User:Phoebe

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Hello! My name is Phoebe Ayers. I am a librarian, currently based in Seattle, Washington Davis, California. I'm a native English speaker. I've been writing, editing and using Wikipedia on and off since August 2003 (with a couple extended breaks, when my life was rudely interrupted by graduate school). There is always something else I want to do.

I work on Wikipedia, but I also talk about it a lot; I give a fair number of presentations about the site, particularly to librarian groups, and I am happy to share my notes. I am also interested in Wikip/media research. I also worked on Wikimania 2006 (see below), am working on Wikimania 2007, and am interested in events, outreach, and teaching Wikipedia generally.

On usernames

D58 D21 G4 S29 S29 D21 G4 X1

I used to edit content under the name brassratgirl. I generally teach and present using my given name. That username is longstanding and has nothing whatsoever to do with MIT, or this. It is also not symbolic of anything in particular. If you're curious, ask and I'll send you the explanation. (I am also not user:BrassRat, or related to any other variation). wikihiero

on meta ~~ on Wikimania '06 ~~ Wikimania '07

Contents

[edit] a long answer to a short question

Why work on Wikipedia? For me, the answer is a matter of scale. As a librarian, I am in the business of helping make sure that people get the information that they are looking for in order to do their jobs, educate themselves, satisfy their curiosity and live a fulfilling life. I am also in the business of helping people discover relevant information towards these ends that they don't realize or imagine exists. Wikipedia -- meaning the collection of people that produce this site -- is also working towards these goals, but on a global, multilingual and hitherto unprecedented scale. Because of the very heavy use the site receives, the changes that you or I make to Wikipedia are likely to touch substantially more lives than any other possible way of contributing to the information universe at this moment. It's a simple matter of efficiency -- I work on Wikipedia, and try to make it better, in order to reach as many people as possible.

Eastern Phoebe
Eastern Phoebe

There are other reasons as well why this is a deeply important project: the Wikimedia Foundation projects represent one of the most diverse global online communities around. The projects provide a way to get to know people from other parts of the world, and learn about their similarities and cultural differences, in a way that is unmatched online. The Foundation and Wikipedia also represent projects that are perhaps more comprehensively volunteer-driven and volunteer-governed than any other similar undertaking; the projects provide a model for what other empowered collaborative undertakings could look like and achieve. And finally, the sheer scope of Wikipedia is unparalleled in history. There's never been a reference work like this before -- never one both so general and so detailed, one that tries to be all things to all people in all languages. Wikipedia's existence is due to an accident of being in the right technological place at the right time, but it now affords a chance to work on one of the grandest undertakings ever.

Wikipedia is generally a friendly place, but it's also filled with arguments, disagreements, and actions that are angering or upsetting. For the most part people work out those differences through peaceful processes and resolution, with profound instances of assuming good faith; occasionally this doesn't seem possible. Generally, though, the Wikipedia communities are filled with some of the most extraordinary people I have ever had the pleasure to meet -- sometimes in person, sometimes not. I think most contributors who have spent very much time on Wikipedia realize what a cool project this is, and what cool people work on it -- but this doesn't get articulated enough to the world at large; it's easier to criticize a project than defend it well, and more importantly, to improve it. Wikipedia does of course have many areas in which to improve -- accuracy should be checked to a much higher standard, the rate of referencing is appalling, we can improve the climate for new and expert contributors alike. But I'm optimistic on all of these fronts, and hope to continue discovering beautiful and extraordinary evidences of human cooperation here.

[edit] how to use Wikipedia -- resources

These are a collection of handouts, (hopefully) useful for learning and teaching Wikipedia. Feel free to print them, distribute them, use them for presentations, change them, claim them, whatever you need to do.

[edit] wikimania

The 2nd annual international conference of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimania 2006, was held in Cambridge, Mass. on the Harvard Law School campus. The site for more information is [1], and the email address for more information is wikimania-info (at) wikimedia.org. I chaired the program committee for this conference.

The 3rd annual conference will be held in Taipei, Taiwan in 2007. There is a site here where information will be posted as it comes available.

[edit] research

I am particularly interested in how people outside the Wikipedia community view and use Wikipedia -- groups such as librarians, teachers, or "ordinary users." I'm also interested in how the Reference Desk feature functions, and how trust and 'right answers' are generated on the Wikipedia. As a library science student, I posted a short survey for participants on the Wikipedia Reference desk. Although that survey is now outdated, it is still available here: [2] If you have asked or answered questions on that desk, please feel free to fill it out.It is completely confidential and will only be used for my own research into online and community reference services. I recently gave a presentation at the superb first annual Wikimania conference in Frankfurt on the information behavior of Wikipedia users. It can be found here[3]. I am also very interested in other people's research on the 'pedia and would love to get in touch with people doing research. See [4].

strange fish
"I like fish"

[edit] contributions

Some of the things I'm interested in include: English literature, history, jewelry, science, (particularly oceanography, ecology, conservation and marine science) and library science. However, I also have interests in lots of other areas and I like to research things. Sometimes I just fix typos, or merge articles, or rewrite clunky phrasing, or fix whatever I find wrong on random pages. In my casual, limited assessment, there are still gaps in en:wp, though it's getting better every day; there are areas of applied science (engineering, architecture, marine science) that could use a lot of work, and nearly every article here could use some sources.

Here are a few things I've done that I am rather attached to:

  • Pages I've started or destubbed:
  • pages I have worked on:
  • Articles I've referenced or am working on referencing:
Referencing is my true love. I estimate I've added roughly 150 references to print sources for articles I didn't originally write, mostly due to my Dictionary of Scientific Biography project.
  • Current drafts:
  • Pages I'd like to work on (outdated but still useful)
  • Ongoing projects: merges; cleanup; factchecking and sourcing; adding journal infoboxes; scholarly societies links, and further reading sections; making sure every article on the "must have" list gets up to snuff.

Mostly I just end up cleaning up stuff though.

[edit] personal principles

From the past: or the use common sense department, or why it's good to remember not to make a big deal out of things.

A question from the very first batch of archived RFAs, in 2003 (around the time I joined the project):

  • Wow. I don't know. What are the responsibilities of being a sysop?
  • As far as I know, there aren't really any responsibilities, just a list of obvious things not to do.

I'd encourage anyone new to the project who is thinking about being an adminstrator, or who is getting heavily involved, to read up on your history; many of these friendly people are still around today, though many others sadly aren't.

A short essay on taste (nb: I wrote the following paragraph soon after joining wp, but it holds true today; though after a couple of years I don't mind holding my own in a debate, I still don't participate in many arguments.) Things I like doing on Wikipedia: browsing, wikifying, adding citations, verifying things like bibliographies and expanding articles about common yet complicated things, and having the sense of working on an encyclopedia in the grand tradition of same, albeit in a completely new fashion. I also like reading articles. Things I don't like at all: debates about controversial subjects, flame or edit wars.

My biggest pet peeve: cite your sources, people! If you need help finding sources, there's the Reference Desk, the new Newspaper and magazine article request service, the fact and reference check people, or I will individually work with anyone who needs help finding or verifying sources. Just ask.

When in doubt, be nice and see Wikipedia:Simplified_Ruleset.


Journal of Computational Silliness
Discipline Wikipedia
Language English
Abbreviated title WP.
Publisher (country) Jimmy Wales (USA)
Publication history Published since January 15, 2001
Website http://en.wikipedia.org/
ISSN N/A
title
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: [[ ]]
Order: [[ ]]
Family: [[ ]]
Genus: Name
Species: name
Binomial nomenclature
Names here

[edit] editing resources

dict

User:Brassratgirl/Librarians -- here is a handout on the basics of using and editing Wikipedia, with lots of handy links, geared particularly towards librarians.

infoboxen! -->

useful: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Redirect

editing help for mediawiki -- here is a bunch of stuff that I often forget how to do, because I have a hard time remembering syntax

upload images and that new-fangled image markup

templates for you!

line art drawings of fish [5] for use on marine/fishery/fish pages. Excellent line art drawings. done so far: sturgeon, flounder, mola mola..

Another Tip of the moment...


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[edit] a project or two

This article does not cite its references or sources.
You can help Wikipedia by not citing "My Friend Carl" as a source.[6]

shamelessly stolen from user:Ravedave

Reference: unreferenced/unsourced template should be used extremely liberally | as should Template:Not verified | Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check | Wikipedia:Newspapers and magazines request service

Librariana: Wikipedia:WikiProject Librarians | Library-stub articles | Wikipedia:Reference Desk

Research: Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikidemia | (see also: meta)

Fix it: Wikipedia:Cleanup resources | cleanup templates | articles to be merged (perhaps my favorite cleanup task | Wikipedia:Typo | the professor test | Engineering x fact-check articles | Electrical Eng x fact-check

Make it great: Wikipedia 1.0 | Wikipedia:List of articles all languages should have | Template:Grading_scheme and Category:Wikipedia editorial validation (meta-discussion)

Meet: Wikipedia:Meetup (I'm still a Seattleite at heart) | Wikimania


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