User:SeoR

Welcome to SeoR's personal page on Wikipedia.

This user pledges to return to
Old-fashioned Wikipedian values.

Background comment: This is a pretty broad community whose members perform a range of tasks according to their interests, knowledge and skills, often shifting over time. No more than academia, politics or business, the community is not a perfect mirror of the world's diversity, but almost all regular editors are committed to the sharing of knowledge and the community's standards. Wikipedia is sometimes criticised for lack of coverage of certain topic areas or aspects of life, and over-coverage of others, and I share such frustration at times - but as an encyclopedia, it tends to reflect the world, with its inherent biases, especially when it comes to reliable sources. I'm involved since 2007, and it's still fun (but I did take an extended near-break from 2009 to late 2017, when family circumstances / other aspects of Real Life demanded, and when some internal arguments, notably to do with certain Irish topics, got a bit shouty).

I love what Wikipedia does for the world and its users, and believe in keeping most of what we have, but reinforcing its quality and reference-ability - but I do find it frustrating that we have sportspeople and popular culture figures by the 10s of thousands, especially from 15-20 countries, and also many historical leaders, but still poor coverage of large areas of science and other aspects of academia, and of many business figures and enterprises too (sadly an area where we receive far too much PR / other inappropriate content), and of the almost the entire rich histories of whole countries and cultures, and the >50% of humanity... I also wish more people would donate suitable images, notably photographs of people.

Myself: I focus on Irish matters, especially to do with localities in Dublin and nearby counties, and also including myth and folklore, the Irish language, Irish authors, and further including speculative fiction, some areas of science and industry, and more. I'm on the Web since Gopher was a thing, and have put in a lot of time on previous projects, notably the Open Directory Project. I also joined Wikimedia Commons early on, and hope to do more there, from attic storage and other sources. I joined after I'd been asked for suggestions and material by existing Wikipedians, and having had the "compliment" of having some of my material "borrowed" too. At times, I'm also active in Pending Changes, reviewing proposed alterations to semi-protected articles, and trying to improve submissions which have value but are not quite right.

For what it's worth, I've made around 42.5k edits and >2k logged actions across more than 24k pages, a good portion of that concerned with article improvement and rating (I've rated more than 15k articles for WikiProject Ireland, and had the pleasure of finally reaching "zero to rate" with the help of a couple of colleagues). From 2020, I've also returned to an old interest in creating articles, now more demanding than it was in the 2000s, when it was often enough to have a source or two - we now require much better referencing. My statistics are available to view:
SeoR (talk · contribs · logs · block log · page moves · count · edit summaries · non-automated edits · articles created · BLP edits · AfD votes · XfD votes · admin score (beta) · no prior RfA)

If I can help improve an article, or answer a question, please reach out to me on my Talk page, or send an e-mail (I have a dedicated account for Wikipedia). Like most Wikipedians, I keep my encyclopedia and day-to-day lives separate, so any discussions will be with my identity here, only. If you're new to Wikipedia, welcome, and please do help us do even more :-)

Offline / limited periods

In case anyone wonders why a query has not been answered or action taken / completed, I keep a brief log of absences / periods of limited activity:

2018

After December break, aimed to get Unassessed Ireland below 10k for the year-end - and did so.

2019

Weak Feb., patchy March, solid gaps in May, June, August. Patchy in part of Sep. and Oct., and two solid gaps in December.

2020

Slow start, good later March. April: Real Life (mostly work-from-home in Covid-time, and related family needs) demanding, so much offline. June with gaps and RL and Irish SFFH archive push (that did not continue). Slow start to the second half, limited all July, some solid absences in August. Gaps in October, and November, including two weeks into December.

2021

Gaps in Jan., solid Feb., gaps in March. So-so April, May, RL work piled up. Two gaps in June, more in July, incl. offline travel 22-30, then OK August. Some absences in Sept. and Oct., and RL intervened late Oct. Good start to November, then small gaps. Solid start to December, albeit diverted by a new "hidden potential" article; largely offline the rest of the month, except a little of the 13th and less of the 15th and 30th.

2022

Mixed start, finally properly going on 10 Jan. Working the last 3.49k of assessments, and more, and helped with a WikiProject Ireland member run-through. Good late Jan. & early Feb., albeit away / offline majority of 11-16 Feb., then good run, off 23, and remote 24-27. Start of Mar. hit by remote travel - 7 content edits in 8 days, 5 w/ none at all, and again away most of 10-18 and 20-21 Mar. Unexpectedly away again 24-25 and offline 27 Mar. After a good busy few days, remote suddenly mid-31 Mar. to end of 2 Apr. Away again 3 and most of 4 Apr., again p.m. of 14-17 March, and then again - just 1 edit in the whole second half of Apr. Better start to May but then away 10-14 and more than three wks, 17-31 May and to 7 June, with one brief working moment. Steady later June, except 21 and 28, travelling. Overall, weakest period in years. OK start to July, away 11th and most of 16-17th, good finish, then good 1-3 and away 4-8 August. Decent Aug., good progress on rating, but busy week from the 22nd, and more-or-less away 26th and 28th. Good Sept., and right through to 10 Oct., largely away 11-14 Oct., travelling back for 14th, away again from 16-21 incl., most of 23-25, and 31st; weakest month in a while. Slow start to Nov., away 4, 7, 11-12, 18-19, most of 26-28. Away 5 and largely 10-11 Dec. Offline 23-26, and much of 29-30 Dec.

2023

1-2 Jan., most of 6-9, 10-11 and 28 off. Away 10-11 Feb., most of 24 Feb.-5 Mar. Good next 10 days, of which much of 14-15 went on an article improvement drive after an external request. Ill 18-20 Mar., largely away 24-25. Ill from later 3-5 Apr., and travelling 8-12. Away for long weekend to 17, planning new articles and largely away 28-29 Apr., back evening of 30. Away 14 & 23, most of 26-29 May. Away 8, most of 16-17 June, 21 p.m. to 23 a.m., and sudden trip 28 eve. to lunch. 30. Trips 1-5 Jul., eve. of 8 to morn. of 10 and p.m. 11 to 13, and even more 14-19 Jul., except brief return one night, then away 24-26 also, then 28-p.m. of 31. Good start to Aug., away 10 & 12 - p.m. of 14, most of 15, 17 and 19. Solid finish to Aug., away 1-2, part 3, and all 5, then most of 7-11 and 28-29 Sept. Away most of 6-7, all of 8-10, and again most of 14 and all 15; sick 17-19; away during 26 Oct.. Away 9, most of 23-25 and 27-28 Nov. Sick 1-11 December, returned 12 but eyes were not yet ready; returned briefly 19, then 21-22, 23-24, 27-30 with gaps, and will not be doing much today, travelled for New Year's. To all fellow editors, Happy New Year! SeoR (talk) 15:52, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

2024

OK start, 5 Jan. off after a few midnight edits, hosting knocked out most of 6-7, all of 8-9. Away from 12, limited access for a week - 13-14 mostly absent, also 17, 19-22, 24-25 (travel), 28. Good 1 Feb., offline 2 to 4 / 5. Unexpectedly away 21-22, largely offline 26-28 Feb. and 1-2 Mar., ill 3-4, away 8-10, parts of 11-12, most of 17-19, most of 23-28 (3G access at best; entirely away 23, 25, 28), and offshore almost all of 29-31 Mar. p.m., and again 2 to evening of 5 Apr., most of 9-10 and all of 13. Away again 15-18, almost entirely 19-20 and 22, 26, 27, 29-30. OK start to May, best of 2024 - the year work took off - but away 11, 15-16, 19, 25 (mostly) and 13 and 23 (wholly). Away 1 and most of 2 and 4 June; also 8-9, 15, most of 16-17 and lunchtime 18 to the night of 21. Offshore, and offline except for a few minutes, 25 June to morning of 2 July, and little present until 5, then away 7-14 except two brief accesses. Again away 17-22 Jul. except a brief visit, and most of 25-29.

Slow start to August, a few edits on the 1st, resuming night of the 3rd, offshore 4-9, then sick; returned 16 Aug., a little 17, back 20, largely away 24-25, wholly 26th. Away most of 7, 10-12, 14-15, 17-24 September except a few hours, and 26th. Terrible month, largely remote October, under 30 useful edits, and a weak start to November too, offline travel, fully for 10+ days, again 27-28 - really hope I can pull things back. SeoR (talk) 01:13, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

WP Ireland and article rating / backlog closing

This user is a participant in
WikiProject Ireland.

Following on from the start of the great ratings push in 2007, one of my main targets in 2018 was to work through the backlog of over 15k articles unrated in the WP Irish project, and, despite more than 500 new articles flowing in during the process, I managed more than 5.5k reviews, to get below 10k "to do" by 29 December 2018. I am determined (and I am not the only editor on the case) to clear this backlog entirely. For the first two months of 2019, I mostly targeted other work, but as of late February, with 9.8k articles to review and rate... and as of end October 2019, c. 8k. As part of this work I also get the chance to help some new articles on WP, and to copyedit or do other basic fixes to some more obscure items. I have now adopted Twinkle and will try to do more ancillary work as I continue rating. SeoR (talk) 20:25, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

2020: 6,450 articles to go, as of mid-January. From just over 1k rated in 2007 to 20k, 40k, etc., it would be great to finish initial rating, then tackle completeness of coverage, reviews of ratings, and improving of priority articles.SeoR (talk) 09:08, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

2021: c. 5,400 articles to go. Last year saw quite many new articles to rate, and much else on, so despite handling well over 1,000 WP:IRL ratings, nowhere near finished... I really hope to see this - working alongside one very regular, and 2-3 occasional, fellow raters - to a conclusion... Then, with over 60k substantive articles, and thousands more of special-purpose items, the Project will have a great base for members' work planning. SeoR (talk) 12:55, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Recap, for those not fully familiar with article ratings:

Start: has a meaningful amount of good content, including at least one serious element of gathered materials - but still weak in multiple areas, and may lack a key element.
C: has a defined structure, including a lede and one or more sections, is free from major linguistic (spelling and grammatical) errors, and if and when appropriate, has suitable supporting materials, such as an infobox and/or images / figures, and either reasonably covers the topic (with no major obvious inaccuracies) with some referencing or somewhat covers it while being well-referenced on all major points.
B: has a defined structure, including a lede and one or more sections, is free from major linguistic (spelling and grammatical) errors, and if and when appropriate, has suitable supporting materials, such as an infobox and/or images / figures, and both reasonably covers the topic (with no major obvious inaccuracies or omissions) and is well-referenced on all major points (with inline citations as far as possible).

SeoR (talk) 21:25, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

2022: Over 3k articles to go at the start of the year, and successfully closed, with Sarah777, wwCensor, and others! 2024: By the end of the first half of the year, 100,000 articles rated in the project - a nice moment! SeoR (talk) 23:18, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

New articles

I got back to new article development in 2020, partly inspired by a number of other editors (the incredibly productive Antiqueight, WikiCommunity Ireland co-ordinator Smirkybec, GA-success Britishfinance, and the vanished Twilson, among others), and remembered how much fun it can be, albeit also the frustrations, especially in a year with much library closure, and with minimum standards having gone up a lot since the early 2010s. So I plan to do something most months of each year, having restarted with some topics from local discussions: Tailors' Hall, oddly missing, amaptocare, a massive but later forgotten Dublin municipal tree-planting arts project, some of the more active local schools (having rated many schools of less visibility; one done, at least one other in mind), and at least one north Dublin scientist (two covered in 2020) and one business figure (one in 2020, one started). In 2022 and 2023 I even started to allow myself the odd impulse creation. SeoR (talk) 15:13, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

And I wrote 14 in 2021, for a total of 51 article creations, but only 3 in the first half of 2022, as March - May lacked much time and access for Wikipedia, and June was catching-up time. I hope to get back to this, and pass 60 by year-end.SeoR (talk) 20:03, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

And as of Dec. 2023, article creations reached, I think, 71. SeoR (talk) 00:11, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

DYK and GA work

DYKs of articles initiated and nominated by SeoR
Ref	Article	Nom	Appearance	12/24h	Reads	Reads/hr.	Notes	QPQ
A1	Emma Teeling (new)	2020	Sat. 3 Oct. 2020	24h	7.6k	316	> Stats page	pre-2
A2	Tailors' Hall (new)	2021	Weds. 24 Feb. 2021	12h	3.8k	316	-	Q2) Arik Brauer
A3	Chris Horn (computer scientist) (new)	2021	Weds. 5 May 2021	12h	3.43k	286	-	Q4) Konrad Rupf
A4	Róisín Ingle (new)	2021	Tue. 30 Mar. 2021	12h	3.39k	282	-	Q1) Noelle Campbell-Sharp
A5	Amaptocare (new)	2021	Fri. 5 Mar. 2021	12h	2k	167	-	Q3) John Atcheler
A6	John Teeling (new)	2020	Fri. 16 Nov. 2020	24h	3.8k	160	-	pre-4
A7	Karlin Lillington (new)	2021	Thu. 29 Apr. 2021	12h	1.1k	93	-	Q6) Edward Hewitt Nichols
A8	Peter T. Gallagher (new)	2020	Mon. 26 Oct. 2020	24h	1.5k	62	-	pre-3
A9	Arden Warner (new)	2021	___	_	-	62	-	Template:Did you know nominations/Omas gegen Rechts
A10	Hubert Dunn (new)	2021	___	_	_	62	-	Template:Did you know nominations/Franz Josef Altenburg
A11	Eeva Leinonen (new)		___	_	_	-	-
A12	Lisette Olivera (new)		___	_	_	-	-
A13	Audrey Whitty (new)		___	_	_	-	-
A14	Peter Fallon (poet)		___	_	_	-	-
A15	Sophie von Maltzan		___	_	_	-	29 Dec.

DYKs of articles expanded by SeoR, nominated by SeoR
Ref	Article	Nom	Appearance	12/24h	Reads	Reads/hr.	Notes	QPQ
E1	River Poddle	2021	Tue. 30 Mar. 2021	12h	6k	499	> Stats page	Q5) Kolja Lessing
E2	Museum of Literature Ireland	___	-	24h	2.8k	-	-	Q7) Chi Chi DeVayne
E3	Grey Gowrie	___	-	_	_	-	-	Template:Did you know nominations/Rhodesia Information Centre
E4	Ireland's Eye	___	-	_	_	-	-	Template:Did_you_know_nominations/February_28_Popular_Leagues
E5	Randal Plunkett, 21st Baron of Dunsany	___	-	_	_	-	-	Template:Did you know nominations/William McAndrew (educator)
E6	Linda Doyle	___	-	_	_	-	-
E7	Hodges Figgis	___	-	_	_	-	-
E8	Sarah Maria Griffin	___	-	_	_	-	-
E9	An Taisce	2023	Sun., 25 Sept. 2023	24h	3.89k	162	-
E10	Robert Ballagh	2023	-	-	-	-	5 Jan. '24

DYKs of articles initiated by other, nominated by SeoR
Ref	Article	Nom	Appearance	12/24h	Reads	Reads/hr.	Notes	QPQ
N1	Elizabeth Echlin	___	Thu. 3 Oct. 2019	24h	1.57k	65	-	pre-1

All nominations: 15+10+1 =26

DYKs of articles initiated by SeoR, nominated by other
Ref	Article	Nom	Appearance	12/24h	Reads	Reads/hr.	Notes	-
O1	St. Assam's Church	___	5 Jun. 2007	-	-	Before pageview records	Created 29 May 2007	-

Totals: Articles created or expanded and DYK'd (15 A +10 E +1 O =26), articles nominated (15 A +10 E +1 N =26)

DYKs of articles where SeoR credited, but nominated by other
Ref	Article	Nom	Appearance	12/24h	Reads	Reads/hr.	Notes	-
Q1	Jane Suiter	___	June 2021	-	-	TBC	TBC	-
Q2	Grafton Street	___		-	-	TBC	TBC	-
Q3	Harry Crosbie	___		-	-	TBC	29 Dec.	-

Total QPQ check-count: (15+10+1+1 -2 missed older +3 supp-ctrib. =28)

DYKs of articles reviewed (to date, all approved)
Ref	Article	Nom	Appearance	12/24h	Reads	Reads/hr.	Notes	Init. ed.	Reviewed
Q1	Noelle Campbell-Sharp	1 Sept. 2019	10 Sept. 2019	12h	0.6k	53	-	Twilson_r	1 Sept. 2019
Q2	Arik Brauer	___	17-18 Feb. 2021 (first position, w img)	24h	12.3k	514	-	Gerda Arendt (Gerda Arendt & Grimes2)	3 Feb. 2021
Q3	John Atcheler	___	to 8 Feb. 2021	12h	3.4k	283	-	Simon Edwards Esq	3 Feb. 2021
Q4	Konrad Rupf	___	to 11 Feb. 2021 1200	12h	0.97k	80	-	Gerda Arendt (LouisAlain & Gerda Arendt)	3-6 Feb. 2021
Q5	Kolja Lessing	11 Mar. 2021 (cr. 4 Mar. 2021)	-	12h	-	-	-	Gerda Arendt (LouisAlain & Gerda Arendt)	18-23 Mar. 2021
Q6	Edward Hewitt Nichols	12 Mar. 2021 (cr. 7 Mar. 2021)	25 Mar. 2021	12h	1.34k	112	-	Aseleste	20-23 Mar. 2021
Q7	Chi Chi DeVayne	1 Apr. 2021 (GA 31 Mar. 2021)	-	12h?	-	-	-	Armadillopteryx	23 Apr. 2021
Q8
Q9
Q10
Q11...