WIKIPEDIA

People who know me know that I have a seemingly unquenchable appetite for knowledge.  I've always enjoyed learning new things in a wide variety of subjects.  For some time, I tried to maintain my main website as a reflection of some of my favorite bits of knowledge.  Part of the problem with that was the relative difficulty in updating and adding new sections in an organized manner.

Recently, I've been spending A LOT of time on Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia.  I enjoyed the uniform appearance of articles contained on the site and appreciated the wealth of easily-obtained knowledge there.  Occasionally, I'd find topics where I knew additional information that wasn't included.

Yesterday, I took the plunge and registered as a user/contributor and began expanding the page about Thai rock band Carabao (adding the infobox, some biographical details, etc.).  I also started a page to list the band's extensive discography as well as several individual album pages.

Once you get used to the formatting, it's very easy to add and edit pages.  If your knowledge is lacking somewhere, someone else will (usually) come along and add the missing information.  It's VERY addictive.

After working on a few articles, I decided to create my user information page when I realized my signature on the edits was linking to an empty page.  I wanted a photo information box like I'd seen on various biographical articles so I uploaded one of my "official" engagement photos we'd had taken in Lamphun last month.  In adding my current home, I found out that an article didn't exist about the actual tambon where I live so I created a page about Chalong.  I also discovered the cool userboxes that contributors use to inform others about their individual skills, interests, etc.  I think I went overboard (I'm a big fan of sidebar material as this blog reflects) but there are just so many to choose from!

In checking out some of the topics covered in the Thailand Portal, I found a list of films that use Thailand as a location.  This didn't include the film that had been shooting here on Phuket, so I added The Aftermath to the list and created a place-holder article (called a "stub" in Wikipedian).

My latest contribution was to begin working on improving the article about Kansas City band, The Rainmakers.  Previously, they had been included on what's called a "disambiguation" page which groups information on similarly-named topics for later expansion into separate articles.  My first task (very easy) was to move the existing information about this band to it's own article; it's already a very well-written introduction so I just "wikified" it with some formatting and links.  I plan to expand this with info boxes, photos, a discography (I already created a place-holder for this one), etc.  I have A LOT of material which I can expand this article with — unfortunately, much of it is in storage back in New Mexico but at least I did manage to include some in what I called "The Rainmakers Archives" (which, unfortunately, I haven't updated in over a year) on my main website.

There are so many other things I would like to contribute to Wikipedia.  For the time being, I plan to work on these above-mentioned projects to the point where I'm satisfied before I do anything else.  My userpage will always list what I'm working on; bookmark it and check back if you're interested.  At least the sidebar will be entertaining!

As you can see, I've kept myself extremely busy while Tim has been up in Bang Pa-In.