If one's goal is to help produce a truthful, accurate, and complete Wikipedia, not to fulfill one's own agenda, one quickly comes to realize that there are two kinds of people fixing allegedly inaccurate or PoV entries:
There are people who attempt to fix the error, generally by changing the wording so that it's more objective and accurate. "Senator X lied about Such and Such" should usually be changed (if the lie isn't pretty much proven) to "So-and-so asserted, based on this and that, that Senator X did not tell the truth about Such and Such".
And then there are people whose goal is to censor information that doesn't fit their own personal agenda. These people tend to delete supposedly flawed material wholesale, and often will insist continuing to delete any reference to it, no matter how much others attempt to fix the material to comply with their objections. There's no way, if such a person likes Senator X, that any even vaguely accurate mention of Such and Such will survive deletion.
We should all strive to be the former, not the latter, even...or especially...when the topic at hand is important to us and we do prefer one side over the other.
Acknowledged Articles
People keep saying I should track the articles I've created, or dominantly edited, that have gotten awards, features, et cetera. Unfortunately, I haven't kept track of them at all. Here are a few I know of...
Austrian Economics
The Curator Barnstar
It's good to see someone with a solid grounding in economic history contributing to our economics pages. Thanks! --LK (talk) 02:44, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
featured list! The featured lists are what we believe to be the best lists in Wikipedia. Prior to being listed here, lists are reviewed at Wikipedia:Featured list candidates for usefulness, completeness, accuracy, neutrality, style and prose according to our featured list criteria
.
Castorocauda lutrasimilis
Castorocauda lutrasimilis, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page
.
BepiColumbo
On
BepiColumbo, which you created. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page
21 February, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Beelzebufo, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page
.
Microhyla nepenthicola
DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page
DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page
United States Constitution, were written by "a Lady of Philadelphia"? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/The Kentucky Volunteer. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, The Kentucky Volunteer), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page
Ten years ago, I figured we'd soon run out of new articles to create. But not only is there more to what we know than one generally thinks about, but I'm also constantly surprised at the relatively important topics that nobody, even all this time later, has bothered to put together even as a stub. So I just filtered my contributions by "only show edits that are page creations", and I'm going to list a few here that I'm especially proud to have shared with the community since I became an editor in 2004. While I'm overtly showing off my contributions, my secret underlying motivation is to encourage people to read about these wonderful, but apparently overlooked, bits of human knowledge. And to be bold by creating your own Wikipedia articles, when you discover that something worthwhile has been overlooked. There are still many out there that need to be made.
Romano cheese — Had no article until I made it. Weird.
Monks Mound — The best example of the Mound Builders civilization's eponymous structures. Oh, I created the Mound Builders article, too.
WWIV — The software I used for my BBS and network, in the early to mid 1990s.
Ice cream float — Even back then, it was kinda strange that this didn't have an article.
Brach's — Yep, I made the actual Brach's company article, back in 2005. And the article for its founder, Emil J. Brach.
Alien Legion — Spectacular comic series, like Guardians of the Galaxy but better.
Dreadstar — The other SF comic better than Guardians of the Galaxy.
John Philiponus
— 6th century polymath.
Castorocauda — a beaver-like predecessor of modern mammals, from halfway through the age of the dinosaurs
Beelzebufo — A gigantic frog that may have eaten baby tyrannosaurs. I also made the graphic where it dwarfs a full-grown bullfrog.
Robert Heinlein
. I've written a huge chunk of Bob's article, too.
Richard Timberlake — One of the most important living economists. And a great guy.
List of basil cultivars — I made this primarily for my own edification, to organize my basil-planting plans for that year, but it became a Featured List on Wikipedia. Also List of tomato cultivars
Moultrie Flag — Also known as the Liberty Flag, one of the first American flags in the Revolutionary War
Yellow curry — not quite as yummy as snow peas, but worth having an article
Russian tea cake — Okay, it's one thing for nobody to bother with trivial things like world-changing economic or political works, but how is it that nobody had made an article for this amazing pastry?
Elijah P. Lovejoy Monument — A 120 foot tall spire raised for the top abolitionist of the Saint Louis area, murdered while defending his anti-slavery newspaper's printing press from mindless thugs.
Catalaphyllia — The coral beloved by everyone with a reef tank.
Morgan's Riflemen — Without these guys, we may well have lost the American Revolution. Daniel Morgan, Nathaniel Greene, and Casimir Pulaski (no relation) won the war, not George Washington, who was losing it in the North, but happened to be there to take credit for the final British surrender, in a Yorktown battle Washington had actually opposed fighting, which had been initiated by the French (Rochambeau) and Virginians without his knowledge.
Saint Louis cuisine
— Can you believe this article didn't exist?
Indica (Ctesias) — The first, albeit dubious, account of India and perhaps China known to the Western world. Ctesias was a Greek writer in Persia in the 5th century BC.
Cladodont — The most dominant type of shark in the devonian, didn't have an article. I actually bought a cladodont tooth off of eBay in order to take the pic used therein.
was the most important abolitionist of his day, but reacted to the extreme wrongs of the Civil War with this criticism of forced submission to authoritarian government.
Our Enemy, the State — Both modern American Conservatism and libertarianism would not exist in their current forms, without this book, which is attacking the authoritarian state, not government in general.
Galapagos tomato
— The galapagos islands have their own unique tomato species (plural).
Thomas Godfrey — wrote the first professional play by an American author, The Prince of Parthia. The educated thespians among you probably know that one. He definitely deserved an article.
The next several are all seminal economic books, none of which had articles. It's one of those categories that is strangely neglected. Same with aquaria, exotic pets, and horticulture. Not sure why, since they all have large fan bases.
Della Moneta — Galiani's book is at least as important as The Wealth of Nations, which it laid the foundation for, yet it didn't even have an article. All modern realms of monetary theory are explicitly identified herein.
(no relation) wisely destroys mercantilism and protectionism in this super-early monetary theory epistle.
Money and Trade — This book is not as famous as it should be. John Law
convinced the Crown to set up one of the first paper money systems, using this missive.
Of the Balance of Trade — One of the most important post-classical philosophers, David Hume, wrote a book that changed the way economists saw money, and nobody'd made an article for it.
On the Writing of Speculative Fiction — Robert Heinlein may have influenced more Science Fiction writers than any other author, or any other human but Hugo Gernsback, and this is his most famous advice on how to write.
Uncloudy Day — This is one of the most-covered gospel songs of all time. No matter what kind of music you like, you should check out The Staple Singers version here, which helped inspire Bob Dylan to become a musician. The deep, soulful vocals starting halfway through were coming from the heart of a 14 year old girl.
Cyberpunk (novel) — This is the story by Bruce Bethke that named the entire cyberpunk genre, and nobody'd made the article for it. I also had to make one for his parody of the genre, Headcrash
.
Dianthus plumarius — commonly known as the garden pink, this is the flower from which the color pink got its name...and yet nobody had made an article, I guess because this flower was trendy only back in the 17th century, and is almost forgotten today.
BitCoin
branching that allowed better scaling
US Constitution
in 1794, by one of the top American publishers of music for that decade, and one of its key musicians.
Silkhenge — A tiny structure that can mysteriously appear in places in South America, which turns out to be built by a species of spider to protect their eggs.
React Fiber
— the new engine revamping the React library/framework popular in JavaScript.
Robert Heinlein
in 1957, critical of those advocating a unilateral American ban on nuclear testing.
Arthur Dudley — A possible son of Queen Elizabeth, "The Virgin Queen" who had a love affair with Robert Dudley, moved him into a suite right next to her bedchamber, and "fell ill" with a condition that "made her body swell" twenty years before Arthur showed up as a young adult claiming her as his mother. I think silly people who seriously believe she died a virgin were very determined not to document this interesting story.
Honky Tonk Train Blues — Perhaps the earliest boogie-woogie recording, certainly one of the greatest boogie songs before the genre was renamed "Rock and Roll"
The Doorway Effect
— The reason you forget what you were doing, when you walk into another room
Honorable mention
The article for Galileo didn't include his full name, "Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaulti de Galilei", until I added it in 2019.
Speaking of names, the ibn Battuta article didn't even have an explanation about his nickname, much less the name you and I know him by, Shamsal-DinAbu’AbdallahMuhammadibn’Abdallahibn Muhammadibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn Yusufal-Lawatial-Tanjiibn Battuta. The horrors. Anyway, I felt that might benefit the article.
Fossil didn't have a History of the Study of Fossils section until I added it. Did you know that Classical Greek culture was strongly influenced by fossils?
Can you believe that
An Unjust Law is No Law at All
was nothing but a stub? MLK Jr would be horrified. I've fleshed it out.
I'm now working on a template to give quick summary to basic stats, initially for dinosaurs, but perhaps eventually for more. It's User:Kazvorpal/paleo-template
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