User:Academic Challenger

For your many contributions on political figures world-wide, I award you this barnstar. Isomorphic

Hi there. On Wikipedia I will be calling myself Academic challenger, because I am interested in academic subjects. I have a real name that I call myself by in my life outside the Internet, but I will not disclose this name.

I am a young male American college student currently studying and living in the western United States. My main interests are history and politics. Most of my contributions here will be about these subjects. Politically I am very liberal and a member of the democratic party, and strongly urge all American Wikipedians to support the Democratic party during these difficult times, and vote for its candidates in the 2006 and 2008 elections. Of course, I am very disappointed about many of the results of the 2004 elections, but I am participating in updating Wikipedia's articles about politicians who were newly elected, re-elected or defeated in these elections, and will write in an NPOV style, noting the victories and defeats of both Democrats and Republicans.

I also like to study religion and science. I enjoy literature and music (mostly classical music) very much. For outdoor activities, I like swimming and skiing.

I first discovered Wikipedia sometime in 2001, while doing a google search on Ragnar Lodbrok. I was impressed but got sidetracked and did not stay that time. I discovered it again in late August 2003, while doing a google search on political assassinations. This time I immediately decided to start contributing. I contributed for about three months before deciding to create an account. For most of that time I have had the Ip number User: 68.116.64.92. (All contributions by that IP number are mine). I have added much to the List of assassinated persons, which has grown to twice the size it was when I discovered it in August, partly through my contributions. Though I am interested in history from all different time periods, you will notice that most of my edits have been about modern/recent history and politics. This is because I have found that the information about ancient and midieval history has been worked on by users more knowledgable than I, while the areas I work on are somewhat lacking, at least compared to the amount of knowledge I have, or at least can easily dig up from other sites, like rulers.org and the Congressional Biographical Directory. For example, political information about certain countries tends to linger for several months or even more than a year without being updated. The CIA Factbook is a good resource, but it is only accurate for a few months. My current most important project, however, is to make sure that all of the United States senators have articles. My goal is to have that done by the end of December. Hopefully they will all have *good* articles in time for the 2004 election, when we'll have to add some more! In the meantime, I also add articles about political leaders from around the world and sometimes click the random page function and correct typographical errors, even if I don't know much about the subject of the article.

I am very dedicated to the concept of working with the Wikipedia community, striving for a neutral point of view and expanding the encyclopedia while trying to avoid creating problems. I have not participated on debates on talk pages or other special pages much, but I will do so more now, especially since I am an administrator. I read the pages like Vandalism in progress Votes for deletion and Problem users for entertainment, to see the spectacle that vandals and trolls make of themselves, but I am glad that I am not one of them. I also monitor the special Newpages for articles that need speedy deletions or expansion.

Finally, I am almost totally blind and use a talking computer. The only major consequence of this on Wikipedia is that it has taken me a very long time to learn the formatting.

Favorite websites besides Wikipedia http://www.rulers.org (political information). http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/ (the online books page) http://www.google.com Search engine. http://groups.google.com Usenet, including archive for the last 20 years. http://news.google.com News and current events. Page and account created November 15 2003. Update as of December 7 2003; my project on the United States senators went well. All current senators now have their own articles (the last senator to get one was Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, which was written by me last week). A few need to be basically completed, and most could use expansion, but for now I am glad that all of these people are at least represented here on Wikipedia. I am somewhat stuck now, because I have had little time to contribute lately, and I am not sure what to do next, but I am sure I will contribute regularly again soon.

Update as of January 5 2004. I am now contributing articles about the governors of the United States, both current and previous. My goal is to have all of the current state governors with an article by the end of the month. I am also adding articles and updates and additions for articles about foreign leaders whenever I find one that needs them. I am using rulers.org to acquire much of my information, and I highly recommend it for all wikipedians and anyone else interested in the politics of the past two centuries. I am glad to be starting my first full calendar year as a Wikipedian!

Update as of February 7, 2004: Well, I have not edited for the past two weeks. I have been very busy lately and am still busy, but I am back now.

Update February 28, 2004: I was gone and am now back again, at least for a day or so. I am about to create List of Foreign Ministers , if all goes well. On second thought I have decided not to finish that tonight, but create the list of foreign ministers over a few days or weeks whenever I have time, and then post it. I am wondering where to link it in appropriate places so that it does not become an orphan. Any comments can be sent to my talk page. Update as of May 10, 2004: I continue to edit whenever I have time. The list of foreign ministers has already been created, but I am thinking about beginning articles about people on that list who don't have them. I think that my main job right now is writing articles about new people on the List of national leaders and updating articles about people who leave that list. I still write about United States politicians, world leaders and articles I find that need help.

Update as of July 8, 2004. Taking an indefinite break for personal reasons, which had nothing to do with problems related to Wikipedia.

Update as of July 28, 2004. I have returned, for now, although my editing might be very irregular. Update as of September 3, 2004. I am definitely not leaving, and I should continue to edit regularly. Update as of September 4, 2004. I have been nominated for adminship. If you would like to join the discussion about whether I should become an admin, go to Wikipedia: Requests for Adminship. Update as of September 10, 2004. I am now an administrator. Thanks User:Neutrality for nominating me, and thanks also to all the other users who participated in the discussion.

Update as of November 10, 2004. My role on Wikipedia continues to evolve. I still edit and create articles about political leaders around the world, but I am returning to focusing on American politics, as I was this time last year. In January I plan to help updating Wikipedia in light of people taking office because of the election. I am also writing about American politicians from the nineteenth and early twentieth century, as well as politicians from other countries during that time period, rather than just modern ones. Meanwhile, I have begun avidly checking Special:Newpages. This has led me to edit many different kinds of articles to save them from deletion, to learn many interesting things that I would have never known before (including some speedy deletion candidates containing things that I really don't need to know) and I have deleted several hundred pages since I became an administrator two months ago. I believe that I have exercised good judgment most of the time I delete a page. I admit that sometimes I enjoy deleting pages. However, I consider myself to be a moderate inclusionist, and don't delete pages unless they contain no encyclopedic information.

Update as of November 29, 2004. I have decided to write a list of articles that I have written on my user page. Many users that I respect do this, and I think it is a good way to help me remember the articles that I have created, and help point people who have arrived on this page to articles that I have written. This is a very partial list, and is currently under construction. I am addin g them as I remember them. These do not include articles to which I have made major edits but did not create. Also, many of the articles that I wrote have been greatly expanded since I wrote them. See below.

Update as of March 20, 2005. I continue to divide my time on Wikipedia between monitoring newpages and speedy deletion, writing articles about American politicians and other political figures from around the world, both historical and modern, and fixing some articles about many subjects that need fixing. As an administrator, I have blocked three vandals, and my user page has been vandalized twice. Here is the list of articles I have written.

Contents

1 Literature

2 American Politicians

3 Political Parties

4 Southeast Asian Politicians

5 East Asian Politicians

6 Central Asian and Afghan politicians

7 South Asian Politicians

8 European Politicians

9 Israeli Politicians

10 Other Middle Eastern Politicians

11 African politicians and topics