Wikipedia:Editor review/Zozo2kx
Zozo2kx (talk · contribs · count) I have been on WP for almost 4 years now. I am an intermittent editor, I have months of feverish activity and then months where I am barely here; depending on my time IRL. I'd like to know an outsider's view on my contributions to the project, their shortcomings, pitfalls and/or how they can be improved. Based on the comments and observations in this review, I might consider submitting an RfA. Yazan (talk) 20:14, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
Questions
- What are your primary contributions to Wikipedia? Are there any about which you are particularly pleased? Why?
- I mostly contribute to articles related to my country, Syria and the Middle East in general, in areas relating to history and culture (an area that is severely lacking in coverage on Wikipedia). There is wealth of topics related to that area (from archaeology to geography and history), that, combined with only few (one or two, at a time, at most) experienced editors who are interested in the topic area, means that the task of bringing these articles into light feels overwhelming at times. I try to start solid articles about a variety of fields, and then promote them through DYK, in the hope that they will be further improved down the line by the community. I am most proud of helping bring Homs and Latakia to GA status, and of the Ebla tablets article because it's of great value IMHO.
- Have you been in editing disputes or do you feel other users have caused you stress? How have you dealt with it and how will you deal with it in the future? If you have never been in an editing dispute, explain how you would respond to one.
- I consciously try to steer clear, as much as humanly possible, from heated topics; partly because it's too frustrating and takes a lot of effort for very little tangible improvements, and secondly because of the aforementioned wealth of underrepresented topics waiting to be written. Nevertheless, I have been involved in some minor content disputes, mostly in the context of the I/P conflict, but I've never allowed it to spiral out of control, and have always been able to ignore it quickly and re-focus of what I was doing.
Reviews
- Hello, and sorry for the extremely late review! I know it's almost been one year since you initiated but I would simply say better late than never! Now onto the review:
- No doubt your prolific content creation of over some ten thousand edits to article space, and much-needed insights into the country of Syria, are very healthy for this encyclopedia. The truth is we need more content creators like you to share your time and efforts contributing to our knowledge base, work on the Syria Portal's previous lack of editing, and the DYK for the day. It's rare to find other editors who would stick around as you did merely working in their area of interest.
- But since you asked me what areas of the encyclopedia you could improve on, I would have to say unfortunately your interaction with other editors in the project, as you've indicated in question #2 of this editor review. Although I know that English is not your first language, you seem to have a somewhat confrontational demeanor dealing with other editors in regards to your choice of words, and I would advise being more careful about them. Now you've done some good work with the rollbacker and reviewer tools like with this impersonator, and I'm not trying to disprove that, but you could do a better job if you improved your behavior. For example, this edit was not very obvious as vandalism even though it was wrong, and I'd be more inclined to leave the IP editor a good faith message on his talkpage that perhaps what he did was wrong. This perhaps best illustrates what I'm trying to talk about; you should not use "vandalism" as a reason to dismiss their opinion if its not obvious, but you should discuss with them and try to resolve the dispute some other way.
- I know how tempting it is, for most editors, to feel like they are connected to their article after having worked on it for so long, but that is what WP:OWN is trying to discourage. Because when you put your article out on the encyclopedia, you gave Wikipedia the CC-By-SA copyright license to it and authorized everyone else to edit your article, for better or for worse. Anyway, but since you've indicated your problem in question #2 of this editor, I'm obliged to at least commend you because the first step in solving a problem is identifying it. And lately, I have not seen any disputes you have had with another editor, so I believe you are well on the way to improving yourself.
- Lastly, thanks for asking for editor feedback! It would be a great sign of your ability to take criticism and learn from it to improve yourself if you read this through to the end. TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 01:02, 19 December 2013 (UTC)