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My contributions are made in an individual, personal capacity and so do not represent the official views of my employer or any other organisation to which I am affiliated. I am not affiliated with any group or organization that charges a fee for any activity relating to Wikipedia. If you have seen an advertisement for, or received any kind of message from, someone who claims that they can help you with any kind of issue with Wikipedia for a payment, it may be a scam. If any such advertisement or message refers to this user name, please mail me a report.
Before deciding to be a geographer, I considered several career paths. As a child, I wanted to be a paleontologist, and wanted to be a doctor of paleontology just like Alan Grant from Jurassic Park. My parents discouraged this, warning me that it would take a lot of school and would likely never pay well. As a teenager, I wanted to be a pilot and took flight lessons for several years in pursuit of a licence, soloing a plane before I could drive. When I started college, I began as a history major and joined AFROTC with the intention of becoming a pilot for the military, with the major just being a box to check. I decided the Air Force wasn't for me after a few semesters, and switched away from a focus on aviation. Although I didn't continue down that path, it influenced my passion for maps and navigation, and I'm still interested in planes today. After dropping AFROTC, my choice of major became much more important, and after I was told that most of the program graduates worked in the insurance industry, I decided to find something else, ultimately settling on geography after browsing the University course catalog, with the goal of becoming an analyst for one of the intelligence agencies. I ended up with an minor in history in addition to my geography degree, and stumbled into graduate school because it made sense in that moment. I learned that I enjoyed teaching and research, and decided to do that. All this is to say, I have had many false starts resulting in a range of interests, and while I can't always apply this knowledge base to my day job, I can while editing Wikipedia.
I started editing Wikipedia to correct an error on the Spatial analysis page. Then, I used it to procrastinate real-world responsibilities while waiting for replies from journal reviewers, editors, and advisors. Since then, working on Wikipedia has motivated me to review literature and practice writing. In addition to forcing me to read papers on topics I'm working on, this helps encourage me to read material outside my narrow focus and older material central to geography. This has resulted in improvements to my professional writing, as I often find myself referencing material I would never have read otherwise. I recommend grad students and researchers try this a few hours a week by either editing as they read and come across information that could be included or finding pages that require sources and hunting them down.
On a broader note, I believe it is the ethical responsibility of academics, cartographers, and subject matter experts in any field to improve the public-facing crowd-sourced literature when possible. This moves high-level academic knowledge into the sphere of public knowledge rather than hoarding it in the Ivory Tower, guild halls, or behind paywalls. As technology continues democratizing capabilities, ensuring the general public has access to the background information they need to employ the capabilities is essential. As many geographers know, others greatly misunderstand and misrepresent our discipline during this democratization process. Many disciplines have stumbled into the geography domain and rediscovered or appropriated our techniques, spreading our support thin. In a world dominated by specialists, broad generalist umbrellas like geography can be seen as redundant (a view I obviously reject), and while this is a problem for geography departments, it is a bigger problem when these techniques are misused and either accidentally or intentionally used to spread misinformation. The only way to correct this problem as Geographers is to Set A Good Example, which is my main motivation for editing Wikipedia (and the origin of my username). When I first started editing Wikipedia, I found the state of representation of geography to be lacking, to say the least. The main page for geography was a mess, in my opinion, and many topics I consider incredibly important had no representation at all. The state of maps on the project is even worse, with an entire category on category in Wikimedia Commons filled with misleading Choropleth maps that are used throughout Wikipedia, as well as many other examples of poor and possibly intentionally misleading map blunders. While this is still largely the case, I hope to help promote the discipline and avoid the misuse of geographic concepts by improving geography pages. In the future, I hope universities will consider activities like editing Wikipedia as part of faculty outreach duties.
A belated welcome! The welcome may be belated, but the cookies are still warm! —Ganesha811 (talk) 19:22, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
The Original Barnstar Nice job on George F. Jenks! I came across it while doing NPP. — Prodraxis {talk • contribs} (she/her) 22:15, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
The Writer's Barnstar For overhauling the discipline of geograhy at Wikipedia! — gidonb (talk) 05:34, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
The Geography Barnstar For your arduous work in creating and improving geography articles, namely Waldo Tobler related ones; your expert input is much appreciated! — The Blue Rider 21:17, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
Lalaithan has given you a Hershey Bar! You seem like a good person, hope you're doing well! — Lalaithan(talk) 06:06, 19 May 2024 (UTC)
The Original Barnstar Several times in that discussion I found myself thinking "this guy deserves a medal." Then I never showed up with a medal. Now I have. asilvering (talk) 21:58, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
The Master Detective Barnstar I dub thee the "master detective" with The Master Detective Barnstar. Through your deep persistence, expert puzzle-solving and clue-finding, and a disregard for what Wikipedia is about, you have discovered all five guestbooks. Panini!•🥪 16:54, 12 May 2025 (UTC)
The Tireless Contributor Barnstar Thank you for all your work at WP:AFI and WP:VA. Your work has not been overlooked. Congrats! Earth605 (talk) 12:16, 31 August 2025 (UTC)
The Barnstar of Good Humor Thanks for the laugh today, and for reminding me of an old joke about the definition of an honest politician as one that, after he's been bought, stays bought. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:25, 12 May 2026 (UTC)
The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar thanks for returning the favor! and thanks for signin’ me guestbook! thx! AltoHampton (talk here) (le contrebutions) 22:55, 13 May 2026 (UTC)
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