User: Calton
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Well, it's been nearly a month since I for started editing here, so it's time for a user page.
As for my personal facts, I'm a Westerner, living in Tokyo, Japan, where I work as a copy editor/rewriter for a large Japanese electronics company.
I first became aware of Wikipedia when I began using it to look up some technical terms, my being an English literature major screws around with computers, not vice versa. Being of a copy editor bent, I noticed typos, misspellings, and generally screwy language occasionally, and after a while I realized that I could in fact edit them myself. So I did. Soon, I was hitting the random page button, just for my own amusement, and I got sucked in.
Now, this has turned into a relaxing break from my required copy editing: I get to exercise my pedantic tendencies, without the responsibility of deadlines or deliverables. Now I'm getting a little deeper into things, and have started writing articles from scratch.
This whole project is infectious: hitting the random page button, I encounter whole swatches of text and knowledge areas requiring work, and I suddenly feel compelled to try to do something about it, even if I didn't have any particular interest in the subject to began with. For example, I did a massive edit (for style, organization, and a general readability) for the submarine USS Trout (SS-202). I have no particular interest in the military, especially not the Navy, yet I found myself sucked into doing this. Same with entries on community colleges and Booker Prize winners.
So far I have added articles and stubs (and yes, I plan to expand the stubs) on:
- Adventures of Sam Spade
- American River College
- Barry Unsworth
- Canyon, California
- David Malouf
- David Mitchell
- Diné College
- KALW
- Kate Wolf
- Kousalya, Sumitra and Kaikeyi
- Los Medanos College
- Meiji Mura
- Merritt College
- Panaca, Nevada
- Patrick McCabe
- Sacramento City College
- Seibu Tamagawa Line
- Timothy Mo
- William Leonard Marshall
As well as major work in revisions on:
I've got to learn my limits, otherwise I'll be attempting to fix every article or expand every area of knowledge here. At the moment, it looks like I'll try to do something with state parks and national parks of the United States, community colleges, writers (especially Booker winners and mystery writers), and random Japan entries.
