I have a reputation for being a prolific interwiki editor. This is something I'm rather proud of, but gets me a lot of "what the hell is wrong with you?"-type questions, not only from people in real life who I try to explain this to, but also from my fellow Wikimedians (and if they don't get it, the average person doesn't stand a chance).
What most don't understand is that I have a very, very strict philosophy regarding interwikis. Read on to better understand the Way of the Interwiki.
Firstly, this is my essay, not yours, so I'd appreciate it if you had a bit more tact. Thank you.
When I refer to interwiki links, I'm talking about the "In other languages" box that appears to the left of most pages (a good example would be Earth).
A common variant of this question is "what the hell's wrong with you?"
It is true that there are bots that help maintain the links. However, I'm wary to be 100% reliant on bots for most things; I routinely find things that they've missed, and so I take the opportunity to fix the links myself.
Having so many accounts also comes in handy for my various Commons- and Wikipedia-related administrative duties. For example, I use my accounts to fix duplicate images found at commons:Category:Duplicate, [1] or to add images from Commons to foreign-language Wikipedia articles that have either Fair Use images [2] or no images at all. [3] Often my edits will span across multiple projects (such as multiple Wikipedia editions, [4] [5] Commons, [6] and Wikispecies [7]).
Interwikis represent, to me, the purest essence of the Wikimedia Foundation's desire to present the sum of human knowledge to the world. Yes, we've got the information, but there are hundreds of languages spoken on our planet; what good is English to someone that only speaks Italian? By maintaining the interwiki network, I'm helping to bring us one step forward in presenting as much information as possible in as many languages as possible.
I'll admit that it sounds rather high and mighty of me, but that's pretty much it. I should be committed I'm strongly committed to the principles of free knowledge.
I have very strict rules for my edits outside the English projects:
I'm an outspoken critic of any non-English speaker who attempts to mix it up here. That may seem hypocritical of me, but if a non-English speaker comes and starts messing around, they need to be blocked for disruption; quite simply, if you're unable to contribute in a particular language, then don't try to do so.
Before I make my first edit on a new project, I'll generally do the following things:
Wikipedia is, far and away, the largest and best-known project under the Foundation's umbrella. However, to truly follow-through with the pledge to make all knowledge accessible, one must work on the other projects as well. Wiktionary and Wikispecies are both full of important information, but that information has no place in Wikipedia itself. I behave myself on those projects as I do here and elsewhere.
Various musings about my ever-increasing usermatrix at m:User:EVula/matrix.
My massive ego must be satisfied Keeping track of where I am and am not active is a logistical nightmare. Keeping track of all the accounts in a matrix makes it much, much easier to track my edits, and served as a method of verifying the identity of any "EVula" that may have registered on a smaller wiki (some English Wikipedia administrators had problems with impersonators).
Now that unified login has been rolled out for administrators, people have asked why I still maintain my matrix. Several reasons:
I will say that having a unified account makes my life much, much easier when doing massive interwiki maps. I love it, but it doesn't entirely do away with the need for a user matrix.
I have a reputation for being a prolific interwiki editor. This is something I'm rather proud of, but gets me a lot of "what the hell is wrong with you?"-type questions, not only from people in real life who I try to explain this to, but also from my fellow Wikimedians (and if they don't get it, the average person doesn't stand a chance).
What most don't understand is that I have a very, very strict philosophy regarding interwikis. Read on to better understand the Way of the Interwiki.
Firstly, this is my essay, not yours, so I'd appreciate it if you had a bit more tact. Thank you.
When I refer to interwiki links, I'm talking about the "In other languages" box that appears to the left of most pages (a good example would be Earth).
A common variant of this question is "what the hell's wrong with you?"
It is true that there are bots that help maintain the links. However, I'm wary to be 100% reliant on bots for most things; I routinely find things that they've missed, and so I take the opportunity to fix the links myself.
Having so many accounts also comes in handy for my various Commons- and Wikipedia-related administrative duties. For example, I use my accounts to fix duplicate images found at commons:Category:Duplicate, [1] or to add images from Commons to foreign-language Wikipedia articles that have either Fair Use images [2] or no images at all. [3] Often my edits will span across multiple projects (such as multiple Wikipedia editions, [4] [5] Commons, [6] and Wikispecies [7]).
Interwikis represent, to me, the purest essence of the Wikimedia Foundation's desire to present the sum of human knowledge to the world. Yes, we've got the information, but there are hundreds of languages spoken on our planet; what good is English to someone that only speaks Italian? By maintaining the interwiki network, I'm helping to bring us one step forward in presenting as much information as possible in as many languages as possible.
I'll admit that it sounds rather high and mighty of me, but that's pretty much it. I should be committed I'm strongly committed to the principles of free knowledge.
I have very strict rules for my edits outside the English projects:
I'm an outspoken critic of any non-English speaker who attempts to mix it up here. That may seem hypocritical of me, but if a non-English speaker comes and starts messing around, they need to be blocked for disruption; quite simply, if you're unable to contribute in a particular language, then don't try to do so.
Before I make my first edit on a new project, I'll generally do the following things:
Wikipedia is, far and away, the largest and best-known project under the Foundation's umbrella. However, to truly follow-through with the pledge to make all knowledge accessible, one must work on the other projects as well. Wiktionary and Wikispecies are both full of important information, but that information has no place in Wikipedia itself. I behave myself on those projects as I do here and elsewhere.
Various musings about my ever-increasing usermatrix at m:User:EVula/matrix.
My massive ego must be satisfied Keeping track of where I am and am not active is a logistical nightmare. Keeping track of all the accounts in a matrix makes it much, much easier to track my edits, and served as a method of verifying the identity of any "EVula" that may have registered on a smaller wiki (some English Wikipedia administrators had problems with impersonators).
Now that unified login has been rolled out for administrators, people have asked why I still maintain my matrix. Several reasons:
I will say that having a unified account makes my life much, much easier when doing massive interwiki maps. I love it, but it doesn't entirely do away with the need for a user matrix.