user:Noswall59

I was drawn to editing because I grew frustrated to find so many Wikipedia articles which were missing or in a poor state. After a while, it dawned on me that "if you want something doing, do it yourself" so I got stuck in. To date, I have over 14,000 edits, most to the article space (>78%) and much of the rest is related to producing content (I used to draft in my userspace). I have created over 1,000 mainspace articles and substantially improved many others, mostly biographies or lists of notable people. I remain engaged in improving Wikipedia's patchy coverage of people in under-represented fields of British history, politics and society. I have also worked to improve our coverage of women and non-Anglophone people; I've created dozens of articles about women.

The following are some major achievements of mine:

• I brought several articles about Sleaford up to GA or FA-standards and improved many others (mostly 2014–16)
• I have created wiki-linked, comprehensive lists of people receiving top-level state honours in the UK, including knights and dames of the Royal Victorian Order (2014–17) and Knights Bachelor (2020 onwards). There are still many more to go, but each list is complete in itself; I have used these to guide article creation.
• I created a list of every Fellow of the British Academy (completed in 2015–16) and have linked all of the entries, with many being redlinks. I have used this to create dozens of articles for FBAs; I resumed this work in 2021 and have created articles for every missing fellow elected before the early 1980s.
• I have created wiki-linked lists of top-level academics at several UK institutions, including Titles of Distinction awarded by the University of Oxford (2018) and holders of named chairs of music (2018–19). I have used this to create dozens of articles on notable subjects.
• I have created wiki-linked lists of every member of the various Estonian legislatures (2019) and created dozens of articles for members.
• I am in the process of writing up biographical lists of people appointed Queen's Counsel in England and Wales (see for instance 1950 silks).
• In 2020 I created lists of every member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science, the country's national academy.
• I am interested in expanding Wikipedia's coverage of senior British civil servants and have worked on several lists of them; I have created several dozen articles for permanent secretaries.
• I essentially rewrote the page on Skegness in 2020 and brought that up to FA standard.

As of September 2021, these are projects I intend to work on over time, often sporadically and to no schedule. Many of them are already ongoing. If anyone reads this and wants to help, please do!

• Improve articles on major Lincolnshire towns: Grantham (high priority; need access to an unpublished PhD thesis), Scunthorpe (next in line), Sleaford (bring up to date and to FA level), Grimsby (must acquire some sources); longer-term: Lincoln, England, Boston, England, Stamford, History of Lincolnshire. Also, bring Kesteven and Sleaford High School to GA (will need access to offline newspaper sources).
• Create articles for all Fellows of the British Academy (list of missing FBAs is here)
• Produce navbox templates for FBAs by year of appointment
• Create articles for all modern Permanent Secretaries of UK government ministries, departments, etc. (list of UK officials is here; heads of pre-devolution Scottish departments are here and need notability assessing on a case-by-case basis)
• Create a list of Permanent Secretaries of Northern Irish government departments
• Finish producing complete lists of post-1900 Knight Bachelor appointments (about a third of the way there)
• Produce lists of GCB, KCB and DCB appointments, and link (working on offline)
• Produce lists of GCMG, KCMG and DCMG appointments, and link (yet to begin)
• Produce lists of GBE, KBE and DBE appointments, and link (yet to begin)
• Link all knights, dames and 2-star-plus military officers in post-1900 honours lists for the UK (about a quarter of the way there)
• Very long-term: populate lists of knights of the orders of chivalry (partially done for Royal Victorian Order)

I have been privileged to have access to academic libraries and many pay-walled online resources in the past, which I have used when editing Wikipedia; I considered this rewarding and hope that it helps to make knowledge more accessible to "ordinary" people across the world. Even if the topics I research sometimes seem esoteric or obscure, I believe that, if anything, those hard-to-research articles are the ones which give Wikipedia its strength. Anyone can Google a fact about the Roman Empire, but it was much harder to find stuff about, say, the agricultural historian G. E. Fussell before I created his article. Now it's there, with links to further reading. When you do this 1,000 times over, it's likely having a positive effect.

These days, I don't have ready access to as much online material, but I do have a good library of books and pamphlets about Lincolnshire and British history and still have access to many helpful resources. I also subscribe to the British Newspaper Archive.

When it comes to writing, I don't profess to be the best, but I have some recognised content under my belt (see right) and am always trying to improve. My initial efforts needed some copy-editing, but I've come a long way since then and have accrued real-world writing experience. I'd like to produce more high-quality stuff, but I rarely have the time for that sort of sustained effort. Hence, I've taken to making short articles (usually in sporadic batches) when I have free time.

I gather that most Wikiprojects are moribund and I see little point in adding my name to most, even in areas where I am active. Nevertheless, I am a member of the following:

• Biography. Joined on 28 April 2014.
• Military History. Joined on 4 August 2014.

My approach to Wikipedia is relatively simple: it would not be an encyclopaedia without content. That is central to its mission to deliver the sum of all knowledge to anyone for free. I believe firmly in that mission. I want to help make Wikipedia better and I believe that its articles have to be high-quality and scholarly for them to fulfil this aim. Yet when I joined my university, I was shocked at how much is stored behind castle-like walls (sometimes literally, sometimes digitally or financially). I want to help make knowledge free because I think it empowers people (though obviously I respect copyright and intellectual property, etc.) It's in my nature to quietly get on with editing or creating articles which are more obscure or in need of improving. Doing so tends to avoid conflicts with other editors, and I generally prefer to avoid conflict anyway. I am a believer that we should aim to communicate in a civil and, above all, constructive manner. There really is no need to be a jerk.

Category:Wikipedians in the United Kingdom