Wikipedia

Milkmandan

Joined 1 July 2004

I'm back from my WikiVacation...and I've brought a new toy! Check out the black coupé in pictures below.

de-1Dieser Benutzer hat grundlegende Deutschkenntnisse.
enThis user is a native speaker of the English language.
fr-1Cet utilisateur peut contribuer avec un niveau élémentaire de français.
ja-1この利用者は初級の日本語ができます。
la-1Hic usor simplici latinitate contribuere potest.

I've graduated. Updates pending!

I'm a member of several projects:

Editing philosophy

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I've learned a few things in the not-too-many years that I've been writing and editing. Some of the most important of these are listed below.

  1. Nothing is too good that it can't be replaced. When I'm editing an article, I make it a point to scrutinize everything I'm reading. I write articles expecting that someone else will go through them and change things that I thought worked just fine.
  2. As sort of a corollary, I like to think that even if something is replaced, its spirit lives on in the next incarnation of text. I don't worry much about doing serious rewording because I know that the original authors work has seriously influenced how the next version is written. Accordingly, I don't mind when my thoughts are heavily reworked.
  3. As another corollary, my one hangup is thought deletion. With the exception of redundant information, I believe that everything has a place somewhere in the Wikipedia. Moving pages to obscure subpages doesn't bother me as long as they're still available.
  4. A halfassed first shot is much better than the perfect article that gets written one line a year. Giving an audience a whole ton of information to digest and improve upon works much better than asking them to come up with something original.
  5. Shorter is better.
    1. I almost always forget to apply the previous rule.
      1. See what I mean?
  6. There is no such thing as too much information. Although this and the previous point seem to contradict one another, they actually address subtlely different details.
  7. Articles that need more details as well as a serious reorganization will benefit most by reorganization first.
  8. People are religious about things that you aren't. Always tread lightly.

Generally, my edits fall into one of two categories:

  1. Content-free edits, which focus primarily on spelling/grammar and Wikification, and
  2. Whole-page rewrites.

Rarely do I add just a sentence or two to the text. Of course, this is just personal style.

Significant contributions

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to User:Milkmandan.

Although I've made somewhat serious changes to many smaller pages (and countless minor edits), I'm not sure that listing them here is worth much. In contrast I've made significant changes (i.e., more than two or three paragraphs) to a few select pages:


I have edited some of the above pages because I accidentally ran across them and found them to be unreadable. The Prague Orloj fixes were really my first major edits, and took place because I was interested in the clock and found that the page had a lot of important details mired in indecipherable English. The Mitsubishi Eclipse and Toyota Camry pages were both reworked because I was fairly disappointed at how much information was available and I happened to know a good deal about each of the topics. The Zeiss and Tsar tank pages were found through the Special:Randompage link, and I figured I could probably do something useful with them.

Posted images

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My cars
 
My (now my uncle's) 1985 Toyota 4Runner SR5, seen here near Los Alamos, New Mexico
 
My 1998 Toyota Camry (now severely hail-damaged) at New Mexico Tech
 
My 1986 Volkswagen Scirocco at my house in Socorro, New Mexico (now sold)
 
My 1993 BMW 325is in Redmond, Washington

To do

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On my to-do list is to fill out the pages for any cars I've ever owned. This includes:

More to-do:

Toolbox

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