On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 7:38 PM, Christine Meyer <christinewmeyer@gmail.com> wrote:

This may not qualify as appropriate for this list, but in the little bit of time I've been in this mailing list I've seen that articles written by women are fair game. I also believe that this would be appropriate because the subject, the children's television show "Sesame Street," is a female-oriented subject. These articles have been largely neglected, I think, because The Show's viewers are small children and their parents, a demographic that doesn't tend to edit Wikipedia. For that reason, I think that they also fulfill the systematic bias. (I also edit other articles that apply, including articles about other children's television shows such as Blue's Clues--a GA, and The Wiggles--my first FA).

BTW, Sesame Street (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesame_Street) is currently up for FA. This article was delisted in 2008, for good reason, and I've been working on it ever since. It's been quite a journey. I've become an expert on The Show, have amassed a small library of SS books, and have experienced a great amount of joy in the process. FA is so close! All weekend, I'm thinking, "C'mon! It's a holiday weekend; surely you have the time to pass it!" ;) If it passes, it will be my 9th FA, and my 1st to pass in only one FAC.

The interesting thing about this article is that it's essentially a series of summaries of forked articles, all of which I created or re-wrote. The first of these forked articles, "History of Sesame Street", was the first of these articles to become an FA. Many of the others are also FAs or GAs. Currently, I'm helping someone write "Sesame Street in the U.K." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesame_Street_in_the_U.K.) that demonstrates the need for improvement for these articles. I'm thinking that the creator is either a member of the demographic mentioned above or a second-language learner. At the very least, he's a horrible writer. I was going to just let it go (there are scores of badly-written articles on WP, you know), but I decided that if I did, I'd be embarrassed by the association. Ugh, what a pain!

For the most part, other than this fellow and maybe two other editors in all of WP, I've been mostly alone in this endeavor. That's why it's taken three years to get "Sesame Street" to FAC. There are benefits to working this way; I've experienced very little of the drama that I've seen with other editors who tend to edit high-profile and controversial articles. I've also had, for the most part, very positive experiences as a content editor.

OTOH, the articles I focus on tend to be highly vandalized. (Don't get me started on "Steve Burns"!) Personally, I think that's the key to becoming indoctrinated to become a "successful" WP editor; begin with articles that don't get a lot of attention and ones you can learn from and have the freedom to make mistakes.

Christine
User:Figureskatingfan

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