User:Teratornis
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Welcome to my user page. If you're looking for examples of leading-edge user page design, you'll need to keep looking. Also, this page needs updating. I know more about Wikipedia than I did when I wrote most of it.
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[edit] A brief history of my wiki time
- I started editing on Wikipedia on April 28, 2006. Given that wikis have been around since 1995, and I've been using Internet since the 1980's, I'm rather embarrassed to be so late to the wiki party. I'm still trying to figure out how I could have remained so unaware of wikis for so long, while learning HTML, building Web sites the "conventional" way, and so on. I had seen hints about wikis for some time, but I never quite "got" the idea, until somehow I had my "wikiphany."
- If it wasn't against the rules to propose a neologism here, I would propose "wikiphany", as a portmanteau of wiki and epiphany, to mean the nascent comprehension of enough of the nature and function of wikis to generate a sudden realization that one is going to do many wonderful, useful, and perhaps even revolutionary things with wikis. As of 20:04, 6 February 2007 (UTC), google:wikiphany finds zero links, suggesting my neologism is novel (although I make no claim that it is). So maybe it's really a protologism, and I'm not supposed to mention it in articles (WP:NEO). So please imagine I did not just write this paragraph.
- I slowly realized the usefulness of wikis in other contexts, such as at the companies where I work. As with most organizations I have seen, most of what we do is severely under-documented, and people waste time re-inventing things that other people have already figured out. We need more efficient ways for people who discover or create knowledge to share it. Traditional documenting tools such as Word, DocBook, and Help authoring tools are too difficult for casual use by non-specialists, especially while they are concentrating on solving some other problem (ideally, a documenting tool should require the least possible thought, so people can use it to document the other things they are thinking about). At the other extreme, an easy tool like e-mail encourages everyone to contribute, and archiving programs like MHonArc make messages permanently available as Web pages, but an archive of thousands of e-mail messages lacks organization, and may contain outdated information and errors that are hard to correct. MediaWiki appears to fill the gap between traditional documenting tools and e-mail.
- I installed my first MediaWiki 1.7 instance on one of my company's intranet sites in August, 2006.
- As of 18:04, 7 September 2006 (UTC) I am learning how to be a MediaWiki administrator.
- 04:38, 5 October 2006 (UTC): I made an account on WikiBooks to make a few edits there.
[edit] About my user name
Teratornis is Greek for "monster bird". Teratorns were large flying birds related to modern condors which died out in the Pleistocene. I picked this user name because nobody else is likely to use it, even on a large wiki such as Wikipedia. Other than that, my user name has no significance.
[edit] Plan
[edit] Bicycling-related articles
- Edit some existing articles and start some new articles relating to cycling in and around Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. My interest is mostly about actually riding my bicycles and leading group rides, so I'm interested in articles I can put to direct use. (While I have raced bicycles, and I enjoy watching televised racing now and then, I have little interest in what seems to be the very large amount of racing-oriented article editing activity on Wikipedia from a fan's perspective. I'm primarily interested in riding bikes, putting more people on bikes, and finding ways to organize group rides so they function smoothly without requiring massive inputs of volunteer human labor. Documenting the exploits of a tiny genetically-gifted elite class of cyclists is a task I happily leave to others.) Related tasks include:
- To the Little Miami Scenic Trail article, add links to more articles that are about various things along the Trail (towns, parks, bridges, historical sites, etc.). To those articles, add links back to the Little Miami Scenic Trail article.
- Bring the Cincinnati-area Trail articles up to the standard proposed by: Tom guyette in his talk page comment and exemplified in his article: Arroyo Seco bicycle path.
- I do as much riding on roads as on trails, but it's harder to know what I could write about roads which would be suitable for Wikipedia articles. Bike trails exist as distinct entities with a clearly-defined function, making it easy to write about them. In contrast, a typical road cycling route consists of many (dozens) of secondary roads; the cyclist typically rides a relatively short distance on each road and then turns onto another. The route is not a distinct, named geographical entity which lends itself to an article. Think about this.
- It would be nice to work all the information in the OKI Bicycle Route Maps into a Wikipedia article, somehow, but the information is inherently geographical and would only make sense as a large, annotated road map. I haven't seen a Wikipedia article yet that presents information that way. However, it would be nice to have a Wiki-like way to enable large numbers of cyclists to contribute their local knowledge of roads. Wikipedia itself does not seem suitable for this, as it would probably amount to original work.
- Write some new articles about bicycling in cycling in and around Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. Examine what others have done, for example: Bicycling in Chicago. Start an article: Bicycling in Cincinnati and create stub articles for some or all of the bicycle organizations, rides, trails, routes, etc., that I mention.
- Recruit other cyclists from Cincinnati to join WikiProject Cycling.
- Possibly encourage cyclists from surrounding cities such as Dayton, Lexington, Louisville, Indianapolis, and Columbus to make similar pages about bicycling in their cities.
- Participate in discussion about how to categorize pages which are about bicycle trails, rides, organizations, etc.
- Learn about templates.
- Learn about maps. Wikipedia seems to have no built-in mapping or GIS tools, at least not that I have found, but there are templates for linking to external map sites. For example: Wikipedia:Coordinate-referenced_map_templates.
- I recently stumbled across OpenStreetMap which may be a way to do some of the geographic stuff I'd like to do. 21:06, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
- I may also contribute to the general-interest articles relating to cycling.
[edit] Articles relating to Computing
I also have interest in computing, both for work and recreation. When I see a way to improve an article about something relating to computing, I take a stab at it. I noticed that Wikipedia seems to have articles that define almost every computing concept and term. Many articles about software and so on seem to require the reader to have an extensive background in computing. I found that simply by hyperlinking every jargon term in such an article to the articles defining them, the article immediately becomes more understandable. Anyone lacking the background to understand the jargon in such an article can simply click a few links and go get it. I have not looked to see whether a WikiProject exists to go through all the computing articles and make sure all their jargon terms have sufficient definitive hyperlinks. If there is no such project, it might be useful to start. 21:06, 2 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Existing articles I have edited
My early edits included:
- Little Miami Scenic Trail -- needs more content to cover recent additions to the Trail at both the south and north ends. The existing article about the Trail has (as of 21:34, 12 May 2006 (UTC)) the somewhat unfortunate title: Little Miami Bike Trail. The vast majority of references to this Trail on the Web, on printed maps, and in brochures from various government agents call it the Little Miami Scenic Trail. For example:
I made an article: Little Miami Scenic Trail, initially as a redirect to Little Miami Bike Trail. However, I suggest eventually moving the article content to Little Miami Scenic Trail and making Little Miami Bike Trail a redirect to it. I solicit comments from anyone with interest.
[edit] New articles I started
- Lebanon Countryside Trail -- my first article with some actual content. I started it because Little Miami Bike Trail referred to this trail, but not by the official name (which I fixed).
[edit] Some recent editing
- 04:15, 28 January 2007 (UTC): Web mapping had a high ratio of jargon to links when I first read it. It's a survey article, so it briefly mentions many jargon terms which have Wikipedia articles. I'm adding links on as many jargon terms as I can find defining articles for.
[edit] User sub-pages
- User:Teratornis/Outplacement - some notes about why we should organize an effort to find suitable wikis for Wikipedia's deleted articles, rather than just deleting them.
[edit] Aphorisms
These are some aphorisms I have written. I don't know whether I am the first to say any of them. I may never have had a truly original thought, for all I know. It's a big world.
- On Wikipedia's rules:
- Any rule anyone cites to justify doing anything to any article is simultaneously being violated on any number of other articles.
To-do: add more as I think of them.
[edit] Useful links
Some pages I refer to often enough to make them worth writing down here:
- WP:HELPDESK
- WP:VPT
- User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia - Wow!
- Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup (shortcut: WP:TC)
[edit] MediaWiki training videos
An administrator of a public wiki recorded some MediaWiki training videos, to help people learn how to edit on his wiki:
Most of the material in the videos applies to any MediaWiki site, including Wikipedia. The videos could be better, but they are not bad, and I recommend them for wiki beginners as an easy way to get a quick overview of how to edit on Wikipedia.
[edit] Hi-resolution .avi files
You may prefer to download the video files to view directly rather than from the wiki page in the previous section. Here are direct links:
- 001-intro.avi
- 002-pagenames-and-namespaces.avi
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- Warning: the above video shows an example page on Wikipedia which contains a potentially offensive word in its title.
- 003-pagenames-and-namespaces.avi
- 004-pagenames-and-namespaces.avi
- 005-shortcuts-and-interwiki-links.avi
- 006-wikitext-markup.avi
- 007-wikitext-markup.avi
- 008-wikitext-markup.avi
- 009-wikitext-markup-lists.avi
- 010-wikitext-markup-links.avi
- 011-wikitext-markup-links.avi
- 012-wikitext-markup-tables.avi
- 013-wikitext-markup-templates.avi
The above videos use the x264 codec (a lossless codec which reproduces screen shots clearly); to view the videos, you may need to install one of these video players:
If you want to watch all the videos sequentially, you can download them to a directory on your computer (for example, in Microsoft Windows: C:\JUNK), and make a playlist file for VLC media player (for example, C:\JUNK\mediawiki_video.m3u). In the playlist file, edit a list of your video files in the order you want them to play:
C:\junk\001-intro.avi C:\junk\002-pagenames-and-namespaces.avi C:\junk\003-pagenames-and-namespaces.avi C:\junk\004-pagenames-and-namespaces.avi C:\junk\005-shortcuts-and-interwiki-links.avi C:\junk\006-wikitext-markup.avi C:\junk\007-wikitext-markup.avi C:\junk\008-wikitext-markup.avi C:\junk\009-wikitext-markup-lists.avi C:\junk\010-wikitext-markup-links.avi C:\junk\011-wikitext-markup-links.avi C:\junk\012-wikitext-markup-tables.avi C:\junk\013-wikitext-markup-templates.avi
and then you can open your playlist file in VLC media player via the usual File | Open... command.
[edit] Low-resolution .mov files
If you don't want to install VLC media player, you can download lower-resolution (but still fairly legible) versions of the videos in QuickTime format from Revver:
- http://one.revver.com/find/user/brianwill
- http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91522.mov — part 1 of 13
- http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91446.mov — part 2 of 13
- http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91447.mov — part 3 of 13
- http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91448.mov — part 4 of 13
- http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91521.mov — part 5 of 13
- http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91450.mov — part 6 of 13
- http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91451.mov — part 7 of 13
- http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91452.mov — part 8 of 13
- http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91453.mov — part 9 of 13
- http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91454.mov — part 10 of 13
- http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91455.mov — part 11 of 13
- http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91456.mov — part 12 of 13
- http://media.revver.com/qt;download/91445.mov — part 13 of 13
[edit] WikiProjects I have joined
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This user is a member of WikiProject Cycling, a WikiProject which aims to expand coverage of cycling on Wikipedia.
Please feel free to join us. |
| This is a Wikipedia user page.
This is not an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user this page belongs to may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia itself. The original page is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Teratornis. |
[edit] User pages on other wikis
- Meta is auxiliary to all Wikimedia Foundation projects. My contributions to Meta include edits to the MediaWiki manuals and troubleshooting guides. I read the manuals to solve problems with Wikipedia, and when I see a way to improve the manuals, I do.
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- m:User:Teratornis — contributions
- First edit date: September 7, 2006
- Wikibooks is a wiki for creating books. It is a Wikimedia Foundation project. As of 15:07, 21 November 2006 (EST), I have made few edits on Wikibooks. However, it might be a good place to write at length about some computing topics.
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- wikibooks:User:Teratornis — contributions
- First edit date: October 5, 2006
- Wikiquote is a wiki for publishing a vast reference of quotations from prominent people, books and proverbs, and to give details about them.
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- wikiquote:User:Teratornis — contributions
- First edit date: March 27, 2007
- OpenStreetMap is a collaborative project to create free maps using data from portable GPS devices. I have some recreational interest in maps. I haven't actually done any map-making for OpenStreetMap as of 18:42, 20 November 2006 (EST), but I did some edits on the OpenStreetMap wiki, to categorize pages and so on.
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- user page — contributions
- First edit date: July 1, 2006
- Bicycling wiki is a small wiki about bicycling which needs lots of work. My editing here is, of course, recreational, since I have not found a way to get paid to ride a bike.
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- user page — contributions
- First edit date: July 20, 2006
You can learn more about wiki editing by joining a wiki in some area of your interest. Thousands of public wikis exist, so you can probably find some you like. See for example:
