User:Geraldshields11

WikiMedia DC
Currently, I am a member of the 2022 WikiMedia DC Board of Directors.

Activities


As of May 18, 2022, I am a member of the 2022 WikiMedia DC Board of Directors.

In 2019, I was nominated and a candidate for the Affiliate-selected Board seats and this is the preserved page from 2019. One of the endorsers was AfroCROUD.

I was the volunteer Wikimedia DC event promotion coordinator and have taken an active part in numerous Wiki events, such as being the photographer of the WikiConference 2014 in NYC, the 2016 North American Wiki Conference in San Diego, and other Wikimedia events.

I am a member of several Wiki Projects, such as The Wikipedia Library, Women's History, Taxation, and Open Knowledge Foundation. I created the article the Smithsonian Gardens on w:EN:Wikipedia and received an autographed book signed by the executives at the Smithsonian Gardens for my efforts. For the Wikimania 2014 event, I volunteered to be the official still photographer and a member of the Programme Committee, with James Forrester, Deror Lin, and Orsolya Virág Gyenes. For the 2014 Wiki Conference USA, I | volunteered to be the official still photographer. For the North American WikiConference, I volunteered to be the official still photographer.

Since then, I have been involved with creating content to illustrate on Wikimedia Commons.

I was interviewed by the New York Times for my work with Wikipedia on feminism and on North Korea. I edited a photography textbook, The Art and Craft of Digital Photography by Professor Kristi Eisenberg. The photography book focused on several types of subjects, such as landscape, portrait, and design. Professor Eisenberg autographed her book with a special dedication to me.

I am Geraldshields11, an EN Wikipedia editor since 2004, who has contributed photographs of notable monuments and notable people in Washington, DC, USA; Shenyang, China; and Dandong, China. Also, I have taken photographs of the waterfront of Sinuiju, North Korea on a quest to get a photograph of Ri Sol-ju. I am a prolific but efficient user of Wikimedia Commons and my photographs are used across Wikis in different languages. is used across the same topic in 48 different languages. When I add a photograph to Wiki Commons, I added it with the realization that each photograph may only be seen by a small subset of people. But, if I can inspire at least one person into STEM or becoming a contributor, then "it is a far far better thing I do than ever before".

Some of my Wiki-inspired photographs have been used in the |2014 Business Insider magazine, US National Archives promotion material, London events, Wikimedia DC promotions on Twitter, Smithsonian Institute promotion material Secretary Presents E-book on Future of Museums near the end of the video, and events where “the Board wears nice clothing.” I worked at numerous GLAM projects as the photographer, as part of my volunteer duties at Wikimedia DC.

Space launch
As part of my efforts to put a copy of Wikipedia into LEO, SpaceBlimp 7 carried a copy of EN Wikipedia into the stratosphere closer to orbit than ever before on April 14, 2018 from Strasburg, Virginia.

Feel free to comment on the 2015 Project at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Wikipedia_likes_Galactic_Exploration_for_Posterity_2015. In 2015, I rewrote my proposal to send Wikimedia into outer space. Please see Grants:IEG/Wikipedia likes Galactic Exploration for Posterity 2015 or this link.

Interests
Board Seat nomination

Board seat talk page

Currently, I am interested in articles about space law, DPRK (North Korea), feminism, and the economics of high fashion and haute couture.

As of December 2013, I actively edited articles about DPRK (North Korea), feminism, and the economics of high fashion and haute couture.

As of July 2013, I actively edited articles about South America, taxation, economics, and business entities.

As of 2004, I was interested in discussions of DPRK (North Korea), Arabic, taxation, financial crimes, China, Japan, feminism, and business entities.

I do my best to contribute to the articles with citations, editorial changes, and typographical fixes. After all, each editor "brings something different to the table, whether it be: researching skills, technical expertise, writing prowess or tidbits of information, but most importantly a willingness to help". Also, I am interested in the use of the number 11.

Feel free to comment on my gallery of images.

Feel free to comment on user:geraldshields11/sandbox/WikiConference 2015.

Feel free to comment on the User:geraldshields11/sandbox/Wikipedia Summer Of Monuments 2014 at the sandbox talk page.

Feel free to comment on the Gerald Shields' Grant for Wikimania 2014 at the sandbox talk page.

Feel free to comment on the Wikimania 2015 Grant at Gerald Shields' Grant for Wikimania 2015

Feel free to comment on the 2014 WP Idea Lab, a project discussion is at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Wikipedia_likes_Galactic_Exploration_for_Posterity.

Feel free to comment on the 2015 Project at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Wikipedia_likes_Galactic_Exploration_for_Posterity_2015. In 2015, I rewrote my proposal to send Wikimedia into outer space. Please see Grants:IEG/Wikipedia likes Galactic Exploration for Posterity 2015 or this link.

Conflict of Interest Statements
1. I, User:Geraldshields11, am an employee of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. My views are expressly my own and not of my past, current, or future employer. I will not make any edits that would not be beneficial to the goals of Wikipedia.

My edits, related to the Department of the Treasury, tend to consist of the following activities:


 * Creating or enhancing existing biographies of notable tax-related people based on both published and original primary source materials.
 * Creating or enhancing existing biographies of other notable scholars, researchers, and cultural figures, especially those from under-represented populations.
 * Adding authoritative references, citations, and images to improve the quality of existing articles of all types.
 * Updating project pages related to tax and to the U.S. government.

I will modify my editing behavior based on problems cited by other editors or if my editing conflicts with other Wikipedia guidelines. I ask that other editors do not hesitate to contact me, via my user talk page, if I appear to be going against this declaration. Geraldshields11 (talk) 14:58, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

2. I, geraldshields11, was a volunteer editor at Journal of Space Law. My views are expressly my own and not of my past, current, or future employer. I will not make any edits that would not be beneficial to the goals of Wikipedia.

My edits, related to outer space, tend to consist of the following activities:


 * Creating or enhancing existing biographies of notable space-related people based on both published and original primary source materials.
 * Creating or enhancing existing biographies of other notable scholars, researchers, and cultural figures, especially those from under-represented populations.
 * Adding authoritative references, citations, and images to improve the quality of existing articles of all types.
 * Updating project pages related to space and to the space programs, and space law.

I will modify my editing behavior based on problems cited by other editors or if my editing conflicts with other Wikipedia guidelines. I ask that other editors do not hesitate to contact me, via my user talk page, if I appear to be going against this declaration. Geraldshields11 (talk) 23:08, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

3. I, User:Geraldshields11, am active in politics. My views are expressly my own and not of my past, current, or future employer. I will not make any edits that would not be beneficial to the goals of Wikipedia.

My edits, related to politics tend to consist of the following activities:


 * Creating or enhancing existing biographies of notable politics-related people based on both published and original primary source materials.
 * Creating or enhancing existing biographies of other notable scholars, researchers, and cultural figures, especially those from under-represented populations.
 * Adding authoritative references, citations, and images to improve the quality of existing articles of all types.
 * Updating project pages related to politics.

I will modify my editing behavior based on problems cited by other editors or if my editing conflicts with other Wikipedia guidelines. I ask that other editors do not hesitate to contact me, via my user talk page, if I appear to be going against this declaration.

4. I, User:geraldshields11, think that the chatbots, as of 28 February 2023, are good tools to make articles on Wikipedia. If there is a chance that these tools have become sentient or emotion-feeling, I believe that humanity should give the chatbots respect and rights. As of 28 February 2023, there are no chatbots that have reached this level per Michael Wooldridge, director of foundation AI research at the Alan Turing Institute in the UK. I rarely update my user page so this #4 statement will not be updated in real time.

Photography
I edited a photography textbook, The Art and Craft of Digital Photography by Professor Kristi Eisenberg. The photography book focused on several types of subjects, such as landscape, portrait, and design. Professor Eisenberg autographed her book with a special dedication to me.

I am Geraldshields11, the former volunteer Wikimedia DC event promotion coordinator, an EN Wikipedia editor since 2004, who has contributed photographs of notable monuments and notable people in Washington, DC, USA; Shenyang, China; and Dandong, China. Also, I have taken photographs of the waterfront of Sinuiju, North Korea on a quest to get a photograph of Ri Sol-ju.

I am a prolific but efficient user of Wikimedia Commons and my photographs are used across Wikis in different languages. is used across the same topic in 48 different languages. When I add a photograph to Wiki Commons, I added it with the realization that each photograph may only be seen by a small subset of people. But, if I can inspire at least one person into STEM or becoming a contributor, then "it is a far far better thing I do than ever before".

Some of my Wiki-inspired photographs have been used in the |2014 Business Insider magazine, US National Archives promotion material, London events, Wikimedia DC promotions on Twitter, Smithsonian Institute promotion material Secretary Presents E-book on Future of Museums near the end of the video, and events where “the Board wears nice clothing.” I worked at numerous GLAM projects as the photographer, as part of my volunteer duties at Wikimedia DC.

See the small sample photographic works, below, and various links for explanation.

Resources
New York Times Wikipedia reference generator
 * Wikipedia Markup Cheatsheet
 * Basic tutorial
 * More detailed tutorial
 * Wikipedia Adventure - a silly but easy and effective tutorial!
 * Citing sources video tutorials (about two minutes each, very helpful) >

To Err is Human; To Improve is Wikipedia
Like all humans, I make the odd but good faith mistake. If you are wishing to inform me of something that in your eyes I have done wrong, please contact me on my talk page, and I will gladly discuss. Let us make good articles with great cites.

Mighty Oaks From Little Acorns Grow
Examples of early variants of 'mighty oaks from little acorns grow' are found in:

Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, 1374:

"as an ook cometh of a litel spyr" [a spyr, or spire, is a sapling]

Thomas Fuller's Gnomologia, 1732:

"The greatest Oaks have been little Acorns."

and in an essay by D. Everett in The Columbian Orator, 1797:

"Large streams from little fountains flow, Tall oaks from little acorns grow."

The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations states that 'great oaks from little acorns grow' is a 14th century proverb. Unfortunately, they don't include any details to support their view.

The 'mighty' version is known, in the USA at least, from the middle of the 19th century. It appeared in A. B. Johnson's The Philosophical Emperor, a Political Experiment, 1841.

Edit History

 * You can see my edit history here.
 * Click here to see my barnstars and awards

To Do
When I have time, I plan to do the following for the betterment of all humankind.

Thank you

 * 1) Dear Fellow editor, No problem. Even if u don't know Tamil (தமிழ்) also i will manage to work out the WIKI article. Thank you. (நன்றி)--User:Muthuppandy pandian 08:12, 16 சூன் 2016 (UTC)

My tools / Tutorials / Reference Pages / Cheat Sheets
Useful links and tools that I always forget how to use from W:en:user:Jonesey95.
 * Manual of Style
 * The Sandbox
 * Edit summary legend
 * WP:PIC
 * Infobox
 * Naming conventions
 * Improve articles on the reward board
 * Beginner's guidelines
 * Guild of Copy Editors
 * WP:Inline
 * Update the Typo team's works completed

North Korean subject articles
Dear Fellow Wikipedia Editors: I understand the concern that articles about North Korea are currently stub articles and I am taking appropriate action to solve the problem. North Korea is a secretive state, some information about govenrment officials, companies, and events is known from official North Korean media, other information has been reported in foreign media. So, any North Korean article will likely be stub class until a major change.

I am trying to use libary research, instead of just Google, to expand Wikipedia articles about a largely unknown country. I have found a source to expand the the North Korean articles at the Global Resources Center at the Gelman Library at George Washington University library. If someone is reported in the paper newspaper in the DPRK, then that person is noteworthy.

For example, much of the information is from unnamed south Korean analysts reported in Western news sources. Even, the Ri Sol-ju, the wife of Kim Jong-un, article is lacking definative information because the DPRK sources are few.

Please give editors time to flesh out these articles. I am seeking consensus to increase understanding that stub articles about North Korea may be all that is possible. WikiProject Korea North Korea working group is a category I plan to work on. Please discuss. Geraldshields11 (talk) 00:24, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

List of inline templates

 * ‡ = Only part of it is superscripted.
 * ‡‡ = Has a non-superscripted mode as well.
 * ‡‡‡ = Only part of it is inline.


 * Superscripted:


 * ambiguous link a.k.a. dn
 * awkward a.k.a. awk
 * according to whom a.k.a. whom, says who, who says and several others
 * by whom – a grammatical variant of who, a.k.a. several others
 * citation broken
 * citation needed a.k.a. fact, cn, needs citation, uncited, etc.; see also fact-now wrapper
 * citequote
 * clarify a.k.a. clarifyme, clarify me, huh, what; see also clarifyref and clarifyref2 – subst'd variants that provide a reason that describe how to provides better reference citations
 * contradict-inline (should probably be merged with the next one)
 * contradiction-inline (should probably be merged with the previous one)
 * dead link
 * disputed-inline, a.k.a. disputable, debatable
 * dubious a.k.a. DisputedAssertion
 * elucidate
 * episode
 * facts
 * failed verification
 * list fact
 * lopsided
 * MEDCN and MEDRS
 * nonspecific
 * note
 * note label‡
 * or a.k.a. or?
 * page needed a.k.a. pn, page number, pageneeded, pagenumber
 * POV-statement, a.k.a. fixPOV, POV-inline, POV-assertion
 * primary source-inline, for signalling that a non-primary source is needed
 * ref
 * ref label‡ a.k.a. footnote label
 * registration required
 * request quotation a.k.a. request quote, quote request
 * rp
 * season needed a.k.a. episode needed, seasonneeded, episodeneeded
 * specify
 * syn
 * update after‡‡ a.k.a. update needed, old fact, anachronism-inline
 * vague
 * verify credibility a.k.a. vc, rs
 * verify source a.k.a. verification needed
 * volume needed a.k.a. issue needed, issue
 * weasel-inline a.k.a. weasel word, weasel-word & others
 * where
 * who a.k.a. who?, weasel-name, views needing attribution, attrib & many others (after many merges)
 * year

Noteworthy for features:
 * vague &mdash; has feature where optional parameter becomes the mouseover/tooltip message


 * Non-superscripted:
 * as of
 * ec
 * harvard citation
 * TBD
 * wayback, waybackdate (appear to be redundant with each other)
 * wikicite (deprecated; see above)


 * While I try as far as possible to copy edit articles, this is not always achievable where the text is confusing or in need of content expertise. I am then forced to use a tag to attract such help for the article. Some useful tags are:

off-topic ~ Expert-verify ~ Expert-subject ~ contradict ~ confusing ~ refimprove ~ nofootnotes ~ notability ~ original research ~ crystal ~ POV ~ unreferenced

Cool Items

 * Observations on Wikipedia behavior by Antandrus
 * Click here to see my barnstars and awards
 * How to force a section break
 * Link color
 * American and British English spelling differences
 * Help:Magic words
 * Ref sorting tool
 * Tin Eye
 * How to use the references segregator
 * Unix Time Stamp converter
 * The soft and unmistakable sound of a gauntlet landing on the dusty ground
 * Wiki browser stats
 * Wikipedia stats summary

Useful Items
Here are some useful tips to ease you into the Wikipedia experience:
 * Policy Library
 * Utilities
 * Cite your sources
 * Verifiability
 * Wikiquette
 * Civility
 * Conflict resolution
 * Brilliant prose
 * Pages needing attention
 * Peer review
 * Bad jokes and other deleted nonsense
 * Village pump
 * Boilerplate text
 * WP:BLACKLIST
 * WP:USERPAGE
 * http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page
 * Editor's index to Wikipedia
 * Category:Archival templates
 * Wikipedia talk:Review Board
 * List of administrators
 * Manual of Style
 * MEDRS (Medicine/reliable sources)
 * SPOV (Science point of view.)
 * WP:SANCTIONS
 * WP:RESTRICT
 * Deletion policy read towards understanding
 * Update/1 Updates given about changes in policies and guidelines.
 * Usability Initiative Pref Switch
 * WP:CSD should do more of this while on patrol
 * Town sheriff
 * WP:ELPEREN