Contact me on my talk page edit
I am still pretty new at this, so I’m using Wikipedia:A Primer for newcomers to learn how to edit properly.
Call me S. edit
My real name is not going to be listed here, and I’m not posting a picture, being a human of the female persuasion who is doing something on the internet, but you can probably track it down if your google-fu is good enough. I have been contributing to Wikipedia since 19, September , 2013. I’ve gotten heavily into the Wikipedia Loves Monuments thing and have been submitting pictures of really, really obscure places around the Midwest for a couple of years now. Like I’ve driven past “road closed” signs to head out to “bridge condemned” to get a photo kind of thing, driven down private drives and probably trespassed, but I haven’t been caught yet. Adventure!
But, I also keep finding things missing in Wikipedia articles that I know about. So I’ve started improving articles by adding references or information. I’m even up to creating a few pages now that just don’t exist already.
I love the idea of crowd-sourced knowledge because all of us are smarter than any one of us. Also, the idea of putting a free – accurate - reference up online is one of the best uses of the internet ever.
I am committed to the principles of Wikipedia, especially the neutral point of view, and I’m a professional writer for a living, so I can manage to do a neutral style. However, I always appreciate constructive criticism.
I have degrees in History (B.A.), English (M.A.) and an M.B.A. I’ve been a professional teacher and lecturer. I know some stuff and what is a legitimate source in the real world. I’m learning the rules at Wikipedia. But I love me some primary source documentation. Nothing is better than straight from the horse’s mouth, IMHO.
I was born and raised in the Midwestern United States and have lived here all my life in various states. I have traveled to nearly every state in the union, however, and to several countries outside the U.S.
My interests edit
I am so nerdy that listing all of the things that interest me would take all day. I am a repository of obscure factoids. But I will primarily be editing or writing articles in the areas of History, Literature and Biography because I have legit expertise in those areas and keep finding things missing in articles I look up. Please let me know if signs of bias creep into anything I write and I will try to restrain myself from use of colorful descriptive language because that might inject bias into factual copy just by trying to add some flair.
Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest edit
I’m a politically active person, but I’m also a trained Historian. Trying to get at the truth of something is of greater import to me than any partisanship. Revisionist history makes me crazy and if I see you lying about something, I will mark your article for deletion so fast your head will swivel around like Linda Blair in the Exorcist. Or, I will just correct it and cite primary sources until the cows come home.
I’m not going to edit anything that will be a conflict of interest for me, unless someone is lying. If that happens, I’ll note it here.
But the Five Pillars and all Wikipedia policies will always apply to what I contribute.
Someday, I will fill in this stuff below as time allows. There are a LOT of pictures already.