public goods. I must find some more good economics podcasts (like the excellent 2006 Boyer Lectures). (If you have recommendations, please tell me.)
 * Hugh Thompson, Jr. - defended the innocent at My Lai.
 * Right Livelihood Award
 * MythBusters (season 1)... This is great! I don't have to watch the whole boring episode to find out what happens!
 * Constructionist learning - one of the influences behind the One Laptop Per Child project.
 * Kamal Kar - critic of standard approaches to development & aid.
 * Julian Lincoln Simon - wrote about population & natural resources. An optimist.
 * Cicisbeo - 18th Century Italian women had surprising freedoms.
 * Shi Zhengrong founder and head of Suntech Power. Someone who's really doing something about solar power.
 * User:Ihcoyc has a very amusing section of Favourite quotes from the Wikipedia.

A few users with similar interests
...and many, many more of course.
 * User:Ericbritton, User:LRG, User:Curtbeckmann - sustainability.
 * User:Vortexrealm - water.
 * User:Georgedappilly - mosquito control.
 * Some people who seem to be interested in developing country issues... User:Improv, User:Anthere, User:Ethanz...
 * User:John Quiggin - Australian economist, somewhat lefty, who appears in the news occasionally.
 * User:Guaka - a fellow CouchSurfer, it seems, with some overlap of interests.
 * User:Earthmytemple

user pages that I will probably get around to browsing, some time...

 * User:Jimbo - the creator.
 * User:Larry Sanger... if Jimbo's the creator, then Larry might be the devil, in some kind of gnostic view of co-creation followed by conflict. That's if I understand Gnosticism, which I probably don't.
 * User:Kierant - some interesting links.

bits from Wikipedia

 * During the May 1998 Revolution, when calls for political reform or reformasi in Indonesia led to the resignation of President Suharto, Malaysian satirists Instant Cafe lampooned a government broadcast in which 'Malaysians are reminded that reformasi is an Indonesian word, which has no equivalent in Bahasa Melayu.'

What I do on Wikipedia

 * Work on development-related & sustainability-related articles
 * Put citation needed on articles (using fact). I've even used it on things I wrote myself, and very happy when someone replaces one with an excellent link].


 * Promote love, joy, peace, etc (or try to).
 * Do any minor edits I see that need doing (if I have a fast connection at the time)
 * Ask questions that seem to need asking.

I think about one day doing more on other topics I want to learn about... so I'd be learning, researching, adding well-verified information when the articles are too skinny, and making suggestions on the user page... but not taking a strong position on what should and shouldn't be in the article. These topics include:
 * A few of the articles in Category:Alternative economy. Institutions such as Cooperatives, and practices such as Local currency & Local Exchange Trading Systems - I'm really not sure the latter are a good thing, though I suspect some variation of them would enable some people at some times to engage in the economy when a cash-based economy would not.

Read why I'm enthusiastic about Wikipedia.

My pending tasks &middot; My sandbox &middot; My scratchpad &middot; My areas of interest &middot; My notes on Appropriate technology

My key links: Appropriate technology &middot; Appropedia &middot; site'''

General editing: Guide to layout &middot;  How to write a great article &middot; How to edit a page &middot; Some articles on editing &middot; Citing sources &middot; Forum for Encyclopedic Standards

Specific: Cleanup resources &middot; Stub types &middot; Prettytable &middot; Help:Table &middot; Divbox &middot; Web colors &middot;  userboxes &middot; Format templates &middot; AutoWikiBrowser.

Something cool about Wikipedia
When English speakers see the words "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" we probably think: cool, it's free, I don't have to pay. I realised that there more to it when using the Indonesian Wikipedia. For "free" it didn't use the word gratis (no cost), but rather bebas (as in free from restrictions). Actually, both meanings are true of Wikipedia.

Useful bits of wiki code
Gallery and caption:

See User:Robchurch/Software/Captions in galleries
 *  

To put a line through a block of text (more than one paragraph):
 *     

HTML attributes