Wikipedia

[low_delta]

I do a lot of editing at Wikipedia. I started there because I was interested in fixing up the Violent Femmes articles, and I've ended up joining the Album Project, so I do a lot of editing to album articles. I don't do much content editing though, since I'm expert on only a few bands, and I'm not that good a writer. Most of my edits are technical stuff, like spelling, grammar, format, links and categorization. Some of the problems I just happen upon, and others I find by checking lists of articles other people have tagged for problems.

Lately (like since last night), I've edited articles on albums by these artists:

Joe Diffie (Country)
Mindy Smith (singer-songwriter)
The Promise Drive (local Georgia band)
Tiziano Ferro (Italian Pop singer)
Governor (R&B artist)
...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead (Indie rock)
Lacuna Coil (Gothic metal)
tim Russ (Actor)
Jason Mraz (singer-songwriter)
Antônio Carlos Jobim (Jazz/Bossa Nova)

Comments

[i.livejournal.com]

alas, the farbelism entry is no more. evidently, there have to be links from other entries to it...

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

Bummer.

Due to notablility requirements (and that linkage rule, and prohibitions against vanity pages), it's hard for artists to get articles. Unfortunately, due to the insistence of their fandoms, too many local-level bands have articles. Or maybe not enough, if you're a Wikipedia inclusionist. I'd like to see a lot more artists in Wikipedia.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farbelism

[i.livejournal.com]

ah! so it must be in a special area of the site?

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

Nope. It's right there in Mainspace.

[i.livejournal.com]

weird. the other day when i searched for it, i couldn't find it. today it's there...

[heartwork.livejournal.com]

i never knew how wikipedia worked with people doing the writing and editing. i would like doing that kind of thing, but i'm not an expert on anything. oh, well.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

There are all kinds there of things that people who aren't experts in anything can do. :-)

[heartwork.livejournal.com]

tell me more!!! i would love to participate at that site, but never thought i had anything to offer.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

Well... I've made 1500 edits, but I've actually written only a few articles or sections.

You can go wander around an fix errors as you see them. Like spelling, punctuation and grammar. I spend a whole lot of time italicizing album titles and enquoting song titles. With only a little learning, you can fix wikimarkup, like fixing broken links.

Disambiguation is a big one. A lot of links link to the wrong page. Like someone will put brackets around Easter to link to the album, but that will just take the reader to a page about the holiday. So instead of [[Easter]], the link should be [[Easter (album)|Easter]], so it links to Easter (album), but the link displays as Easter.

I belong to WikiProject Albums (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Albums), where there's a whole list of things to do, few of which require any actual knowledge, much less talent. :-) And there are other projects for other interests.

If you want, go there an look around. Click on a bunch of the menubar links. And feel free to stop by my talk page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Freekee) and say "hi."

[ezee123.livejournal.com]

My wikipedia contribution is confined to maybea total of 100 words.

OUt of the list of musicians aboce, the only one I am familiar with is Antonio CArlos Jobim.

Kep up the good work

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

That's still cool!

I had never heard of about half of those people, including Jobim. One of the originators of bossa nova. I might have to see if I can find some of his stuff.

[specificocean.livejournal.com]

I wanna do that when I grow up...