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I primarily function as an copyeditor and sometime translator on Wikipedia. I insert punctuation into machine translation and correct verb tenses. I edit and write for substance on geeky topics such as internet protocols. I sometimes do RfCs; it is interesting to be fresh eyes for a question. I may stop as many questions are poorly formulated, and if you try to explain anything to certain people then voilà, you are no longer an uninvolved editor. I have done third-party edits on very contentious articles, with varying degrees of success. The biography of Vladimir Putin comes to mind, but the battle over the definition of an Ugg boot was much more bitterly fought.
When bored I sometimes pick a task off the to-do lists on the Community Portal. My current such apparently random interests include Mexican punk rock, the history of mining in West Africa, Provence in the Dark Ages, the business history of Central America, the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, Annees Folles or France in the 1920s, and fake news.
Warning, if you ask for my opinion you may get it. When really annoyed I reformat reference syntax code (your IDE should do this itself, wikipedia) because it's sooo much easier to read and no harder to run so sorry not sorry if that makes your OCD twinge.
You might be here because I mis-categorized an article and you want to yell at me. Feel free, and you will probably be right. But one of the things I do, realize, is find lost little articlets that are clearly written by harried professionals who have about four more degrees in the topic than I do but can't spell, may or may not have cited a reference work, and didn't link to anything. One way to fix this is to send the article to, you know, at least the right hemisphere of human knowledge. So if I called it mold and it's mildew, or it's new wave and I said punk rock, I'm sorry, honest. Just let me know where it's supposed to go and hurray for all, wikipedia will be ready real soon. Merge it, expand it, kill it with fire, I really don't care. Whatever you need to do.
If it's something I wrote that's clearly a typo, I usually get those myself within minutes.[1] If I haven't, please do fix it, sure. Otherwise I tend to be careful about translations and word choice and would like to be consulted about any substantive edits. I do realize that my preferences don't require your compliance ;)
fun fact:
- the word "crime" in French does not mean "crime" in English. At least not in the modern legal senses of the word(s).
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