User:Robinvp11

About me
Ex-soldier, degree in History and Politics, former Global Commercial Director for an oil company. Three kids, last just finishing college in US (thankfully)

Lived most of my life (adult and child) outside the UK, travelled minimum of 150k miles per year from 1988 until 2021. I also have over 2,500 logged dives (all in warm water).

My travels
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Topics
(a) Areas of history I know of but would like to understand more eg the Scottish dimension of the British Civil Wars. Politicians or military leaders whose Wikipedia entries are either obscure or cut and paste inserts from Victorian DNB. That means research, tracking down obscure PHD dissertations or archive materials and I'm often learning or updating as I go.

(b) Authors or novels I've read all my life, many fading into obscurity (deserved or otherwise), and I'd like others to appreciate; Alfred Duggan. Stanley Weyman. John Masefield. Barbara Cartland (just checking).

Approach
Two things I still remember from my history tutors at London University;

Spanish specialist Paul Preston'; 'Any historian who thinks they have nothing to learn from others about their topic needs a reality check.'

17th century historian John Miller; 'People and personalities change, strategic interests do not; the Why is always more useful than the What.

I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one instead. Blaise Pascale (or Oscar Wilde, depending)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, written for general users; any article is better for being shorter, but that takes time. It requires removing content interesting to the author, but not helpful for the reader. Only one third to half the Sources I use appear in the article.

Curiosity is more useful to a researcher than anything else; there is tons of information freely available on the Web, go out and find it.

Collaboration
In my previous role, I was evaluated twice a month by 20 complete strangers who knew less about the topic than I do; so I'm good at taking constructive feedback. I find it hard to deal with drive-by editing eg people who haven't worked on the article, making changes without consultation, usually based on 'Wikipedia protocols.'

Collaboration assumes I don't know all the answers - and I don't need to, as long as someone else does. Questions, insights, suggestions gratefully received.

Even when I disagree, I often make changes because understanding why I disagree helps me.