Wikipedia:Editor review/Spazure 2

Spazure

Spazure (talk · contribs) I already had a review a little over a month ago (see Wikipedia:Editor_review/spazure), but I've learned a lot more about Wikipedia -- and wikistress -- since then. Basically I'm just starting to feel that none of my contributions are helping, and would like somebody to take a look at my edit history and see if I may have some "hidden strengths" I might not know about, that I could put to good use. I need to get away from WP:AfD before I drive myself crazy, but it's just so easy to just reload the current day's page and comment, so I'm sort of just hiding there and not doing much of anything. Honestly, a comment I made in AfD most recently [[1]] led me to realize that I need to step away and find something else to do here -- I just can't seem to think of anywhere I've actually been useful lately, and I have a bit of a writer's block right now, so working on expanding articles is out of the question at least for the time being (until some RL non-wiki stress mellows out, then I can probably write again). spazure (contribs) 07:40, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Reviews

• Some thoughts from User:JayHenry

Hi Spazure, I've seen you around at AFD and I was surprised to see from your contribs that you started contributing so recently. First, you should know that contributing at AFD is definitely useful and important. Second, some editors start editing and instantly find tasks they like and make WikiFriends really fast and whatever, but for some editors it takes some time to find your stride. For nearly nine months after registering I was too intimidated to make any substantive edits to Wikipedia, and even once I started editing, it took me another three months before I felt like I knew what I was doing. So basically, don't worry if you feel like you haven't found your niche yet. You're off to a way better start than I was!

And I wouldn't worry about writer's block. It comes and goes.

So I wanted to jump in and offer some thoughts for two reasons. One because your comments are the way I felt a year ago and two because I have a suggestion for an area you might not have considered but for which I think you'd be a good fit. I'm a big fan of DYK, and I think your skills could really help out there. T:TDYK is where most of the action happens. Dozens of new articles come through every day, and there's lots that can be done. 1) As the articles are new, a lot of times they just need a quick read to make sure there are no glaring spelling errors and such. It might seem minor, but 3 million people visit Wikipedia's main page every day, so we want the pages that are linked from the main page to be in as good of shape as possible! 2) A lot of times the hooks aren't as good as they could be. If you see hooks that you think are a little clumsy, it really helps to suggest alternate versions. 3) At the bottom of T:TDYK the new article bot makes a list of new articles that might be good for DYK. If you read any of these articles, see that they're eligible for DYK, and see an interesting fact, you can nominate the articles yourself.

But DYK is just a suggestion. It's definitely not for everyone. Even if you find out that you don't like DYK, don't get discouraged, you have a really good attitude and you're calm and civil and so you'll find a place where you feel like you fit before too long. --JayHenry 06:34, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, I was starting to think nobody even saw this ER listed! I'll definitely check out T:TDYK next time I have some downtime, and I also appreciate your kind comments. I do find it interesting that you said I'm calm and civil -- but in fact I overreact emotionally to things, yes, even things that happen on here ALL THE TIME -- I've just learned to step away from whatever's bugging me and come back to it when I have a clear head, as I learned back in my teens that flame wars don't help anybody, but civil discussions sometimes do. spazure (contribs) (review) 09:35, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Really, you overreact emotionally all the time? I didn't review all your contributions, but I didn't see any evidence of incivility or anger. I think everyone gets frustrated sometimes on this project, especially at AfD where people's different visions of an encyclopedia conflict, but what's important is that you don't start leaving edit summaries like "eat sh** and die!" whenever someone disagrees with you. It looks to me like you're doing a good job of that! --JayHenry 01:08, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Comments

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Questions

1. Of your contributions to Wikipedia, are there any about which you are particularly pleased, and why?

   Not really. I worked hard on Astrid Young at first, but now it's kind of stale because it's nowhere close to a GA, but I have no idea what to fix on it at this point. Same thing goes for Peter Williams, and even The Ernies, I just can't seem to do any decent writing lately.

3. Have you been in any conflicts 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?

   There's been an ongoing issue over at Hamster lately, but I think we've been working civilly to get some sort of a compromise. The only real stress I'm feeling is because I spend hours upon hours on here each day, and have absolutely nothing to show for it. I'm not saying I want to own any articles, but I do want to find where I belong and actually make something of a mark within the project. I dabble in AfD because it's easy, I sometimes work with dead-end pages or add references to pages, and sometimes I'll even try to counter vandalism (which becomes pointless because bots and people with twinkle will always be faster than me -- because here at work, i have to do it 100% by hand), but I can't seem to find anywhere that actually seems to need an extra hand. Mostly I'm just feeling like the odd-man out, not phased out by any sort of cabal or anything, but just the fact that there's so many editors.. I might just not be needed.. which would be depressing because there's not many other websites I can get to from my work PC, so I'd probably die of boredom.