User:Chriswaterguy

Name: Chris Watkins

Wiki & open knowledge consultant, and a director of the Appropedia Foundation, which runs Appropedia (Wikipedia article), wiki for sustainability, appropriate technology & international development. My Appropedia homepage says more about my passions - in particular, international development, water and sanitation, sustainability, global public health, appropriate technology & renewable energies.

I'm concerned that Wikipedia is losing its civility. I'm concerned that there's not enough encouragement, too much deletion rather than organized efforts to improve articles. I'd like to see deletion as a good faith process, transwikiing or moving pages to userspace rather than officiously deleting them.

On Wikipedia, I've contributed about 6000 edits, including 70-ish new articles.

Jump down to the Picture and Tip of the day

putting myself in boxes: My blog: Pablo Garudaa Joint blog: Appropedia Foundation blog en This user is a native speaker of English. id-4 Pengguna mampu bersumbangsih dengan bahasa Indonesia mendekati penutur ibu. ms-3 Pengguna ini boleh menyumbang dengan taraf yang baik dalam Bahasa Melayu. en-sg-2 This user's Singlish not very good lah. MEng This user has a Master of Engineering degree. UNSW This user is a student or graduate of the University of New South Wales. More userboxes. Very, very occasionally, I contribute to the Wikipedia in Indonesian (user page) and even more rarely, in Malay (user page). (j The places: Spent decades: Spent years: Spent weeks: Visiting soonish: Visiting someday: Ancestry: Idea pinched from Grutness who lifted from Moriori who half-inched from Calton who nicked it from Salsb who stole it from Guettarda who borrowed it from White Cat

This is a Wikipedia user page. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. The page may be outdated and the user may have no connection with the site you are viewing. The original page is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Chriswaterguy.

Warning: Wikiholism alert.
"My username is Chriswaterguy and I am a wikiholic." I cancelled my plans to live and work in China when I learnt they blocked Wikipedia. I often read (non-fiction) books and mark things that I want to put into Wikipedia. I now read blogs and ask the writer to consider using an open license so we can adapt it for Appropedia, I'm a registered user of about 10 wikis (I've stopped keeping count, but way more than 10). Yes I'm an addict. No, it's not a problem. I'm going to take a break, just as soon as I finish editing this... Maybe I need a 12 step program... We admitted we were powerless over wiki-editing and our lives had become unmanageable. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him/Her/It/Them. When that failed, we took responsibility for our own actions. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Admitted the exact nature of our wrongs. Made a list of all the new experiences we had passed up because we were busy editing a wiki, and became willing to try them all. Left the computer occasionally, in order to meet attractive people in real life, and flirt with them. Continued to take inventory and when we were wrong promptly reverted it. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Her, praying only for knowledge of Her will for us and the power to carry that out. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to wikiholics. Realized the irony of creating this notice.

Collaborations

This user is a member of WikiProject International development.

This user is a member of WikiProject Environment.

WikiProject Climate change · talk
WikiProject Energy development · talk
WikiProject Water purification · talk
WikiProject Urban studies and planning · talk
WikiProject Countering systemic bias · talk
WikiProject Community · talk

I sometimes post questions & point out problems in articles at:
WikiProject Business and Economics · talk.

To leave me a message, click the "talk" tab, or Use this link

Note sure what to do with this...More - interests and opinions.

Interesting...

pages

• Ronald Coase - an economist with interesting ideas about public goods. I must find some more good economics podcasts (like the excellent 2006 Boyer Lectures). (If you have recommendations, please tell me.)
• Hugh Thompson, Jr. - defended the innocent at My Lai.
• Right Livelihood Award
• MythBusters (season 1)... This is great! I don't have to watch the whole boring episode to find out what happens!
• Constructionist learning - one of the influences behind the One Laptop Per Child project.
• Kamal Kar - critic of standard approaches to development & aid.
• Julian Lincoln Simon - wrote about population & natural resources. An optimist.
• Cicisbeo - 18th Century Italian women had surprising freedoms.
• Shi Zhengrong founder and head of Suntech Power. Someone who's really doing something about solar power.
• User:Ihcoyc has a very amusing section of Favourite quotes from the Wikipedia.

A few users with similar interests

• User:Ericbritton, User:LRG, User:Curtbeckmann - sustainability.
• User:Vortexrealm - water.
• User:Georgedappilly - mosquito control.
• Some people who seem to be interested in developing country issues... User:Improv, User:Anthere, User:Ethanz...
• User:John Quiggin - Australian economist, somewhat lefty, who appears in the news occasionally.
• User:Guaka - a fellow CouchSurfer, it seems, with some overlap of interests.
• User:Earthmytemple

...and many, many more of course.

user pages that I will probably get around to browsing, some time...

• User:Jimbo - the creator.
• User:Larry Sanger... if Jimbo's the creator, then Larry might be the devil, in some kind of gnostic view of co-creation followed by conflict. That's if I understand Gnosticism, which I probably don't.
• User:Kierant - some interesting links.

bits from Wikipedia

During the May 1998 Revolution, when calls for political reform or reformasi in Indonesia led to the resignation of President Suharto, Malaysian satirists Instant Cafe lampooned a government broadcast in which 'Malaysians are reminded that reformasi is an Indonesian word, which has no equivalent in Bahasa Melayu.' ([1])

from elsewhere:

Javanese poetry [2][3]

hana caraka data sawala padha jayanya maga bathanga

knights differed in opinion equally powerful both corpse

What I do on Wikipedia

• Work on development-related & sustainability-related articles
• Put ^{citation needed} on articles (using {{fact}}). I've even used it on things I wrote myself, and very happy when someone replaces one with an excellent link].
• Promote love, joy, peace, etc (or try to).
• Do any minor edits I see that need doing (if I have a fast connection at the time)
• Ask questions that seem to need asking.

I think about one day doing more on other topics I want to learn about... so I'd be learning, researching, adding well-verified information when the articles are too skinny, and making suggestions on the user page... but not taking a strong position on what should and shouldn't be in the article. These topics include:

• A few of the articles in Category:Alternative economy. Institutions such as Cooperatives, and practices such as Local currency & Local Exchange Trading Systems - I'm really not sure the latter are a good thing, though I suspect some variation of them would enable some people at some times to engage in the economy when a cash-based economy would not.

Read why I'm enthusiastic about Wikipedia.

My pending tasks · My sandbox · My scratchpad · My areas of interest · My notes on Appropriate technology

My key links: Appropriate technology · experimental Wikicity

General editing: Guide to layout · How to write a great article · How to edit a page · Some articles on editing · Citing sources · Forum for Encyclopedic Standards

Specific: Cleanup resources · Stub types · Prettytable · Help:Table · Divbox · Web colors · userboxes · Format templates · AutoWikiBrowser.

Something cool about Wikipedia

When English speakers see the words "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" we probably think: cool, it's free, I don't have to pay. I realised that there more to it when using the Indonesian Wikipedia. For "free" it didn't use the word gratis (no cost), but rather bebas (as in free from restrictions). Actually, both meanings are true of Wikipedia.

Useful bits of wiki code

Footnotes: Using the <ref> element

Boxes:

<center><div style="background-color: LightBlue; border: 1px solid; margin: 15px; padding: 15px; width:60%">     </div></center>

The text color attribute, e.g. color:red; doesn't work for some reason - only applies it to the decoration, if present.

OR:

{| style="text-align:center; border: 1px solid #ffc9c9; background-color:#d0ffff"

|- padding:1em;padding-top:0.5em;"

|style="font-size: 85%"|

<b>Header</b>

Content

|}

OR:

{{subst:Divbox|amber| title | content }}

To make quoted text look different:

<tt> </tt>

Tables:

{| class="wikitable"	|} starts the table. Using class="wikitable"puts a grey border around all the cells, and gives heading cells a grey tint. This ensures that all tables across Wikipedia look similar.
|-	makes a new line in table
Cell 1 || Cell 2 ||Cell 3	| starts the line, and || makes a new cell
|}	finishes the table.

Gallery and caption:

See User:Robchurch/Software/Captions in galleries

<gallery caption="Some pictures">

Image:name1|cap1

Image:name2|cap2

Image:name3|cap3

</gallery>

To put a line through a block of text (one paragraph or less):

<s> </s>

To put a line through a block of text (more than one paragraph):

<div style="text-decoration: line-through">    </div>

HTML attributes

Subpages

In this Userspace:

User:

Chriswaterguy

Chriswaterguy/Air travel, climate change, and green consumerism	Chriswaterguy/Appropriate technology	Chriswaterguy/Appropriate technology/Archive
Chriswaterguy/Chris Watkins	Chriswaterguy/Coalition of the Willing (film)	Chriswaterguy/Development & Sustainability Wikia
Chriswaterguy/EnhanceHistory.user.js	Chriswaterguy/Global CCS Institute	Chriswaterguy/Grameen Foundation Australia
Chriswaterguy/Hexayurt	Chriswaterguy/Interests	Chriswaterguy/Low cost computer
Chriswaterguy/POV on user pages	Chriswaterguy/Sandbox	Chriswaterguy/Sandbox3
Chriswaterguy/Sb	Chriswaterguy/Scratchpad	Chriswaterguy/Turning deletion into a good faith process
Chriswaterguy/Why I'm enthusiastic about Wikipedia	Chriswaterguy/Wikimood	Chriswaterguy/Wikis
Chriswaterguy/links sandbox	Chriswaterguy/monobook.js	Chriswaterguy/noindextest
Chriswaterguy/noindextest2	Chriswaterguy/noindextest3	Chriswaterguy/notice
Chriswaterguy/tips for newcomers	Chriswaterguy/to do

User talk:

Chriswaterguy

Chriswaterguy/Appropriate technology	Chriswaterguy/Appropriate technology/Archive	Chriswaterguy/Archive
Chriswaterguy/Goolsbee's legal threats	Chriswaterguy/Hexayurt	Chriswaterguy/Low cost computer
Chriswaterguy/notice