User:Brightkingdom

My contribution to the Wikipedia franchise will in all likelihood remain rather modest: the improvement of language wherever I find something that prevents the easy flow of information.

"The lines on the map move from side to side..."

I've found a niche as a bottom-feeder, toiling away at the administrative divisions of Iran. What was already there was sometimes decent, sometimes in need of repair. What wasn't already there were hundreds of divisions that were overlooked or have emerged as a part of political geography's evolution and occasional fragmentation in all countries, but particularly remarkable in Iran.

First, I had to thoroughly understand the administrative structure of the country and then to comprehend the shifting lines on the map that indicated the proliferation of administrative divisions, even if I'll never understand why this is happening on some deeper level.

Second, I had to teach myself how to read enough Persian to work with Iran's abundant toponyms, and have extended those modest abilities into the inevitable search for solid references for every piece of data. It was alarming to me how many sources in existing articles did not work or had nothing to do with the referenced assertion, so I started hunting around and archiving as many as I could. It's been a sometimes frustrating enterprise, but peppered liberally with the inevitable discovery of what I'm looking for. Every editor has had the joy of finding perfect sources; but then again, without them, there's a lot less to do here for a nerd like me.

You'll most likely find that, when I've accomplished all I hope to do, I will have touched every province, county, district, rural district and city. I will have also covered every village that was the largest in its rural district in 2016, and every administrative center (capital) that can be determined definitively.

That's a lot, but it's not possible to get to every village. There simply isn't enough time in the life remaining to me, so it's regrettable that perhaps 90% of those most basic granular demographic units will have to await an editor with the time and interest to update them.

As of the beginning of June 2023, I've updated nearly 4,000 pages, about 13% of which I have published as new articles. I hope to have finished the task by the end of the year.