User:Ground Zero

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Preferred pronouns: he/him. But I'm not offended by other pronouns. Gender-specific pronouns were probably a bad idea in the first place, but we're stuck with them for now.

Projects:

Work space:

Useful articles: {{mapgroup|target=}} * {{mapgroup-item

Country projects

... in which I comb Wikipedia, and other-language Wikivoyages and Wikipediae for information about the destinations in a country.

Work

Articles to which I have adding enough content to warrant upgrading from outline to usable:

  • City and park articles: 312
  • Region,topic and itinerary articles: 107

Articles upgraded from usable to guide: 13 (Canada, NS, NB, PEI, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, N&L, BC, Yukon, NWT, Nunavut, Quebec)

Articles I've created: 165

Substantive articles that I have created from stubs:

Really, too many to count, but here is a selection:

Other

Follow-ups:

Older things:

Map markers

  • type=go burgundy
  • type=see pale blue
  • type=do grey
  • type=buy teal
  • type=eat orange
  • type=drink black
  • type=sleep prurple
  • type=city blue
  • type=vicinity burgundy
  • type=other
  • type=park
  • type=listing green
  • type=orange

Recently, currently, at the moment

Words and phrases like "recently", "currently", and "at the moment" should usually be avoided because they go out of date quickly. See also here. Here are some examples of where these words have been added to articles and then left to rot like an egg sandwich in the hot sun:

  • "Currently in 2007"
  • This was added in 2003, and remained mostly unchanged until Dec 2019.
  • Okinawa -- for 15 years, we've been saying that "Okinawan culture had become quite popular". 15 effing years.
  • Southlake - someone wrote that this city had been recently chosen as the best place to live within the Dallas/Fort Worth area. That was written in 2006 or earlier, but remained in the article until 2018.
  • Milton Keynes - someone wrote that "the bus operator, MK Metro, has recently been purchased by Arriva". That happened in 2006, and remained in the article until 2018.
  • Chukotka - "Chukotka was until just recently governed by... Roman Abramovich" is pretty awful when you're reading it in 2018, ten years after he left the post.
  • Central Asia - saying that Turkmenistan was "ruled until recently by a post-Soviet lunatic" is misleading when he died in 2006.
  • Rochester's Wegmans store was replaced in 2013, which is not "recently" if you're reading it in 2018.
  • "LIAT, which merged with Caribbean Star recently" - the merger happened in 2007, and this line remained in the article until 2018.
  • Information on Brunei's ticket tax was added in 2010, and described misleadingly as being $2 "currently", until I removed it in 2018.
  • Nuristan's warning told readers about the security situation in the region and emphasized that it was describing the situation "at the moment" (twice!) But it had not been updated between 2009 and 2018.
  • The Melbourne has been telling us "At the moment there are a lot of job offers for nurses and craftsmen" since 2006. I deleted that in September 2018.
  • The Saint Petersburg article has been telling since at least 2007 that "The most popular trend within music and clubbing in Russia at the moment is house/techno."
  • The Brampton (Cumbria) article told readers "Carlisle airport is some 5 miles to the west, but at the moment (October 2008) there are no commercial passenger flights" for ten years! The moment has long since passed.
  • Until 2019, the Wrexham article told readers that the Bridge End "is currently the Camra Pub of the Year". The year was 2011.
  • The Syria article was edited in 2011 to tell us about Facebook being unblocked recently, and then edited around 300 times, but this line was not updated until I deleted in it 2020.
  • The Arcadia, Michigan article told us in a 2009 update that a bar was for currently for sale". I removed that in April 2019. (Also, some of the text was written in the first person, apparently in 2006, and imported from the predecessor site. Ugh.)
  • Mackinac_Island -- this is the oldest yet. From 2005 to 2019, the article told us what was "currently" being presented.
  • "Currently " since 2005.
  • "In recent years" since 2006.
  • ["Recently"] meaning 2005. And here.
  • "very recently" being used to refer to something that happened in 1987, well before many of our readers were born. And it wasn't being used in a geological sense.
  • From 2013 to 2020, we were saying that a sandwich shop had been opened "just recently", in the article about the busiest airport in the world.
  • DeLand -- "in recent years" added in 2006, changed to "recently" some time later, deleted in 2020
  • Ko Chang - "over the last few years" and "less than ten years" have been in the article from 2008 to 2020, and were never updated
  • Williamsburg: from 2006 to 2020, we were telling readers about "recent" road construction.
  • Kawasaki added in 2005, edited in 2020
  • Campeche added in 2006, edited in 2020
  • Ludhiana -- "recent construction" added in 2006, edited in 2020

Arguably

[1], [2], Urban Dictionary, Collins Dictionary,

  • "Arguably" is also used by people who can't be bothered to look something up. It this case, it was used to say "Scotland is arguably the most pro-European part of the United Kingdom". It is easy to look up the statistics that a higher proportion is Scots voted "remain" than of English, Welsh or Northern Irish, so instead we can say, "Scotland is the most pro-European country of the United Kingdom", and avoid the weasle word for livelier writing.