Catherine Munro wrote:
I'll admit, my editing tends to go in spurts: I'll spend a day or two creating swathes of new text (creating or greatly expanding articles) -- then I'll spend another three to ten days doing "housecleaning" - typo patrols, Cleanup pages, disambiguation, lately the Orphaned Categories page. Why? Because I hope against hope that the major contributions I made will be at least be noticed to the extent that someone fixes a typo or adds an external link, and I wait, patiently checking my watchlist, for a few days before I'm convinced (and discouraged) that a new article has vanished into the ether. It certainly feels like the housework gets more credit; at least, I'm more likely to get feedback when I clean up someone else's article. (I know, I know about article ownership.) I'm not exemplary about complimenting people either (and it's always easier to do so via the edit summary than actually going to their user page), but I'll make more of an effort. I just wanted to add my two cents -- I've been a steady editor for a year and a half, and I know exactly what others are saying about feeling like giving up sometimes because no one notices what you do unless you're a troll, or deliberately seek out controversial areas, or participate in every policy discussion.
I know what you mean - sometimes new articles generate interest from other people, sometimes not. I've written a bunch of stamp stuff partly in the expectation that there would be visitors coming because of WP mentions in the philatelic print media, but there haven't been many, so realistically I'm doing it for my own entertainment right now.
Also, I've found that it may be several months before anybody "notices" new material, so I think of those as seeds planted without knowing the germination period. Even if it takes a year, WP is still further ahead because of the bits I added before.
Stan