Space Shuttle Columbia lights up the pre-dawn clouds as it lifts off on its 27th flight into space, STS-109.
This user is getting back into the swing of things after a three five year absence. Please give her a little bit of a break. :)
I first began visiting Wikipedia in late 2002. Then, it was nearly two years old, but still quite a bit different than it appears today, as indeed, the entire internet is. I continued visiting, reading, but did no edits until 2005, and did not create an account until late summer of that year. Since then, while making small edits for obvious mistakes here initially, I watched. I read, and learned policies, and noticed they grew by the month.
As I tended to "lurk" until I feel I know enough to post something meaningful, or assist in some useful way, my first genuine foray into editing wasn't until nearly two years after creating the account, once I felt I had a good grasp of most of the basic policies, and I had much more time on my hands. Since July of 2007, I've been active in Recent Change patrol, Articles for Creation, Editor's Assistance Requests, Wikipedia Help Desk, Articles for Deletion, WikiProject Space, and its sub-projects, and a wide variety of other areas.
I frequently spent time doing random page edits, doing general cleanup, fixing footnotes, etc. I really feel that properly cited references are the backbone of a really great article, and to that end, I use the citation templates to fix the "simple URL" references in many articles, as they provide information not available by simply looking at a URL with no explanation. I created several articles, including some that went on to become good articles and were featured in Did you know...?, but I also enjoyed doing behind-the-scenes work.
I would classify myself as a WikiFairy. I enjoy helping others, even if it is just a simple thing, and there is really nothing that can bring a smile faster than a simple "Thank you" from another editor.
In a fun bit of trivia, The name of the machine that is the master database server for the English Wikipedia is Ariel
There is one tip I would give to all Wikipedians: Please use the "Edit summary" box at the bottom of the edit field. No matter what you're doing. Providing a summary can make all the difference in the world to someone reviewing changes.
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 Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user to whom this page belongs may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia itself. The original page is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ArielGold.
