User:Jim.henderson

I'm Jim Henderson, a retired telephone switchman in New York City from 1969 to 2010. Also a bicycler and fan of technical history and astronomy, and a BBS operator from 1991 to 2005. Born in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, lived as a child in Madison, Wisconsin, Knoxville, Tennessee and Plainview, New York, grew up in Manhasset, New York, dropped out of New York University. Thus I forsook suburbia to become a lucky resident of a small island off the coast of New Jersey, where life is so simple, the majority of islanders don't own an automobile, and hardly anyone has a lawn mower. When we want to visit a neighboring island or the mainland, we hop on our bicycle and pedal over a bridge, or take a quick ride on an underground train. Specifically, I am a denizen of Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan.

Subpages

 * User:Jim.henderson/Wikipedia is collaborative
 * User:Jim.henderson/WMNYC
 * User:Jim.henderson/Short flier
 * User:Jim.henderson/Life
 * User:Jim.henderson/Make Wikipedia more accurate
 * User:Jim.henderson/Wikipedia Day 2024

Autumn 2006
A friend messed up Crimean War in early September 2006 and I learned a bit trying to clean it up. First deliberate try at editing Wikipedia  was the addition of new material to Juno Online Services article in mid September. Then came revisions of Reed relay, Marker (telecommunications), Wire spring relay, 5ESS, Signaling System No. 5 and others that an old switchman would know about.

In October, added to articles on History of Brooklyn and various parts of Brooklyn and other parts of Long Island. Also greatly expanded articles on New York Telephone and Panel Switch and reorganized the terribly disorganized DSLAM article even without knowing much about the topic.

You will notice I've got no bumper stickers saying where I eat and what's my religion and how I stand on political and Wiki issues. That's partly because I don't know how to do that, and mainly because I figure Wikipedia is for matters on which I am particularly competent.

Ah. So, here's my first sticker, installed a few hours after dialing a phone call to Brooklyn with the rotary on my red Western Electric 500 type phone. And another, for an exchange I repaired.

Spring 2007
Well, it's been an interesting winter and spring, more than a third of a year, learning how to do this by editing and adding large or small bits to about 2000 articles and making a few from whole cloth. Lately editing some bicycling articles, especially since getting knocked off my bike on April 3 by a limousine and thus having a broken collarbone and more time indoors.

I've let my watchlist grow to over a thousand articles, and vigilante duty towards graffiti now takes much of my time. Also moved the majority of articles out of category:telecommunications to more specific subcats, and did other things with related categories, not that cat work is the most important part of Wikipedia but it still ought to be done right. I ought to do more merger work with small stub articles. Did that with Main distribution frame, Borough President and a few others. Maybe the New York City water supply system and its related tunnel articles will be my next victim. Still having fun, and that's what it's about, right? Jim.henderson 06:30, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Early 2008
So, now my watchlist has grown to about 2,600 items. No discipline; most days about 500 are recent and leave no time to do much except check, revert and tweak them as they enter or leave the active list. Big Wiki news personally is that a couple months ago a relative gave me an old Nikon Coolpix 2200 camera with broken zoom, so I've been learning how to take wide angle photos of various places in easy bicycling range and uploading them to various articles. Come springtime my intention is to buy a new non broken camera and go to those places again and reshoot with better hardware and much better understanding.

2008
On Feb 8 I bought a new, non broken Canon A570IS camera at a nice sale price (a later model came out). Springtime always means more bicycling, and now it means more pictures to review and upload.

Meanwhile on March 21 I added Carterfone to my watchlist, bringing the total to 3000! A few minutes later I removed Quack.com but will certainly give in to the temptation to add more.

In late April 2008 I joined Commons so my pictures might be more widely used. During the summer Wikiphotography grew from a sideline to an obsession and detracted from the older Wikipedia obsession, which nonetheless saw my watchlist grow to 3800 articles including hundreds showing my pictures.



Summer 2009
4800 articles are on my watchlist, yet Wikipedia editing has taken lower priority. Photography for Commons is what my Wikilife is about nowadays, especially since I found out about free geotagging methods.



Million monkeys

 * :D Gosgood (talk) 20:37, 29 August 2008 (GMT)

2011
Same old things. Too busy with photography, I cut my watchlist below 6000 by year's end, yet it grows back as though a thing alive. Was made "Reviwer" in June.

2014
Goodness; been a long time and I've been doing more in Commons than here. I do want to point out two articles in the dead tree press:
 * This NY Times piece, Wikipedia vs the Small screen, hints to me that we need to avoid making articles too big.
 * This NY Review of Books piece, The Charms of Wikipedia, flatteringly analogizes us with, "some vast aerial city with people walking briskly to and fro on catwalks, carrying picnic baskets full of nutritious snacks."

At the astronomy seminar, May 2016
"So, Jim, who writes those Wikipedia articles?"


 * "I do."

"What, all those millions of articles?"


 * "Something like a million of us have written at least a little bit of Wikipedia. Tens of thousands of us around the world do it every day."

"Well, how do we know who wrote which article?"


 * "It says so."

"Where, down at the bottom?"


 * "No, look at the top of this Beethoven page." Why was Beethoven open at the astronomy club? Well, everything's connected, y'know. "You see those tabs, including the 'History' tab? Click that. There's the past 50 changes anyone made. See, a few times a week someone changes something in this article."

"But, who originally wrote it?"


 * "See where it says "Oldest" at the bottom? Click that. Now you see the first fifty versions, in 2001. Click the bottom, earliest date. That's what the article was then. A little bit of biography and a long list of works. In 15 years it's been changed and added to, thousands of times, by probably hundreds of editors like me, but not me because musicians are not my thing."

"What, experts?"


 * "Some of them, probably, but it's not easy to know and we get along without knowing. I edit some astronomy, but other editors do a good job on that. Probably professors or other experts. I know more about Cycling in New York City than other editors. You might call me an expert and anyway I pretty much dominate that. But, if someone else pushes in there, I'll pull out, at least partially, and do more Arab history or organic chemistry or Beaux Arts architecture or whatever."

"But, if anyone can edit anything, and nobody knows who's an expert, what happens if they add something wrong?"


 * "Tens of thousands of vigilantes watch out for that. We pounce and it's gone quickly. I've got 5,600 articles on watch." And showed my watchlist.

"How often do you check this?"


 * "Few times a day."

"Isn't that a lot of time?"


 * "Sure. It's my hobby. Most editors do less and many, heaven help them, do more than I do."

So the topic turned to Monday's Transit of Mercury and the later Opposition of Mars and how astrology programs chart ascending and descending nodes. Astrology? Their doctrines are nonsense but their software does some things more handily than scientific programs do. The astronomy club meets again in two weeks and maybe I'll recruit a new Wikipedian.

Links

 * Special:CreateAccount
 * Account creation log
 * Special:UserRights
 * Edit counter
 * Vera de Kok's list of NYC targets (User:1Veertje)
 * Wikinyc Slack channel
 * Wisdom of polarized crowds: How bias makes a better Wikipedia
 * DEWKIN DEep WiKi INspector shows what you've been up to
 * Governance Structure of Wikipedia -Youtube


 * Events calendar
 * Wikipedia talk:How to run an edit-a-thon

Youtube videos

 * Vanessa Stokrocki: How to upload photos to Commons also discussion of contests.
 * Lovilsa Mellin: Wikipedia, an Introduction -2015 9:07 Promotional review, pointing the ways of contributing, rather than technical.
 * Katie Boyce: What is Wikipedia? -2016 5:24 How did it live down its dreadful reputation?
 * User:VidEwan, Wikimedian in Residence at University of Edinburgh: How to Edit Wikipedia - a 2018 tutorial  47:44  Poor sound. Walks you through doing several things with little explanation of why. And poor organisation.
 * The Wiki Show
 * [24] Vandalism Patrol 2 -May 2020 2:25  using Twinkle.