Saturday, July 07, 2007
Instead of blogging
I should have written something about who to vote for in the Wikimedia Foundation Election, especially since I had a lot of free time today, but instead I did the following:
* Read some books that I ordered: I.M. Lewis' A Modern History of the Somali, 4th edition, and David Buxton's The Abyssinians. And as I read these books, I have the dawning feeling that I am building a better collection on the two countries than my public library has.
* Caught up with listening to The Wikipedia Weekly.
* Helped out with adding some sources to articles. That's more difficult than it might appear: I think I know which book to use to cite as an authority, then discover either that the author actually didn't write something useful or relevant or fail to find the passage I know is in the book. (One reason why I tend to just add to articles as I encounter the facts and their sources, and build up articles brick by brick.)
* Left a number of notes on articles pointing out things that need adding or improving on in the article. I hope that qualifies as useful criticism, especially as I suspect many Wikipedians don't have a strong idea what needs to be discussed when writing an article -- and which is the cause of the oddly unbalanced treatments in many articles.
Even though the election is over as I write this, I do believe something must be said to the people who lost their races; as I considered whom to vote for, I found that I had more than three qualified candidates to vote for, and a few more could have made my list had they simply followed a few important steps.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: Wikimedia Foundation, wikipedia
* Read some books that I ordered: I.M. Lewis' A Modern History of the Somali, 4th edition, and David Buxton's The Abyssinians. And as I read these books, I have the dawning feeling that I am building a better collection on the two countries than my public library has.
* Caught up with listening to The Wikipedia Weekly.
* Helped out with adding some sources to articles. That's more difficult than it might appear: I think I know which book to use to cite as an authority, then discover either that the author actually didn't write something useful or relevant or fail to find the passage I know is in the book. (One reason why I tend to just add to articles as I encounter the facts and their sources, and build up articles brick by brick.)
* Left a number of notes on articles pointing out things that need adding or improving on in the article. I hope that qualifies as useful criticism, especially as I suspect many Wikipedians don't have a strong idea what needs to be discussed when writing an article -- and which is the cause of the oddly unbalanced treatments in many articles.
Even though the election is over as I write this, I do believe something must be said to the people who lost their races; as I considered whom to vote for, I found that I had more than three qualified candidates to vote for, and a few more could have made my list had they simply followed a few important steps.
Geoff
Technocrati tags: Wikimedia Foundation, wikipedia
Labels: blogging, wikipedia, writing
