User:Jack Greenmaven/My essay

This is just an outline; I never got around to writing the essay; I got too caught up with editing!

Discovering WP
Google

Editing my first article
Jackaroo

Exploring the terrain
User talk pages: conflict, rudeness, arrogance—wow!

Adding what I knew
Ronald Symond; I had two of his books The Cry for Myth; I was re-reading it at the time

Then what do you do
What do I really know that is not already in WP, what do I even know about the city I live in, two photos

New page patroller
The first exposure to the torrent of incoming articles, taught me a lot about WP and other editors,

Anonymity
Important to me, but should it be? Following the herd, but not secure.

Staying motivated
At least I am not doing a sudoku every day

Edit counts, boxes, barnstars

Intermediate goals, 1000 articles, > 50% article space, > 66.7% article space, better than best month's total, a barnstar

Some de-motivators, first editing a disambiguation page the documentation pages Seeing someone announce she was leaving editing after 23 edits on nine pages; civility

finding a more interesting stream of articles to edit

Less TV; less munching;

Copyeditor
I was getting hungry for my first barnstar, why did no kind soul give me one? I found a way to earn one — a copyediting backlog drive

Some parallel activities in my past

I had already done some off the Open Tasks page, which was good for opening my horizons or doing something a little random

Categories
easy-peasy way to add to an edit count; more to explore about how categories are created; another way to find the interesting articles

SuggestBot
Prompted me to merge and wikify

Getting too motivated
Addiction Sudoku

Under the Village pump
Something more than editing;continuing to explore the terrain Idea Lab Miscellaneous Technical

Taking pride
edit summaries, wikifying, infoboxes,

The so-called crisis in declining editor numbers
I had an obvious explanation; there were fewer new articles to be created; the maintenance role appeals to a different kind of editor; business analogy

Conflict
Conflict bothered me to begin with, and I collected a few bruises. Now I avoid it and don't read talk pages that are too full of it. It taught me the importance of civility

Our boats bump together, but we are all sailing on the 'wine dark sea'. It's more like rowing actually. Rowing teams.

Getting over the line
3798 edits on December 26, 2011 Wanted to meet a goal - 'Yeoman Editor' - the vest book edition with the status soaked reddish cover forgotten that i had been editing nearly 14 months. Time flies when you're having fun

The nature of Wikipedia
I was delighted to find Wiki is not paper, which confirmed some of my thinking about how the 'idea of an encyclopaedia' needs to change in an online inclusively conceived instance such as WP.

'Anyone can edit'

Demographics

Evolution: a maturing WP must be different from a youthful WP. Editor crisis? What editor crisis?

Why am I a Wikipedian?
It allows me to feel useful – I am retired. I think WP is a peacemaker. Many nationalities. The highest ideals. A self regulating system and democracy. Is WP a true Anarchy? I learn and I help to teach. Any time and place that suits me. Just behave yourself (practice virtue), all else becomes positive.