User:Jim.henderson: Difference between revisions

Jim Henderson
— Wikipedian ♂ —
	Wikimedian Jim Henderson
Name	Jim Henderson
Born	Wisconsin
Pronouns	He
Country	United States
Handedness	Right
Education and employment
Occupation	Retired Switchman
Employer	New York Telephone
Primary school	Several
Intermediate school	Manhasset Jr High
High school	Manhasset High School
University	New York University
Hobbies, favourites and beliefs
Hobbies	Astronomy, bicycling, photography

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Revision as of 15:45, 2 April 2023

I'm Jim Henderson, a retired telephone switchman in New York City from 1969 to 2010. Also a bicycler and fan of ~~technical~~ history and astronomy, and a BBS operator from 1991 to 2005. Born in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, lived as a child in Madison, Wisconsin, Knoxville, Tennessee and Plainview, New York, grew up in Manhasset, New York, dropped out of New York University. Thus I forsook suburbia to become a lucky resident of a small island off the coast of New Jersey, where life is so simple, the majority of islanders don't own an automobile, and hardly anyone has a lawn mower. When we want to visit a neighboring island or the mainland, we hop on our bicycle and pedal over a bridge, or take a quick ride on an underground train. Specifically, I am a denizen of Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan.

Subpages:

This is a Wikipedia user page.
This is not an encyclopedia article or the talk page for an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user whom this page is about may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia. The original page is located at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jim.henderson.

Wikimedia Commons has a User Page for Jim.henderson

Autumn 2006

A friend messed up Crimean War in early September 2006 and I learned a bit trying to clean it up. First deliberate try at editing Wikipedia was the addition of new material to Juno Online Services article in mid September. Then came revisions of Reed relay, Marker (telecommunications), Wire spring relay, 5ESS, Signaling System No. 5 and others that an old switchman would know about.

In October, added to articles on History of Brooklyn and various parts of Brooklyn and other parts of Long Island. Also greatly expanded articles on New York Telephone and Panel Switch and reorganized the terribly disorganized DSLAM article even without knowing much about the topic.

You will notice I've got no bumper stickers saying where I eat and what's my religion and how I stand on political and Wiki issues. That's partly because I don't know how to do that, and mainly because I figure Wikipedia is for matters on which I am particularly competent.

This user remembers using
a rotary dial telephone.

JU

This user remembers when telephone numbers began with exchange names, such as JUdson.

Ah. So, here's my first sticker, installed a few hours after dialing a phone call to Brooklyn with the rotary on my red Western Electric 500 type phone. And another, for an exchange I repaired.

Spring 2007

Well, it's been an interesting winter and spring, more than a third of a year, learning how to do this by editing and adding large or small bits to about 2000 articles and making a few from whole cloth. Lately editing some bicycling articles, especially since getting knocked off my bike on April 3 by a limousine and thus having a broken collarbone and more time indoors.

I've let my watchlist grow to over a thousand articles, and vigilante duty towards graffiti now takes much of my time. Also moved the majority of articles out of category:telecommunications to more specific subcats, and did other things with related categories, not that cat work is the most important part of Wikipedia but it still ought to be done right. I ought to do more merger work with small stub articles. Did that with Main distribution frame, Borough President and a few others. Maybe the New York City water supply system and its related tunnel articles will be my next victim. Still having fun, and that's what it's about, right? Jim.henderson 06:30, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Early 2008

So, now my watchlist has grown to about 2,600 items. No discipline; most days about 500 are recent and leave no time to do much except check, revert and tweak them as they enter or leave the active list. Big Wiki news personally is that a couple months ago a relative gave me an old Nikon Coolpix 2200 camera with broken zoom, so I've been learning how to take wide angle photos of various places in easy bicycling range and uploading them to various articles. Come springtime my intention is to buy a new non broken camera and go to those places again and reshoot with better hardware and much better understanding.

2008

On Feb 8 I bought a new, non broken Canon A570IS camera at a nice sale price (a later model came out). Springtime always means more bicycling, and now it means more pictures to review and upload.

Meanwhile on March 21 I added Carterfone to my watchlist, bringing the total to 3000! A few minutes later I removed Quack.com but will certainly give in to the temptation to add more.

In late April 2008 I joined Commons so my pictures might be more widely used. During the summer Wikiphotography grew from a sideline to an obsession and detracted from the older Wikipedia obsession, which nonetheless saw my watchlist grow to 3800 articles including hundreds showing my pictures.

Wikimedia Commons has a User Page for Jim.henderson

Summer 2009

4800 articles are on my watchlist, yet Wikipedia editing has taken lower priority. Photography for Commons is what my Wikilife is about nowadays, especially since I found out about free geotagging methods.

Million monkeys

:D Gosgood (talk) 20:37, 29 August 2008 (GMT)

2011

Same old things. Too busy with photography, I cut my watchlist below 6000 by year's end, yet it grows back as though a thing alive. Was made "Reviwer" in June.

2012 blackout

2014

Goodness; been a long time and I've been doing more in Commons than here. I do want to point out two articles in the dead tree press:

This NY Times piece, Wikipedia vs the Small screen, hints to me that we need to avoid making articles too big.
This NY Review of Books piece, The Charms of Wikipedia, flatteringly analogizes us with, "some vast aerial city with people walking briskly to and fro on catwalks, carrying picnic baskets full of nutritious snacks."

At the astronomy seminar, May 2016

"So, Jim, who writes those Wikipedia articles?"

"I do."

"What, all those millions of articles?"

"Something like a million of us have written at least a little bit of Wikipedia. Tens of thousands of us around the world do it every day."

"Well, how do we know who wrote which article?"

"It says so."

"Where, down at the bottom?"

"No, look at the top of this Beethoven page." Why was Beethoven open at the astronomy club? Well, everything's connected, y'know. "You see those tabs, including the 'History' tab? Click that. There's the past 50 changes anyone made. See, a few times a week someone changes something in this article."

"But, who originally wrote it?"

"See where it says "Oldest" at the bottom? Click that. Now you see the first fifty versions, in 2001. Click the bottom, earliest date. That's what the article was then. A little bit of biography and a long list of works. In 15 years it's been changed and added to, thousands of times, by probably hundreds of editors like me, but not me because musicians are not my thing."

"What, experts?"

"Some of them, probably, but it's not easy to know and we get along without knowing. I edit some astronomy, but other editors do a good job on that. Probably professors or other experts. I know more about Cycling in New York City than other editors. You might call me an expert and anyway I pretty much dominate that. But, if someone else pushes in there, I'll pull out, at least partially, and do more Arab history or organic chemistry or Beaux Arts architecture or whatever."

"But, if anyone can edit anything, and nobody knows who's an expert, what happens if they add something wrong?"

"Tens of thousands of vigilantes watch out for that. We pounce and it's gone quickly. I've got 5,600 articles on watch." And showed my watchlist.

"How often do you check this?"

"Few times a day."

"Isn't that a lot of time?"

"Sure. It's my hobby. Most editors do less and many, heaven help them, do more than I do."

So the topic turned to Monday's Transit of Mercury and the later Opposition of Mars and how astrology programs chart ascending and descending nodes. Astrology? Their doctrines are nonsense but their software does some things more handily than scientific programs do. The astronomy club meets again in two weeks and maybe I'll recruit a new Wikipedian.

Links

Special:CreateAccount
- Account creation log
Special:UserRights
Edit counter
Vera de Kok's list of NYC targets (User:1Veertje)
Wikinyc Slack channel
Wisdom of polarized crowds: How bias makes a better Wikipedia
DEWKIN DEep WiKi INspector shows what you've been up to
Governance Structure of Wikipedia -Youtube

Youtube videos

Vanessa Stokrocki: How to upload photos to Commons also discussion of contests.
Lovilsa Mellin: Wikipedia, an Introduction -2015 9:07 Promotional review, pointing the ways of contributing, rather than technical.
Katie Boyce: What is Wikipedia? -2016 5:24 How did it live down its dreadful reputation?
User:VidEwan, Wikimedian in Residence at University of Edinburgh: How to Edit Wikipedia - a 2018 tutorial 47:44 Poor sound. Walks you through doing several things with little explanation of why. And poor organisation.
The Wiki Show
- [24] Vandalism Patrol 2 -May 2020 2:25 using Twinkle.

Box City

es-1

Este usuario puede contribuir con un nivel básico de español.

60,000+

This user has made more than 60,000 contributions to Wikipedia.

This user is one of the 1500 most active English Wikipedians of all time.

|

This user has been on Wikipedia for 18 years, 1 month and 23 days.

This user has been editing Wikipedia for more than ten years.

This user participates in
WikiProject
Geographical Coordinates.

This user has pending changes reviewer rights on the English Wikipedia. (verify)

This user has rollback rights on the English Wikipedia. (verify)

This user is a recent changes patroller.

This user has autopatrolled rights on the English Wikipedia. (verify)

This user is a member of Wikimedia NYC.

This user rode the
San Diego Trolley to
WikiConference 2016

This user participated in Wikimania 2017 held in Montréal, Canada.

This user participated in Wikimania 2018 held in Cape Town, South Africa.

This user participated in Wikimania 2019 held in Stockholm, Sweden.

This user is old enough
to know better! ( 76 )

@@ Line 239: / Line 239: @@
 So the topic turned to Monday's [[Transit of Mercury]] and the later Opposition of Mars and how astrology programs chart ascending and descending nodes. Astrology? Their doctrines are nonsense but their software does some things more handily than scientific programs do. The astronomy club meets again in two weeks and maybe I'll recruit a new Wikipedian.
-== How could Wikipedia ensure more accuracy in its content? What are some simple mechanisms that could be put in place to ensure that truth is maintained even with such a large and oftentimes biased opinion from readers? ==
-A question in Quora, my answer 22 Feb 2022
-Inaccuracy in Wikipedia articles comes from inattention. The more the people reviewing the writing, the less likely it is to retain an inaccurate statement. Most articles are little read, because their topics don’t interest many. For example, articles about people or organizations often arise for promotional reasons; someone decides that the world isn’t paying enough attention to the subject, and a Wikpedia article will bring that deserved attention. When the world still does not pay much attention, or more particularly when only a few of the many thousands of Wikipedia fact checkers pay attention, then lies, errors, obsolescence, propaganda, and other bad contents are able to survive.
-So, if what is important is the prevalence of inaccuracy in the articles in Wikipedia, we need either more fact checkers or fewer facts. That’s why some of us checkers look for an opportunity to kill articles. If an article is gone, it won’t attract vandals, liars, promoters, and other enemies of accuracy.
-From this arises a tension between “deletionists” or minimalists who want to pare down the encyclopedia to more manageable proportions and “inclusionists” or maximalists who want to expand to include undeservedly ignored subjects. I more often side with the minimalists, with a preference towards the softer, redirectionist version of deletionism. Obviously if we had more checkers, and if more of them were precise, consistent, industrious checkers, this tension could relax and allow a larger, more accurate online encyclopedia.
-Wikipedia has competitors with a different balance between inclusion and deletion. Citizendium is much more on the side of minimalism, with restrictions on who is qualified to edit and what may be covered. As a result, CZ is very small and has large gaps in coverage, but my impression is that the number of checkers is so small that the error rate isn’t much smaller, either. Another competitor, Everipedia, is much more on the side of inclusionism, with the result that it has many “vanity” articles on topics that Wikipedia does not cover, that attract few readers and fewer checkers, and more errors.
-So, if you want to improve the accuracy of Wikipedia, you can go the direct route, becoming a checker. There is no qualification to be allowed to check; just find an error and hit “Edit”. Or, if it isn’t an outright error or the article is protected from new editors or for some other reason it’s a complex situation, ask in the article’s Talk Page. Once you have some experience in this direction, you might want to join the discussions on whether a particular article ought to exist.
 == Links ==