Thank you for dropping by my user page. My name is David Mark Purdy and my username on Wikipedia is Neelix.
I consider myself an academic and love working in academia, but I choose to spend more time writing Wikipedia articles than submitting articles for publication in scholarly journals because I believe that Wikipedia embodies three values that academia too often neglects:
Wikipedia is thoroughly, inherently collaborative. In the humanities division of academia, we still hold to the ideal of the lone genius, expecting that each humanities scholar be the sole author of his or her journal articles. In the sciences and social sciences, we expect that there be two or three authors for each journal article. On Wikipedia, every well-developed article has many more than three authors. The result is an ever-increasingly accurate approximation of objectivity. This objectivity is not the pseudo-objectivity that results from ignoring our biases as authors, but is rather the result of diverse perspectives all being covered proportionally through discussion between people who have those diverse perspectives. We write better when we write together.
Wikipedia recognizes the interdisciplinarity of all things. The development of the Giraffe article requires not only the collaboration of many biologists, but also requires the collaboration of sociologists to contribute the cultural significance of giraffes; folklore specialists to add information about giraffes in folk tales; and historians to document how giraffes and humans have interacted. On Wikipedia, the walls that separate the disciplines fall down.
Wikipedia is free for everyone to access. Every article that appears on the main page of Wikipedia is read by at least hundreds of readers and normally thousands. The average academic journal article is only read by between 3 and 4 people, mainly because journal subscriptions and journal database subscriptions are prohibitively expensive for the average global citizen. Humanity has amassed an overwhelming amount of knowledge, and the majority of that knowledge is out of the grasp of the average person because it is too expensive to access. As academics, we have spent an inordinate amount of time and energy producing novel treatises on novel concepts rather than disseminating the knowledge that we have already attained. Wikipedia allows us to give our knowledge to the world, instantly and free of charge.
The main thrust of my edits on Wikipedia is a desire for a better relationship between Wikipedia and academia, which is why I volunteer as an Online Ambassador with the Wikipedia Ambassador Program. Many of my edits on Wikipedia attempt to establish format standardization and better navigation. I accomplish this goal mainly by creating and reformatting redirects, disambiguation pages, navboxes, and hatnotes, but also by standardizing article titles so that the only differences between titles are substantive. I have created articles on a range of topics, and I have written far more disambiguation pages. I am deeply involved in Today's featured list which currently runs biweekly and I hope to eventually get running daily, although this may be something of a long-term goal.
For the creation of many useful disambiguation pages, e.g. Yellow-breasted. -- MightyWarrior (talk) 00:30, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
The Bio-star
I commend your actions in taking this bold step in disambiguating abbreviated binomial names. Keep up the good work. Bob the Wikipedian (talk) 12:57, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
The Working Wikipedian's Barnstar
Great work creating all those disambig pages. Thanks for your contributions! J.delanoygabsanalyze 02:18, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Belated Congratulations on your 100000th edit! You have achieved a milestone that only a rare few have accomplished. The Wikipedia Community thanks you for your continuing efforts.Buster Seven Talk 12:32, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
A barnstar for your creation of the Noria (disambiguation) disambiguation page, and for working to further improve disambiguation on Wikipedia. Northamerica1000(talk) 00:44, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
images
Thank you for quality articles on underrepresented topics, such as Carabane and 2012 tour of She Has a Name, for uploading images and illustrating Featured articles, for gnomish tasks, and for your trust in collaborative interdisciplinary free access for everyone, - repeating: you are an awesome Wikipedian (29 June 2010)!
For the work you've been doing on the subject of human trafficking, but specifically for getting the Tara Teng and Natasha Falle articles to GA status. Great job! --1ST7 (talk) 20:46, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
The Invisible Barnstar
I re-read Tintin in Tibet today; I have to admit: It's a great read. That's because everyone who contributed to it did an outstanding job. This includes your contributions, Neelix! I'm glad to have most of your advice (your good ideas truly were the very best copy edits the article received; it is a better article because of you). But what an honour it was to work on this particular article, right? Thanks again for your uniquely thorough and insightful contributions; keep them coming. :-) Cheers. Prhartcom (talk) 15:39, 22 September 2014 (UTC)
The Writer's Barnstar
Congratulations on WP:TFA day! And thank you for contributing to human rights and expanding coverage of WP:WikiProject Human rights related articles with your Quality improvement project successfully bringing Not My Life to WP:FA. Much appreciated. :) — Cirt (talk) 00:44, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
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