Welcome to my world! I am the Dutchman In Disguise. Even though many of my ancestors were Dutch, I don't use that language, but contribute to Wikipedia in English, in Spanish and in several other languages. Unlike some Wikipedists, I have a life beyond Wikipedia, and only make occasional contributions about random things which interest, or annoy, me.

My contributions in English

Articles

I either created, or was responsible for much of the text, of the following articles:

Dutch-American history

• Charles Winans Chipp, American naval officer and Arctic explorer
• Cornelis Melyn, early Dutch-American settler and leader – my first attempt at an article
• Winans, just an index of various persons with this Dutch surname who have Wikipedia articles; this is known as a disambiguation page in Wikispeak.

Some other disambiguation pages

• Butera (surname), a town in Sicily, a saxophonist, two ballplayers and some other interesting people
• Carey and Carrey, two related surnames which had been neglected by Wikipedians
• Cheney (surname), a page which needed to have a lot of stuff added to it
• Coello, a page to which I added a lot of entries after noticing that an Angels pitcher wasn't on it
• Ege, a page which I went to work on while watching a Marlins pitcher work
• Follett, a surname of several people I've known
• Frías, a very common Spanish and Portuguese surname and place name
• Galindo (disambiguation), a common Spanish surname and place name
• Gillespie, the surname of one of my favorite jazz musicians
• Hester, to which I added a lot of entries after noticing that an Angels catcher wasn't on it
• Kela, which I expanded while watching Keone pitch for the Rangers
• Lackey, which I expanded while watching a Cardinals pitcher pitch
• LEWP, which reminds me of my very first home computer
• Mahle, which I expanded while watching a new Angels pitcher pitch
• Melançon, which I created after watching Mark Melancon playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates; this is a common surname in Louisiana and Québec
• Oliveto, the surname of a controversial bishop who was in the news recently
• Ove, a Scandinavian first name which was part of the title of a book
• Puig, to which I added a lot of entries while watching the great Dodger player hit home runs
• Redick, which I created while watching the L. A. Clippers play
• Wada, which I expanded while watching a Cubs pitcher work
• Wassermann (or Wasserman), a German / Jewish surname borne by a number of interesting people
• Wigglesworth (disambiguation), an unusual surname and place name

Music, especially jazz

• Chu Berry, jazz tenor saxophonist
• Chuck Cecil (broadcaster), a great disc jockey whose final show I listened to the evening of July 3, 2016
• Leo Edwards (composer), early 20th century Broadway songwriter
• Four Saxophones in Twelve Tones, a 1955 jazz album
• Bob Gordon (saxophonist), jazz baritone saxophonist
• Billy Gray (comedian), owner of an L. A. night club where some great jazz musicians used to play
• André Hodeir, jazz and classical music composer and author
• Nappy Lamare, jazz banjoist/guitarist
• Mark Masters (musician), a jazz trumpeter, composer and arranger
• Roy Porter (drummer), jazz drummer
• Steve Propes, disc jockey
• Wim Statius Muller, Curaçaoan composer and pianist – my first attempt at translating an article from my ancestors' language into English
• Sleepy Stein, pioneering jazz disc jockey and radio station owner
• The Jazz Review, a wonderful magazine which was published all too briefly
• Mike Zearott, a great musician I knew a long, long time ago

Baseball

• Gene Baker, infielder who came up from the PCL Angels to the Cubs and formed their "keystone combo" with the late Hall of Famer Ernie Banks.
• Chris Bourjos, Giants outfielder whose son played for the Angels
• Joe Gonzales (baseball), who pitched for USC, the Red Sox, and in the PCL
• Truck Hannah, major league and PCL Angels baseball player
• Bob Kelley, who announced PCL Angels baseball and also Rams football
• Clarence Maddern, major league and PCL Angels baseball player
• Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá, a Puerto Rican writer who has written several books and articles about ballplayers
• Jigger Statz, major league and PCL Angels baseball player
• Blaine Walsh, Milwaukee Braves and Green Bay Packers announcer
• Two "templates", which make it easier to include links to the Society for American Baseball Research's biography project in a ballplayer's article:
  • Template:Sabrbio
  • Template:Sabrbio1

California politics and history

• Deane Dana, Los Angeles county supervisor
• John Anson Ford, Los Angeles county supervisor
• Lucy Killea, San Diego county state Senate and Assembly member
• Samuel Marshall Perry, Los Angeles city councilman and county supervisor
• Pete Schabarum, California politician and football player

Miscellaneous

• Feeding America, an organization which helps provide food for needy people all over the U. S. A.
• Hartmut Heinrich, German scientist who discovered an important geological event.
• Jaunjelgava, a little town in Latvia
• Samuel B. Thomsen, first U. S. ambassador to the Marshall Islands
• Shag (artist), a very interesting modern artist

Editing

I also do a lot of trivial edits and corrections (wrong links, missing links, typos and grammar errors really bug me):

• other contributions

Carlsbad

Not long ago, I was vacationing in the beautiful town of Carlsbad, California. I happened to see a plaque along a street there commemorating the beach city's sister city relationship with some Czech town. It took a lot of reading and research before I figured out that the strangely-named (to my Anglo ears) town is the place that I used to hear of as Carlsbad or Karlsbad.

My curiosity aroused, I did some wiki-browsing and discovered that a lot of articles contained links to plain old Karlsbad, but failed to distinguish between the Karlovy Vary version of that name and a small town in Germany with the same name. There were also a bunch of links to plain old Carlsbad which were put in wiki articles by incompetent or careless editors. The links took you to a "disambiguation page" which left it up to your imagination which town the editor really meant. I've tried to remedy this situation whenever I've had a few minutes to kill and could figure out which town an article was talking about — the one in Bohemia? in California? in Baden? in New Mexico? I hope I've guessed correctly while making these corrections.

Chelyabinsk

15 Feb 2013, I scooped the world, sort of, in Wikipedia's coverage of the 2013 Russian meteor event. At 0633 GMT, after hearing the early news reports, I added a paragraph entitled Meteor shower to the Chelyabinsk article. Well, to be completely truthful, Edward Vielmetti had already wondered about it on the Chelyabinsk talk page 49 minutes earlier. Y para decir la verdad, un usuario anónimo agregó un párrafo al artículo en español unos siete minutos antes de mi cambio al artículo en inglés. Y es posible que habían contribuciones en otros idiomas aún más temprano que éstas.

Categories

Duke Ellington once said something like "you can't put cats in categories", and I find Wikipedia categories to be a huge nuisance. Far too much time is spent creating them and putting people in them and debating about who should, or should not, be in this or that category. I very seldom click on a link to a "category" and have little or no interest in what category a person might fall into.

Surnames and dates

Something which is of much more interest to me than a "category" is a page which lists persons having the same surname. When I have trouble remembering the first name of somebody who interests me it's quite helpful to be able to see all the people who happen to share the same last name. I've helped create, or add to, such surname disambiguation pages ( see above), and have also expanded their contents by filling in the birth and death dates on pages which lack them. I believe the inclusion of a person's dates in a surname page is very helpful in determining whether Joe Blow or José Fulano is a contemporary, or somebody from out of the distant past. The most recent of these pages where I supplied names and/or dates is:

• Person (surname), and Persson (surname)

"Intitle"

While adding and correcting information on people with certain surnames, I discovered a capability for seeing, in an instant, all articles whose titles included the name, or word, I was interested in. This is done via the "intitle" template. For instance, to see all wiki-articles whose title line contains "Dutchman", click here:

   
All pages with titles containing Dutchman

So, having discovered this handy feature, I added the "intitle" template to a number of pages I was working on. What do you think? Is this a worthwhile change, or would you rather not see that unobtrusive link at the bottom of certain pages?

Stuff

some stuff I'm working on

My Wikipedia edit history

Here are the numbers of edits I've made each month to the English Wikipedia:

Mis contribuciones en español

• Martín Dihigo, uno de los máximos beisbolistas de todas las épocas
• otras contribuciones

Minhas contribuições em português

• Coelho, um sobrenome português
• outras contribuições

Mes contributions dans d'autres langues

• Català
• Deutsch
• فارسی
• Français
• Italiano
• 日本語
• 한국어
• ‪Norsk (bokmål)‬
• Polski
• Română
• Suomi
• Svenska