no more 2009 Wikicup Tournament of Champions

those silly guys over at the Simple English wikipedia couldn't even keep together the 2009 Wikipedia Tournament of Champions past the first round. I was leading my pool and would have advanced to the second round, but whatever

all I really did in February (other than partying and enjoying spending winter in the Caribbean and rocking out at Carnival) was create the list of tallest buildings in Chicago and fill in the top few. Getting the hang of the list creation and will do ones for Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Dubai. I'll prolly do ones for the United States and China too. That would get me most of the way done with the top 200, which was my original goal when I started on the wikipedia a year and a half ago. Still a long way to go, but the end is in sight. A few more and the Simple English will be in the top 5 of all language wikipedias as far as skyscrapers go. Not all that phenomenal an achievement in and of itslef, but if I can single-handedly versus all the languages of the world and come in behind only English, German, and French, then I'll take it. Plus I can rank up the Spanish and Portuguese ones whenever I want too. Or Italian or prolly a few others. I'm pretty much a one-man multilingual wikipedia skyscraper juggernaut. I've never been a juggernaut before, but it seems an apt title since the word derives from the Sanskrit Jagannātha, meaning master of the world

2009 Wikicup Tournament of Champions

2009 Wikicup Tournament of Champions
took me 'til the end of the month to start, but I created alist of the tallest buildings in New York City and filled in a few blanks that were on the top 200 page I made a while ago. Added a link to the new list on the other New York skyscraper pages too and edited the Empire State Building one a lil'. Not too productive, but enough to put me in 2nd place in my group. Not sure how they're counting though, they only gave me points for minor edits when I quite obviously created stubs that were over 300kB and a new article that was nearly 5000kB. Whatever

the Simple English wikipedia is really not very good. It's mostly just stubs and dead links. They have some articles, and a few editors, but anyone hard-core is on the English one or the one in their native language. Still though, I'ma keep on plugging away. Can't really complain since I'm not even a star on a hurting wiki. Yet . . .

December

only played on the wikipedia a lil' this month, as moving to Trinidad and adventuring around took precedence over nerding it up on the computer. 40 hours a week on the internet for work still leaves plenty of time to delve deeper into the wiki world though

I found these other guys who are running a parallel list of places by area. Their table is far superior to the one me and my buddies at the E+m² have, but they are irrelevant. The only articles that link to their pages are their other pages. They are a self-perpetuating set of hyperlinks. A perfect example of a waste of energy. One of the main reasons that I've been so slow (aside from sheer laziness) to contribute heavily to the wikipedias is fear of squandering my time and efforts. These dudes have heated debates amongst themselves on the talk pages, but their hard work will continue to go unappreciated. Suppose it is still better than killing orcs and being a level 73 elvin mage or whatever they'd be doing with the internet otherwise, but it is depressing to see wasted potential

in other news, the wikipedia has a tournament where the more things you write and edit the more points you get and you can advance to the next round and there is a bracket and a wikicup champion. I signed up for the Simple English tournament (I am representing Trinidad & Tobago) and wrote a coupla stubs just to get back into the habit. There's no way I'm gonna win the tournament, but my objective is to not finish in last place. Look for me to curtail the English and Spanish wikipediaing, at least 'til I get thrown out of the tournament

1 E+12 m²

I've always had a thing for maps and charts full of statistics and almanacs and rankings. Realized one day that I was embarrassingly ignorant of Africa. Started out by just drawing the continent with borders for all the countries. I challenge any of you to take a blank piece of paper and draw Africa. Your map will be awful. Maybe you'll be able to roughly place Egypt and South Africa and maybe a few others, but no way you'll even get more that a dozen of the 53 with any accuracy. After a few times you can get pretty good though. Once I could draw a nasty map of Africa I started learning and comparing the land areas and populations of the countries. That was almost 4 years ago though, and I haven't played with any of the flashcards since I moved out of that apartment

A few weeks ago I found some underperfected wikipedianess that is right up that alley though. It is a list ranking of all sorts of stuff based on size. Countries and states and provinces too. I had made some charts versing the big Brazilian and Australian ones with Canadia's best of and Alaska, but without the Russian and Chinese ones it was a pretty dumb game. I had almanacs in 3 languages, but none had stats for all the contestants. Fast forward a few years and now everything is but a hyperlink or two away. They got planets and moons and oceans and deserts and all sorts of stuff these wikipedia charts. Still missing a lot though, which is where I can be of assistance

I added Chad, Mali, and Mauritania on the E + 12m² page. Apparently folks had been neglecting the African countries on my flashcards. I also added Krasnoyarsk Krai (Russia), Tyumen Oblast (Russia), and South Australia. Corrected the numbers for Canada, Western Australia, Greenland, Queensland, Xinjiang, and Northern Territory too

Then I created links to the E + 12m² page on for Greenland, Alaska, and Bolivia, and corrected the ones for Indonesia and the Brazilian states of Amazonas and Pará. Coupla them are featured articles too. Hadn't really used the English account since Dec 2007 and first day back I'm editing featured articles. Tried to add the E + 12m² link on other articles that didn't have it, but there is template drama. Everything has it's own special template with all sorts of things that get confused. I can do countries and Brazilian states, but couldn't get Chinese, Russian, Canadian, or Australian ones. Not trying to edit their Infobox templates, so their km² isn't hyperlinked like everyone else's

Still though, it was a pretty decent return from hiatus. The E + 11m² article has a lot more missing information/mistakes as there are a lot more things of that size than there are one order of magnitude larger. It shouldn't be that hard though, I'll prolly get in a few here and there over the next few weeks

I also unified all my accounts. All the various wikipedias are independent, which meant that prior to May 2008 you had to have separate accounts for everything. If I wanted to upload a picture for an article I wrote in Spanish, I had to create a separate account to upload the picture to the Commons. Then if I wanted to put that picture on the English wikipedia I needed to create another account to do that. So stupid. You always had the option of logging in anonymously and editing things as your IP address, but then you don't get the glory of contributing. I don't even have a profile page for most of my wiki accounts, but still. Not even sure what all a unified account entails. It feels like a big step up in legitimacy though, which is for what everything wikipedia-related should be striving

tryin' to bring sexyback

last week I was staying in Brooklyn and a friend recommended walking 'cross the bridge into Manhattan. So many people died and got "the bends" during its construction, gotta love feats of engineering with high body counts. Anywhoo . . . one of the signs from its centennial celebration in 1983 pointed out the various skyscrapers of the skyline. Recognized the name of one of 'em and proclaimed "hey, I know that building! I wrote the wikipedia entry for that building." Chuckled a bit and walked over the river. Downtown has lots more old and interesting things than does midtown, midtown architecture tends to be more of the giant rectangular style than the stone and gargoyle stuff in older areas. Was quite impressed with the carvings and metal stuff on this one building and then saw the name. "Hey, I wrote the wikipedia entry for that building too!" There weren't any pictures of all these cool details on the wikipedia though, just a crappy generic picture. Now here I was standing before the building that doesn't have any good pictures on the wikipedia. No excuses, I gotta start wikipediaing again. Had a buddy in Dubai who I tried to recruit into taking pictures of some of the Dubai skyscrapers that don't have good wikipedia pictures, but he declined. Now here I was in New York not taking pictures for the wikipedia either. And I had been in Chicago and not taken any pictures there either

haven't worked out since Puerto Rico either, but I'ma start overachieving again on at least one front ere I head back down to the Caribbean

Wikidrama: the navigational templates versus

Navigational templates are lil' boxes on the bottom of a wikipedia article that link it to other articles sharing a common theme. They are for the most part redundant with categories and lists, but they look pretty and lead to more right clicking and result in lots of Open Link in New Tab. Because they are easy to make, look cool, and link to articles you like/think people should click on, folks make a lot of navigational templates. That's why I make 'em. I even put pictures on mine. My navigational templates rock.

The creation of navigational templates has been getting completely out of hand. Some articles have a ridiculous number that serve more to confuse/overwhelm than to provide meaningful encyclopedic content. Check out the comical number of navigational templates for soccer coachSven-Göran Eriksson. A backlash of anti-navigational template deletionists have been overcompensating for this proliferation. Wiki folks tend to be sensitive and highly protective of their creations, and when legitimate navigational templates got caught in the deletion rampage, shit got kinda crazy. Wikipedia's open and democratic nature leads to bickering and counter rebuttals worse than you can imagine. Thousands of these guys versing thousands of these guys. Trust me, you don't want to get involved with any of these dudes.

Not sure who's gonna win the versus, but I'ma keep making navigational templates 'til the whole thing gets resolved. Been putting off making lists for some reason, but I need to get on that in order to hedge my bets and be sufficiently redundant that I won't be upset if everything gets deleted.

first encounter with a vandal

There's this dude (who logs in from multiple IP addresses) who likes to go around falsifying heights of skyscrapers in Mexico. Not quite sure why someone would chose to spend their time doing that, but the wikipedias attracts some strange folks. I wasn't trying to start any fights or appeal to any authorities or anything, so I just undid his stupidity and added some comments to the talk page. It was my first time contributing to a talk pages and doing so made me feel like an upstanding member of society.

Unfortunately, that was pretty much the extent of my contributions for April. I could make excuses (and not having electricity for 3 weeks is a pretty damn good one), but I am the only one responsible for my lack of productivity. Still plugging along, albeit at a slower than expected pace. Finally updated this blog though. It had been idle since November. Was hoping to have my wikiprofiles updated as well, but didn't get around to it. Maybe May will be the month. Will May be maybe the month? Maybe May be maybe be May maybe maybe maybe