User:SeoR

Welcome to SeoR's personal page on Wikipedia.

Background comment: This is a pretty broad community whose members perform a range of tasks according to their interests, knowledge and skills, often shifting over time. No more than academia, politics or business, the community is not a perfect mirror of the world's diversity, but almost all regular editors are committed to the sharing of knowledge and the community's standards. Wikipedia is sometimes criticised for lack of coverage of certain topic areas or aspects of life, and over-coverage of others, and I share such frustration at times - but as an encyclopedia, it tends to reflect the world, with its inherent biases, especially when it comes to reliable sources. I'm involved since 2007, and it's still fun (but I did take an extended near-break from 2009 to late 2017, when family circumstances / other aspects of Real Life demanded, and when some internal arguments, notably to do with certain Irish topics, got a bit shouty).

I love what Wikipedia does for the world and its users, and believe in keeping most of what we have, but reinforcing its quality and reference-ability - but I do find it frustrating that we have sportspeople and popular culture figures by the 10s of thousands, especially from 15-20 countries, and also many historical leaders, but still poor coverage of large areas of science and other aspects of academia, and of many business figures and enterprises too (sadly an area where we receive far too much PR / other inappropriate content), and of the almost the entire rich histories of whole countries and cultures, and the >50% of humanity... I also wish more people would donate suitable images, notably photographs of people.

Myself: I focus on Irish matters, especially to do with localities in Dublin and nearby counties, and also including myth and folklore, the Irish language, Irish authors, and further including speculative fiction, some areas of science and industry, and more. I'm on the Web since Gopher was a thing, and have put in a lot of time on previous projects, notably the Open Directory Project. I also joined Wikimedia Commons early on, and hope to do more there, from attic storage and other sources. I joined after I'd been asked for suggestions and material by existing Wikipedians, and having had the "compliment" of having some of my material "borrowed" too. At times, I'm also active in Pending Changes, reviewing proposed alterations to semi-protected articles, and trying to improve submissions which have value but are not quite right.

For what it's worth, I've made around 42.5k edits and >2k logged actions across more than 24k pages, a good portion of that concerned with article improvement and rating (I've rated more than 15k articles for WikiProject Ireland, and had the pleasure of finally reaching "zero to rate" with the help of a couple of colleagues). From 2020, I've also returned to an old interest in creating articles, now more demanding than it was in the 2000s, when it was often enough to have a source or two - we now require much better referencing. My statistics are available to view:

If I can help improve an article, or answer a question, please reach out to me on my Talk page, or send an e-mail (I have a dedicated account for Wikipedia). Like most Wikipedians, I keep my encyclopedia and day-to-day lives separate, so any discussions will be with my identity here, only. If you're new to Wikipedia, welcome, and please do help us do even more :-)

Offline / limited periods
In case anyone wonders why a query has not been answered or action taken / completed, I keep a brief log of absences / periods of limited activity:

2018
After December break, aimed to get Unassessed Ireland below 10k for the year-end - and did so.

2019
Weak Feb., patchy March, solid gaps in May, June, August. Patchy in part of Sep. and Oct., and two solid gaps in December.

2020
Slow start, good later March. April: Real Life (mostly work-from-home in Covid-time, and related family needs) demanding, so much offline. June with gaps and RL and Irish SFFH archive push (that did not continue). Slow start to the second half, limited all July, some solid absences in August. Gaps in October, and November, including two weeks into December.

2021
Gaps in Jan., solid Feb., gaps in March. So-so April, May, RL work piled up. Two gaps in June, more in July, incl. offline travel 22-30, then OK August. Some absences in Sept. and Oct., and RL intervened late Oct. Good start to November, then small gaps. Solid start to December, albeit diverted by a new "hidden potential" article; largely offline the rest of the month, except a little of the 13th and less of the 15th and 30th.

2022
Mixed start, finally properly going on 10 Jan. Working the last 3.49k of assessments, and more, and helped with a WikiProject Ireland member run-through. Good late Jan. & early Feb., albeit away / offline majority of 11-16 Feb., then good run, off 23, and remote 24-27. Start of Mar. hit by remote travel - 7 content edits in 8 days, 5 w/ none at all, and again away most of 10-18 and 20-21 Mar. Unexpectedly away again 24-25 and offline 27 Mar. After a good busy few days, remote suddenly mid-31 Mar. to end of 2 Apr. Away again 3 and most of 4 Apr., again p.m. of 14-17 March, and then again - just 1 edit in the whole second half of Apr. Better start to May but then away 10-14 and more than three wks, 17-31 May and to 7 June, with one brief working moment. Steady later June, except 21 and 28, travelling. Overall, weakest period in years. OK start to July, away 11th and most of 16-17th, good finish, then good 1-3 and away 4-8 August. Decent Aug., good progress on rating, but busy week from the 22nd, and more-or-less away 26th and 28th. Good Sept., and right through to 10 Oct., largely away 11-14 Oct., travelling back for 14th, away again from 16-21 incl., most of 23-25, and 31st; weakest month in a while. Slow start to Nov., away 4, 7, 11-12, 18-19, most of 26-28. Away 5 and largely 10-11 Dec. Offline 23-26, and much of 29-30 Dec.

2023
1-2 Jan., most of 6-9, 10-11 and 28 off. Away 10-11 Feb., most of 24 Feb.-5 Mar. Good next 10 days, of which much of 14-15 went on an article improvement drive after an external request. Ill 18-20 Mar., largely away 24-25. Ill from later 3-5 Apr., and travelling 8-12. Away for long weekend to 17, planning new articles and largely away 28-29 Apr., back evening of 30. Away 14 & 23, most of 26-29 May. Away 8, most of 16-17 June, 21 p.m. to 23 a.m., and sudden trip 28 eve. to lunch. 30. Trips 1-5 Jul., eve. of 8 to morn. of 10 and p.m. 11 to 13, and even more 14-19 Jul., except brief return one night, then away 24-26 also, then 28-p.m. of 31. Good start to Aug., away 10 & 12 - p.m. of 14, most of 15, 17 and 19. Solid finish to Aug., away 1-2, part 3, and all 5, then most of 7-11 and 28-29 Sept. Away most of 6-7, all of 8-10, and again most of 14 and all 15; sick 17-19; away during 26 Oct.. Away 9, most of 23-25 and 27-28 Nov. Sick 1-11 December, returned 12 but eyes were not yet ready; returned briefly 19, then 21-22, 23-24, 27-30 with gaps, and will not be doing much today, travelled for New Year's. To all fellow editors, Happy New Year! SeoR (talk) 15:52, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

2024
OK start, 5 Jan. off after a few midnight edits, hosting knocked out most of 6-7, all of 8-9. Away from 12, limited access for a week - 13-14 mostly absent, also 17, 19-22, 24-25 (travel), 28. Good 1 Feb., offline 2 to 4 / 5. Unexpectedly away 21-22, largely offline 26-28 Feb. and 1-2 Mar., ill 3-4, away 8-10, parts of 11-12, most of 17-19, most of 23-28 (3G access at best; entirely away 23, 25, 28), and offshore almost all of 29-31 Mar. p.m., and again 2 to evening of 5 Apr., most of 9-10 and all of 13. Away again 15-18, almost entirely 19-20 and 22, 26, 27, 29-30 April. OK start to May, best of 2024 - the year work took off - but away 11, 15-16, 19, 25 (mostly) and 13 and 23 (wholly). Away 1 and most of 2 and 4 June; also 8-9, 15, most of 16-17 and lunchtime 18 to the night of 21 June. Offshore, and offline except for a few minutes, 25 June to morning of 2 July, and little present until 5, then away 7-14 except two brief accesses, and 17-20 July. SeoR (talk) 01:41, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

WP Ireland and article rating / backlog closing
Following on from the start of the great ratings push in 2007, one of my main targets in 2018 was to work through the backlog of over 15k articles unrated in the WP Irish project, and, despite more than 500 new articles flowing in during the process, I managed more than 5.5k reviews, to get below 10k "to do" by 29 December 2018. I am determined (and I am not the only editor on the case) to clear this backlog entirely. For the first two months of 2019, I mostly targeted other work, but as of late February, with 9.8k articles to review and rate... and as of end October 2019, c. 8k. As part of this work I also get the chance to help some new articles on WP, and to copyedit or do other basic fixes to some more obscure items. I have now adopted Twinkle and will try to do more ancillary work as I continue rating. SeoR (talk) 20:25, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

2020: 6,450 articles to go, as of mid-January. From just over 1k rated in 2007 to 20k, 40k, etc., it would be great to finish initial rating, then tackle completeness of coverage, reviews of ratings, and improving of priority articles.SeoR (talk) 09:08, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

2021: c. 5,400 articles to go. Last year saw quite many new articles to rate, and much else on, so despite handling well over 1,000 WP:IRL ratings, nowhere near finished... I really hope to see this - working alongside one very regular, and 2-3 occasional, fellow raters - to a conclusion... Then, with over 60k substantive articles, and thousands more of special-purpose items, the Project will have a great base for members' work planning. SeoR (talk) 12:55, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Recap, for those not fully familiar with article ratings: SeoR (talk) 21:25, 21 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Start: has a meaningful amount of good content, including at least one serious element of gathered materials - but still weak in multiple areas, and may lack a key element.
 * C: has a defined structure, including a lede and one or more sections, is free from major linguistic (spelling and grammatical) errors, and if and when appropriate, has suitable supporting materials, such as an infobox and/or images / figures, and either reasonably covers the topic (with no major obvious inaccuracies) with some referencing or somewhat covers it while being well-referenced on all major points.
 * B: has a defined structure, including a lede and one or more sections, is free from major linguistic (spelling and grammatical) errors, and if and when appropriate, has suitable supporting materials, such as an infobox and/or images / figures, and both reasonably covers the topic (with no major obvious inaccuracies or omissions) and is well-referenced on all major points (with inline citations as far as possible).

2022: Over 3k articles to go at the start of the year, and successfully closed, with Sarah777, wwCensor, and others!

New articles
I got back to new article development in 2020, partly inspired by a number of other editors (the incredibly productive Antiqueight, WikiCommunity Ireland co-ordinator Smirkybec, GA-success Britishfinance, and the vanished Twilson, among others), and remembered how much fun it can be, albeit also the frustrations, especially in a year with much library closure, and with minimum standards having gone up a lot since the early 2010s. So I plan to do something most months of each year, having restarted with some topics from local discussions: Tailors' Hall, oddly missing, amaptocare, a massive but later forgotten Dublin municipal tree-planting arts project, some of the more active local schools (having rated many schools of less visibility; one done, at least one other in mind), and at least one north Dublin scientist (two covered in 2020) and one business figure (one in 2020, one started). In 2022 and 2023 I even started to allow myself the odd impulse creation. SeoR (talk) 15:13, 3 March 2021 (UTC)
 * And I wrote 14 in 2021, for a total of 51 article creations, but only 3 in the first half of 2022, as March - May lacked much time and access for Wikipedia, and June was catching-up time. I hope to get back to this, and pass 60 by year-end.SeoR (talk) 20:03, 23 November 2022 (UTC)
 * And as of Dec. 2023, article creations reached, I think, 71. SeoR (talk) 00:11, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

DYK and GA work
All nominations: 15+10+1 =26

Totals: Articles created or expanded and DYK'd (15 A +10 E +1 O =26), articles nominated (15 A +10 E +1 N =26)

Total QPQ check-count: (15+10+1+1 -2 missed older +3 supp-ctrib. =28)

Total reviews:

SeoR (talk) 01:54, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Tools for special roles

 * Category:Articles with conflicting quality ratings: currently  pages
 * Category:Pages using WikiProject banner shell with duplicate banner templates: currently  pages
 * Category:Pages using infoboxes with thumbnail images: currently  pages
 * Category:Biography articles without living parameter: currently  pages
 * Category:Pages using WikiProject banner shell with duplicate banner templates: currently  pages
 * Category:Pages using infoboxes with thumbnail images: currently  pages
 * Category:Biography articles without living parameter: currently  pages