User:MelanieN

This user is female.

This editor is a
Master Editor IV
and is entitled to display this
Orichalcum Editor Star.

This user was born and raised in California.

This user lives in or hails from San Diego.

This user attends or attended Stanford University.

This user contributes using an
iMac.

This user participates in
WikiProject San Diego.

This user has helped promote 6 good articles on Wikipedia.

This user has written or expanded 57 articles featured in the Did You Know section on the Main Page.

This user is a recipient of the Editor of the Week award.

This user has been editing Wikipedia for more than ten years.

Things I've learned at Wikipedia

When you become an administrator, your user talk page gets a lot more interesting.
WP:Assume good faith can be a valuable approach in many circumstances of life, not just Wikipedia.
Use "page preview" before saving an edit.
Use the "thank" feature often.
It's amazing how often a controversial situation can be resolved by a simple rewording.
Check an article's history before proposing it for deletion.
Look for a plausible redirect in lieu of deletion.
Check new articles for copyright violations.
On Wikipedia, it's important to know when to stop arguing with people, and simply let them be wrong. (credit to User:Atsme)
Wikipedia guidelines are like scripture: somewhere in the labyrinthine network of rules, you can find support for any position. (originally by User:S Marshall [2], now borrowed from User:Fences and windows)

Wit and wisdom seen about town, good enough to share

The problem with Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it can never work.[3]
I used to have a dream that my computer would be as easy to use as my phone. And my dream came true. Now I don't understand my phone either.
The bad news is, the guy who bullied you in school is still taking your lunch money. The good news is, he makes a pretty good Subway sandwich.
Some people say the glass is half empty. Some people say the glass is half full. I say, are you gonna drink that?
War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
Humankind: be both.

Wit? Wisdom? No, just puns.

Special collection: puns for nerds, aka: new units of measure. (Borrowed from Math-Explosion.com)

Ratio of an igloo's circumference to its diameter: Eskimo Pi
1 millionth of a mouthwash: 1 microscope
Weight an evangelist carries with God: 1 billigram
365 days of drinking low-calorie beer: 1 Lite year
16.5 feet in the Twilight Zone: 1 Rod Serling
Half of a large intestine: 1 semicolon
2000 mockingbirds: 2 kilomockingbirds
8 nickels: 2 paradigms

And a couple of new ones:

I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.
What do you call a snake that is 3.14 inches long? A πthon.
One man's fish is another man's poisson.
Why does the Norwegian Navy have bar codes on the sides of their ships? So that when the ships come into port, they can Scandanavian.
A pun enters a room and shoots ten people. Pun in, ten dead.
What do you get if you boil a funny bone? Laughing stock. (Sorry, I just thought this one was humerus.)
Never say "Part A" backwards. It's a trap.
I want to tell you about a girl who only eats plants. I bet you've never heard of herbivore.

About me

I am a native Californian (5th generation no less). I grew up in Oakland, California, and now live in San Diego. I attended Oakland Technical High School and Stanford University. I have also lived in Los Angeles, Baltimore, New Orleans, and Honolulu.

On Wikipedia I mainly work on articles related to San Diego, particularly things having to do with San Diego history and San Diego neighborhoods. I also function as a Wikignome, cleaning up or proofreading articles that I come across. And I occasionally "rescue" an article which had been nominated for deletion, by adding sources to prove notability, or by rewriting to meet Wikipedia standards. Others who want to do this kind of thing could look for "unreferenced biographies of living persons" at Category:Unreferenced BLPs.

I've been hanging around Wikipedia off and on since 2006. I began editing in earnest in June 2009, when I saw articles about the San Diego Yacht Club and Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego that contained blatant errors of fact. I corrected those errors, and was hooked. Fourteen short years later, I have become one of the 1,000 most active Wikipedians. Actually #896 last time I looked, but who's counting? 0;-D (That's my personal smilie: an angelic grin.)

In January 2015 the Wikipedia community decided it was high time I got down to work and handed me a mop. I enjoyed being an administrator, but I handed back the mop in April 2024.

Articles created

Articles I've created or substantially expanded include:

Articles rescued

A partial list of articles I "rescued", by improving them after they had been nominated for deletion in an AfD (articles for deletion) discussion:

Folie à Deux (winery)
Benjamin Franklin Haynes
James W. Maney
Ghân-buri-Ghân
Robert Boone
Thomas William Ferguson
William James Wanless
Harry S.N. Greene
Lucy Jefferson Lewis
Kama'aina
Del Cerro, San Diego
Sunshine tax
Kit Carson Park
Frank Worth
California Chaparral Institute
Emil Frei
Stephen Decatur Bross
Hitler's Munich apartment
Real Mex Restaurants
Buzzword
The Boy Who Fell Out of the Sky
helped with Ika Hügel-Marshall (a Good Article)
helped with Naomi Sager
Huy Duc
John Thomas sign
Lou Bellamy
San Diego Repertory Theatre
"Big Bay Boom incident," renamed and refocused to Big Bay Boom
"The Wise Men," renamed and refocused to The Wise Men (book)
"The Celebrity Source," renamed and refocused to Rita Tateel

and 409 others, primarily articles which had been tagged as "unreferenced BLP" (unreferenced biography of a living person) - a tag which can result in their deletion.