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Hey, I'm cymru.lass! I'm a total geek/nerd. I'm also a travel junkie who has lived abroad and has way too many guidebooks for her own good. And a Wikipedian, as you might or might not have gathered. ;) My local time is 04:55 AM. Or, less likely, it could be 01:55 AM or 03:55 AM. (reload). I'm mostly based on the East Coast of the US.
I started contributing to Wikipedia when I was maybe 11? I'm not entirely sure. Suffice it to say, it's been a while. I started out sporadically copyediting from school computers as an unregistered editor, and when my family (finally) got DSL when I was 13, I began to edit more from home, still as an unregistered editor. I ended up registering in May 2010, and 12k edits later, here I am! I'm not really an article creator—I write well, but my talents lie in improving what's in front of me rather than creating something from scratch. My interests on here (as in real life) lie in the behind-the-scenes work—things like vandalism reversion, copyediting, format tweaks, cleanup and deletion.
By now, you've probably noticed my off-hand way of talking on this page, and possibly in general. This doesn't mean I don't take Wikipedia seriously, or that I don't respect the work that other editors and I have done on this project. Rather, it's my way of keeping myself lighthearted. I've found it makes me a more relaxed, enjoyable person to interact with. Rest assured, I talk much more seriously in articles, serious discussions and edit summaries. (With the exception of template sandbox edit summaries. Because after the fifth failed attempt at making a piece of code work, heaven knows I need to snark at myself a bit to keep going.) I've noticed that discussions on here can get way heated, way fast, and I've also noticed that those are the discussions get the least done. They turn making points into creating and defending sides, and trying to see others' points into feeling the need to defend one's side and attack everyone else's. So from day one, I've made a conscious effort to keep myself slipping into the mindset that any discussion, revision, deletion, etc., is mission critical. I firmly believe that having a sense of humor is of the utmost importance here so as not to lose one's mind or blow issues out of proportion. I do tend to be fairly casual in (non-serious) discussions with other editors. I use smileys on occasion, which might seem a bit childish to some, but I've got good reasons for doing so. Tone is difficult to convey and even easier to misinterpret in a text-only medium. A well placed smile or wink can go a long way to express warmth, gratitude, sarcasm or humor in a way lines of text can't.
More recently, I've been trying to expand that attitude into my interactions with new and/or rule-breaking editors. I've noticed it's pretty common for those of us who work in vandalism reversion, NPP, XfD, and the like to sort of forget that everyone here isn't clued in to how Wikipedia works. It's really easy, especially with tools like Twinkle to let templates do all the talking for you—I'm definitely guilty my fair share of that. And don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating against their use; those templates and tools are incredibly useful. It's just important to not let the important thing—helping an inexperienced user understand why their edit was against guidelines/their page was deleted/what notability means/what reliable sources are—get lost in the shuffle. We forget that their Wikipedia is different from ours—our Wikipedia isn't just the articles. It's the talk pages, the namespaces, the Wikiprojects, the templates and how to use them, the tools and scripts and gadgets, the XfD pages, and most importantly, the policies and guidelines and how to find them. We've been in this world so long that it's easy to forget that most people's Wikipedia is just the articles and maybe the article talk pages. They don't know there's a whole world back here. They don't know that if you delete their page or undo their edit, it isn't gone forever. They don't know the difference between an admin and a garden-variety user. They don't know there's a notability policy. Your average newbie is just starting to venture into our Wikipedia, so it's really important to take the time to explain the lay of the land, rather than say "Hey. You're not supposed to do that. Don't do it."
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