User:Alan Liefting

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Ice cream cone worm

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Hello

Welcome to my Wikipedia user page

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I am an enthusiastic Wikipedia editor and I often ask myself why this is the case. Some of the editing is easy, some is very difficult, and at other times (thankfully on rare occasions) I am subjected to the abuse and the wrath of emotive editors. Editing is strangely addictive but at least it is a constructive addiction since having an easily accessible encyclopaedia that can be edited without constraint is a very valuable addition to the internet. So perhaps it is altruism that makes me want to ensure the success of this project.

I live in Christchurch, New Zealand and the current time here is 5:08 pm.

If you want to leave me a message go to my talk page using the link above or use this link to start a new section on the page.

Autobiography relating to Wikipedia

I have been an editor on Wikipedia for 8 years, 1 month and 20 days and carried out over 70,000 edits. As well as creating new articles I also carry out maintenance, vandalism patrol and help build the actual structure of Wikipedia. My areas of interest are topics relating to New Zealand, the environment (especially environmental issues) and to Christian religions. And since I have tertiary qualifications in environmental management I feel that I have at least some authority in editing article about environmental topics.

One area of Wikipedia in which I spend a lot of time is categorisation. This seems to be a neglected area in terms of ongoing maintenance and construction. Categories get a lower amount of traffic compared to the related articles but this is no reason to be lax with quality.

I class myself as an exopedian, someone who concentrates on building the encyclopaedia rather than using it as a sort of social network. However, it is impossible not to interact with others especially in contentious areas. As of 2010 15% of my edits are on talk pages compared to 65% in article namespace. This shows that I do not take exopedianism to its ideological limit.

I have been given Autoreviewer and Rollbacking rights. Since these are powerful features open to abuse by unscrupulous editors it is an indication of the trust placed in me by the Wikipedia community.

Growth of Wikipedia

Given the increasing size of Wikipedia and that a recent study seems to show the attrition of experienced editors I am concerned that ongoing maintenance will be an even greater problem than that which is currently experienced. Many of the maintenance tasks have a backlog: the New pages patrol is up to a month behind, articles have had requests for splitting or merging dating back over a year and the list goes on.

I use some of the wonderful gadgets (powerful software tools) to carry out efficient editing: huggle for anti-vandalism patrol, Twinkle for deletion tasks and AWB for doing semi-automated, repetitious edits.

During my work on redirecting, merging and splitting articles I have have encountered some differences of opinion on my edits. I feel that Wikipedia, as with other encyclopaedias, should have an article on every discrete, notable topic and it is of no concern that the article is a stub. This is seen as separatism in wiki-philosophy. It is better to have short, succinct articles rather than having that topic spread out in a wider, related topic. With short articles it is easier to allocate categories, and add appropriate internal and external links. Also, it is easier to start with a standalone stub article rather than attempting to extricate information from an existing article with a broad coverage at a later date.

Further information about me can be gleaned from my page of userboxes.

Bibliography

• "The Wikipediaholic's fix". The Press. 2008-08-25. http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/technology/the-box/the-box-archive/596500/The-Wikipediholics-fix. 
• "Wikipedia fans will not let it fade away". The Press. 2009-12-15. 
• Wikipedia essays

Notes and references

Contributions

The contributions (edits) that I make to Wikipedia can be viewed in the toolbox menu to the left on your screen. Alternatively the following links will give various statistics about my edits.

• Alan Liefting at WikiChecker
• Alan Liefting at Soxred93's toolserver account

Conflict of interest statement

I am a member of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand and work in the conservation and waste minimisation sectors. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 21:43, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

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