User:Ratherhaveaheart

Introduction
Well first off I consider myself a greenhorn here so if you are visiting because I did something wrong, well I'm not surprised. If you are here because you like what I did YEAH.

If I can claim any expertise it is in United States Law, because I am in law school.

I have a wide variety of interests and have mini-expertise in lots of fields including philosophy, my undergraduate degree, new age/pagan/occult, and Harry Potter and the Joss Whedon universe, though there are even more devoted fans than myself who would do a better job editing these articles.

To Do List

 * Perez v. Sharp- Major expansion ADD the template thing


 * Chavez Ravine- Major expansion
 * Mark Twain- Clean-up and expansion
 * Plagiarism- Clean-up and expansion
 * Rapid transit- Clean-up

Current Focus
November 2006: My Watchlist, Recent Changes- for vandalism, Articles for Deletion debates

Articles
My first and most extensive edit was the DOMA article. As of Sept 12th I made substantial improvements to the DOMA article and hope that readers find my editing helpful and informative. I look forward to working on other law related articles.

I have expanding and edited a few international law article stubs, such as the COPUOS and the Budapest Treaty. As of Sept 19 I went through nearly all the stub categories and watchlisted pages I am interested in expanding. I think this is one of the best ways for me to contribute to Wikipedia, I am good at basic research, even if I don't have an expertise in the subject, and I can make those article more user friendly and add a bit of substance.

I have found that the biography article stubs are the easiest for me to expand, I really enjoyed working on the Thomas Todd article.

Based on an AfD discussion I became heavily involved in The Quran and science article. I am not very knowledgeable about the subject, which I think has actually gave me an advantage for maintaining NPOV.

Skills
Recently I learned how to do "Notes" on my Board of Tea Appeals expansion.

Now I know how to create an article

I try not to overwhelm myself with too many of the technical things at once, but evey stub I work on I try to learn at least one new special feature. I am setting my sights on how to do those neat little boxes on user pages and an "edit counter" would be nifty, but this seems a bit complicated. Even more advanced, there is a template for US court cases that I should figure out how to use, since I think I could do some real good edits on those articles-Perez v. Sharp drool.

I have learned some housekeeping skills such as reversion. I am still not perfect at my proposed deletion templates. I would like to eventually put my most used templates here so I can have easy access.

Clean-up
I have also done some work in the categorization needed section and learned how to make a category tag and how to propose a merge. I feel this is my area where I can do the most clean-up and occassionally I contribute to Articles for Deletion but only if the article in question interests me and there is some real dispute.

These are the more "interesting" AfD's I have contributed to
 * Articles for deletion/The Quran and science
 * Articles for deletion/Andrew Nellis

My latest work has been patrolling the recent changes and reverting vandalism. Occassionally I will do clean up edits on valid changes

Wikipedia Philosophy
I am trying to get a handle on the culture of Wikipedia and the various guidelines, but mostly I am hoping that I am not doing anything inappropriate.

My own wikipedia philosophy is developing as I occassionally browse the Articles for Deletion and the  Requests for Adminship.

As helpful as all the NOT guidelines are I prefer to think in more positives terms. My idea of an encyclopedia is a first reference source, a jumping off point. what should be included is anything and everything about which someone would want research. The information included would be information that would give the basic idea to the researcher and should include "references" to areas for further development. I would have it written clearly and simply, especially the introduction, with lots of attention to the structure and flow of the articles.

This is very important for main topics. For example I am rather disappointed in the International Law article the beginning definition is atrocious. While it is technically correct, no one outside of the field of law would be able to make heads or tails of it, definately not user friendly. However at this time I will keep my opinions about these things to my user page, which I doubt anyone will ever visit, as I don't want to engage in areas with any serious dispute or controversary until I feel more comfortable with some of the basics and that I would do more good than harm not just to Wikipedia, but to the editors as well.

I have been perusing user pages for contributors/editors to articles on my watchlist. I think that the community here is generally awesome, people have such a variety of interests, expertise and viewpoints. I want to write on just about everyone's user page, "I think you sound like a neat person. Will you be my friend?" This community is what makes Wikipedia, because WP can't survive without it.

My only main criticism is that people take themselves and Wikipedia too seriously. Yes Wikipedia is a noble project, but it is also just a website, an online open source encyclopedia incredible website, but still a website. It seems like getting worked up over controversy and guidelines is a bit of a waste of time. So what, the "cheese bubble" article isn't perfect. State your case, make your edit, and take what ever metawikipedia action that is warranted, but for goodness sake, don't get indignant and angry, the "cheese bubbles" article just isn't worth it.