Wikipedia:Editor review/Insorak

Insorak

Insorak (talk · contribs · count) I’ve been a member on Wikipedia for a few days and am finding my time here quite enjoyable. The people are pleasant to work with, the syntax is intuitive, and I am enjoying my (somewhat time-crunched) improvement of some articles. Could someone just take a look to see if I’m headed in the right direction, anything I need to improve on, etc.? Insorak ♫ talk 02:40, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Questions

What are your primary contributions to Wikipedia? Are there any about which you are particularly pleased? Why?
So far, most of my edits have been at User:Insorak/Ballades. I’ve been trying to do a merge and improve of Chopin’s four Ballades, the articles of which are sort of unloved and can’t really stand alone. This is my main project at the moment; I intend to work on some biology-related stuff later but not now (since, as a high school junior, I barely have the spare time). It would be appreciated if someone could give me any pointers; reading policy is one thing, community interaction is another. :)
Have you been in any disputes over editing in the past 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?
I’ve been here for less than a week. Gimme a break! :P If any disputes do arise, I intend to solve them like any mature, rational person would – talk it out and try to understand the other person’s point of view instead of randomly bashing them. (Bashing only works in RPGs, and I stopped playing those quite a while ago. Besides, you guys aren’t NPCs and can probably bash back.)

Optional Questions from Doc Quintana

Why did you come to Wikipedia, and what do you get out of it? Doc Quintana (talk) 01:03, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Reviews

Hi Insorak, I'm going to do a quick review on you, as you have only got a few edits to your name!

User conduct

Edit summaries: 100% use - very helpful! Keep this up, it's always good to see what an edit has done
Constructive comments on talk pages: Not enough evidence to comment (only 4 comments on article talk pages as I type), but you seem to have the right intentions from what I can see
Attitude towards others: Again, not much to go on! You seem to have a good attitude towards others from what I can see.

Edits

Article vs non-article: As you say, a lot of your edits have been to the Ballades (10% in fact). It's interesting to see that you have been taking part in some AfDs - how did you get to those so soon in your editing career? (Incidently, on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hermagenesis you mentioned that you hadn't heard of the term - the rest of your argument is good, but you not having heard of it wouldn't be a useful criteria for deletion!)

Summary

You seem to have made a good start - however, your early edits so far seem to be those of an editor with previous experience - have you previously edited under a different name? It is very rare for 2 of the first 3 edits (excluding any deleted ones) to be on their monobook.css file within 20 mins of creating their account.
I see you have started doing some vandalism reverts - just take care with them: read them carefully, check any sources provided, and use common sense - and be especially carefully if they are biographies of living people.
On a personal note, was the question about OR that you asked at WP:NCHP about a specific situation you had in mind, or just a theoretical question?

I hope this has been useful - but there really isn't that much to go on since this account was created. I would suggest coming back in a few months' time, when there is more of an account history to go on!

Regards, -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 01:11, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for responding with such comprehensiveness on my ER! :)

I hold that a sense of humor is a simple solution to very difficult problems – incidentally, it’s what I wrote about on my October SAT prompt. Therefore, I try to actually display a sense of humor where possible and appropriate, and try to have a pleasant attitude with people. I have before (not here) gotten into massive amounts of trouble for not thinking before I type, so now I make sure to do so!

Here follows a brief biography of me that will hopefully answer some of your questions. The editor known as User:Insorak was born on September... okay, perhaps not that far back. Several years ago (perhaps as a freshman; I’m currently a junior) I discovered Wikipedia. Wow – what an amazing resource. So basically, as with anything awesome, I decided to stick around and find a bit more. (It didn’t hurt that my school’s policy is no Wikipedia on the basis of reliability. I dislike my school, so I do everything to fundamentally undermine its principles that I can, and part of this fundamental undermining involves making Wikipedia more reliable. :P) So essentially, I probed around a bit and found out that there are these things called administrators. More interestingly, I found out that there was actually this big community thing that was behind it all, and that administrators could be nominated or elected or something like that. I also poked around some of the Wikipedia help files and things like that. This basically continued until a few days ago, when I could no longer ignore, for the third year, that gigantic banner at the top asking for donations. I am a student; I do not have money to donate. My parents do not have money to donate. So I figured that as a way to thank Wikipedia for all it’s done, I’d help it accomplish something and become better, even if just a bit.

And this is the AFD action – after I registered, I took a closer look at administrators to see if I would be interested in becoming one, and stumbled on WP:AFD. (Probably auspiciously, I also stumbled on WP:NOTNOW.) (With hermagenesis, I’m only sixteen, but I’m an enormous biology nerd and if both Google and I haven’t heard of it, it probably doesn’t exist. :P)

My good friend User:Goaldrivenguy (who does not seem to have actually edited, despite my relentless peer pressuring >.<) is a whiz at programming of any sort. Some further curiosity and procrastination on my part led to my discovering the .js and .css files, and, having absolutely no knowledge in programming whatsoever, I asked him to take a look at it and what it could do. Of course, after I figured out what it could do, I needed to ask him to write some code for me. ;)

As you can tell with vandalism reverts and newpage patrolling, I am certainly not the ghostly guise of another accomplished editor, and I still need to be more careful when doing those things. Practice makes perfect, I guess.

My questions about OR (with the exception of the second) were actually things that I considered doing and are possible for me to do. I was interested in creating an article about my piano teacher, who has won a fourth prize in the International Schubert Competition, and I am doing some medical research and will hopefully be participating in the Research Science Institute this summer. (I mainly edit Wikipedia during my history homework, since I find it so uninteresting. The homework, that is.)

A bit of a long read, this is, but hopefully your questions have been thoroughly answered. I will continue trying to do my best! Cheers! Back to history notes now. Insorak ♫ talk 01:41, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]