Hello, I'm Rick
Background and potential conflicts
I have an undergraduate degree in history from UCLA and Masters in American History from WCSU. My interests include history of course but especially how it pertains to individual perspectives and how that affects objectivity. Other interests include photography, especially digital and travel. My first digital camera was a Olympus C2000 loaded with hefty 4 or 8 SmartMedia memory cards. I was an early convert to digital because I couldn't afford to pay for film processing at the rate that I would shoot and didn't have to worry about my camera equipment going through the x-ray at the airport.
Employment: I am employed by Move, Inc. which operates Realtor.com and happens to be a recent News Corp acquisition. I am very cautious about maintaining objectivity and avoiding conflicts here on Wikipedia. As a relative noob, you'll likely notice me nosing around trying to teach myself how to edit, often times just looking at the source code. My original interest in learning how to edit emerged when I noticed that the original Realtor.com page was redirected to the National Association of Realtors page. Since they're separate entities with different purposes, I removed the redirect and started a basic page that I am hoping others will contribute to. I was made aware of the situation when users on Google would search for Realtor.com but be presented with the National Association of Realtors information in the Knowledge Graph. Prior to working at Move Inc. I was a member of NAR and licensed real estate agent so particularly conscious of the different goals and objectives.
I hope that being transparent will lead to softer Trout Slap when the time inevitably comes. Apologies in advance for missteps.