[WikiEN-l] Piddly little picky editors and their scripts are what make Wikipedia shine.

[K P]

On 5/30/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
> Michael Noda wrote:
> > As someone who has done large numbers of minor edits in the past,
> > completely unaided by scripting*, I'm disappointed that you feel this
> > way.  These edits are often the formatting and style edits that make
> > Wikipedia look and feel like an encyclopedia.  And yet you implied
> > that anyone who does mass-editing is either using a script or is
> > "mindlessly hitting a button".  Was that necessary?
>
> Same here. I've racked up something like 50,000 article edits over the
> years and I've never touched AWB. The most automation I've ever used is
> Cyde's reference converter from time to time, and that requires copying
> and pasting from an external text field so it's not very automated



Yup, these are things that make Wikipedia look and function like an
encyclopedia.

Thank you both for taking the time to realize how important the details are
in an encyclopedia or anything worth doing, and for doing all the work that
makes my edits and contributions and research for Wikipedia worthwhile.  I
can't believe that people like you actually stick around and do this,
considering the dismissive way some people treat your work.  But, rest
assured, there are a lot of editors out there who realize the whole
endeavour would be a piece of webcrap without you.  I can't believe how much
work writing an article for Wikipedia is, and I never would have had the
time or inclination to say except for the fact that the first article I
wrote someone I didn't even know came in and spit shined it.  Spit-shined my
work--for free.  Thanks.

KP