User:Willscrlt

This user is in college.

This user is taking a wikibreak and may be away or inactive for varying periods of time.
Although he may occasionally be able to do some editing, messages left for him may not be replied to for a while.
He will be back on Wikipedia when college is over.

At a glance

Willscrlt (talk · message · contribs · page moves · edit summaries · count · api · logs · block log · email)

Contacting me: For matters specific to the English Wikipedia, please leave me a message on my talk page here. For time-critical issues, you may also e-mail me. For matters related to other languages or projects, it is best to leave me a message on my Meta Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons talk page.

This user has been on Wikipedia for 18 years, 5 months and 6 days.

About Me

Hello. My name is Will, but for over 25 years I have been known online as Willscrlt (yes, there was "online" prior to the World Wide Web).

The English Wikipedia ("en.wiki") is my home wiki, but I also frequently visit and edit on the Meta Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons, where I also upload images. I also visit and occasionally edit on other wiki projects (mostly the English Wikibooks) and in other languages. I really only speak English, but I can comprehend some Spanish and French thanks to studying the languages in school. I also can decipher a bit of German, Italian, and Portuguese. Writing in any language other than English usually requires an online translator or sometimes a dictionary.

In mid-2010, I accepted a job that left little time for doing any wiki activities. In September 2011, the company laid off a large number of people, including me, and I returned to college to continue my education. Unfortunately, I still can find very little time to be an active editor on the wikis.

What I enjoy doing here…

I registered for an account here on June 15, 2006. I made a few contributions prior to registering, but I do not remember what or how long ago. The task I find myself most drawn to, is developing interwiki-compatible, multilingual templates. I have learned a lot of useful skills by developing several templates in my userspace (see my meta templates page for a list). Most of them are only useful for me personally, but the experience I've gained developing them and testing them across multiple project sites has been quite helpful. I am branching out into the development of templates that are useful to multiple projects now, especially where there are not as many template developers as here at en.wiki.

My wiki experience…

My reason for participating in the various Wikimedia Foundation Projects is to leave them better than I found them. That is how I got started editing Wikipedia. In December 2006, I noticed that the List of cocktails was in a terrible mess, so I started fixing it; that grew into a three-month reorganization and clean-up project editing nearly all of the mixed drink articles. The results of that project remain visible today.

Along the way, I joined several WikiProjects, learned how to create complex wiki templates, reverted the occasional vandalism, participated in various discussions, and a lot of other fun projects. Originally, I considered myself a Wikipedian (someone who primarily edits on Wikipedia). However, Wikipedia is like the Sun in our Solar system… it may be the biggest and brightest object, but it's certainly not the only object worth visiting. Commons, Meta, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikiquote, and Wiktionary are other projects I enjoy visiting. They are all underutilized resource (at least compared to the English Wikipedia), and I hope that more people will participate and increase the content of these free, collaborative information repositories.

My life outside the wiki…

I enjoy meeting people, travelling to new places, and experiencing other cultures. For more information about me, you can visit my home page.

I have been using computers since sometime around 1980. My first computer was an Atari 1200XL, followed by an Apple IIgs, then an Apple Macintosh IIci, and then an old and abused Intel 80286-based PC (very briefly until it died). From that point on, I've stayed with MS-DOS and then Windows-based computers. My first online experiences were made using a 1200 baud modem on my Apple IIgs. I was a charter member of America Online (before it became known as AOL), and I became active in the local Bulletin Board System scene. In the 1990s, I was a Sysop of a fairly popular BBS. That introduced me to people who were putting together the first public regional Internet access (later to be known as a community Internet Service Provider). My first professional development experiences involving the Internet were developing gopher pages and later HTML pages for the ISP. Later, I branched out into my own Internet and graphic design business. From there I moved into computer consulting.

In early 1999, shortly before the dot.com bubble neared bursting, I relocated to Sacramento, California to help start an online auction company that lost funding by October of that year. For the next decade, I did computer network integration and consulting work. In mid-2011, I accepted an information technology position at a company that designed and manufactured weather instrumentation systems. Being in charge of 14 servers and 100+ computers was fun, but very challenging. One of the things I enjoyed most, was working with and providing support to the software developers. In September 2012, the company laid off many people, including me. I did not know it at the time, but that was the end of my I.T. career and the start of my early semi-retirement.

I returned to college with the plan to change to computer programming, full-time at first. My parents' health problems quickly reduced that to part-time. I became their full-time caregiver until their deaths. I took a little time off from a lot of things, though I still attended about one college course a semester. Extended family moved near me just after my mother passed, and it has been a life-changing experience. To the three wonderful children in that family, I have become an active co-parent; all five of us are so happy to have one another in our lives. I have become an active leader in the Cub Scouts and Sea Scouts programs of the Boy Scouts of America, and just started with the Girl Scouts as well. Our oldest boy is involved in high school wrestling, and that has inspired me to change my college major (yet again) to Kinesiology, with an emphasis on coaching. I have become a Bronze-level certified USA Wrestling coach, and I am working on other coaching certifications during my college breaks. I am attending American River College and Sacramento City College concurrently.

More years have passed since I wrote the preceding update, the world has been changed by a pandemic, I have gone through a few unrelated health issues, took a break from college, but returned in Fall 2021. Most of the extended family I wrote about moved away again, but I am still in touch with them on a regular basis, along with my other extended family. I am going to go back into information technology consulting again, but hoping to do more programming and application development this time around. Or maybe I will focus on security. Both are intriguing to me, and only time will tell. I mostly posted this update so that I would not become identified as a "missing Wikipedian", and to reassure my friends on here that I am still alive and generally doing well.

Committed identity: 8E644E496CBA20F3510EF3F68FED2CB684951DBD7C14267519EDF81ED9FF6C6E56BAD67C51B0AA10C8A988EBD10AECE7A0BC27C4BB163C00D0B9831219EE89B0 is a SHA-512 commitment to this user's real-life identity.

Essays and other Wiki writings

I have a hard time quietly sitting by without speaking out when I see things that I feel deserve some consideration, or even some change. I also sometimes write things that others find helpful. Here are a few of them:

Category suppression — How to suppress categories in templates. Revised 17 May 2009
How to move Geograph files to Commons — A simple, step-by-step guide that I wrote. 13:48, 11 May 2009 (UTC)
!Voting/Discussion buttons — Extra editing buttons for discussion and !votes, both with and without icons. 04:40, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
WikiHumanity — one of the biggest problems I see facing Wikipedia is the imbalance between efficiency and empathy. WikiHumanity is an important key to Wikipedia's success.

Articles

By design or by accident, I contributed to the following articles in some meaningful way. I have edited many more pages, but these are ones of which I am especially pleased. The dates listed in reverse chronological order (newest on top) generally by the first date I made significant edits. I've likely made other changes since.

I have added icons next to my original articles, and ones that I significantly modified, that have achieved a B-class or better rating based largely on my original efforts. The ratings were determined by other editors-not by me.

Original creations

I started and usually added a significant amount of information to these.

August Wesley (wrestler) (2018-07-10) — Revived a previously deleted article, bringing it up to acceptable standards.
Sabicea cinerea and Sabicea villosa (along with related updates to Sabicea and Rubiaceae) (2009-12-02) — My first botanical articles. Learning and using {{taxobox}} and all the other Tree of Life-related style guides was a lot more work than I expected to have to do to start a couple of little stubs. I also located and uploaded two related maps (for S. cinerea and S. villosa)
Luke Smalley (2009-05-23) — I read about this photographer passing away in a weekly e-mail from the New York Times. After discovering that there was no biography for him on Wikipedia, I set out to correct that oversight. After searching and sifting through dozens of sites, many with only his images and dubious copyright status, I created a new article picking ten good sources as primary references.
- On May 28, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Luke Smalley, which you created or substantially expanded. 02:21, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
Template:Fdw-iw (aliased as Template:Fdw-commons) (2009-05-04) — After some discussion with a Commons admin about my frustration with trying to alert en.wiki users about Commons deletion discussions, I created this template that can be used for Commons or any other wiki project.
Coastal Christian School (2009-04-18) — Created the page for a school I attended in my youth.
AGHS (2007-10-21) — Created a disambiguation page from scratch.
~~Draft COI Guideline~~ (2007-02-01) — Discussion draft of proposed revision for the (then) current WP:COI guidelines.
- Eventually removed the draft after it was no longer pertinent to the discussion.
Welcome (2007-01-30) — A fancy (probably too fancy) welcome message for new users.
UbxWPHerb1 and UbxWPSpice1 (2007-01-29) — Userboxes for the Herbs and Spices WikiProject.
UbxWPBrr1Chocolate (2007-01-29) — Userbox for the Ice Cream WikiProject.
{{for example}} (2007-01-25) — There was nothing else quite like it, so I created it.
{{WPMIXInfobox}} (2007-01-15) — An insanely complicated esoteric infobox that supports a huge number of options and adapts dynamically to the selected options.
{{WPMIXBarnstar}} (2007-01-14) — Created the award.
UbxWikicommonsUser (2007-01-10) — Created a new userbox to link to a Wikimedia Commons user page.
UbxWPMix1Blank and others (2007-01-07) — Created 11 new userboxes for the WikiProject Mixed Drinks.
Participants list (2007-01-07) — It's a nifty transcludable participant list for the WikiProject. It's fun creating dynamic pages that look different depending on how they are accessed.
Mixed drink supplies (2007-01-06) — This page helps alleviate having to link to several articles individually, sort of like a disambiguation page.
Whiskey sour (2007-01-02) — This is a completely new start for the article.
IBA Official Cocktail (2007-01-01) — The IBA is an invaluable resource for me for determining which cocktails are truly notable on an international level.
I forked several articles off of the List of cocktails and added additional information and photos:
- Drink mixer (2006-12-29) — New
- Cocktail garnish (2006-12-29) — New
- Non-alcoholic mixed drink (2006-12-28) — New
- Flaming beverage (2006-12-28) — New
- Beer cocktail (2006-12-28) — New
- Mixed drink shooters and drink shots — Gutted the entire thing and started fresh.
~~{{Cocktail-expand}}~~ (2006-12-12) and ~~{{Cocktail-micro}}~~ (2006-12-15) — Two ill-conceived and ill-fated templates that were very non-standard and subsequently deleted. I learned a lesson and a better, standards-compliant way to do the same thing and more.
WPMIX (2006-12-07), {{Cocktail-stub}} (2006-12-07), and ~~{{Cocktail-micro-talk}}~~ (2006-12-15) — These help make my job editing the cocktail articles a bit easier. I created a few related categories, too. New templates will be created soon to replace these since the Wikiproject is changing its name from Cocktails to Mixed Drinks, which makes me happy.
Sherry glass (2006-12-04) — Not much of an article, but it was a start.
Latin Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (2006-11-29) — There was no information on the Latin GRAMMY awards.
~~Jack Turner (writer) PromoPhoto.jpg~~ (2006-11-24) — Added a fair use photo of Jack Turner.
Category:Wikipedians by alma mater: Cuesta College (2006-11-24) — There is at least one Cougar here. I should create a userbox to go with it.
User:Willscrlt (2006-11-24) — Time to create my own user page.
Template:User in Scotland (2006-11-23) — My first userbox creation.
Jack Turner (writer) (2006-11-23) — My first article and a great learning exercise.

Massive rewriting

Essentially these are entirely new or completely rewritten articles. In larger articles, entire portions of the articles may have been rewritten.

Paulding Middle School (2011-11-25) — Nearly a complete rewrite of the article using material from multiple sources I located. This came about because I noticed two bogus "notable alumni", and the work grew from there. Incidentally, I did attend the school, so the vandalism was taken somewhat personally. :-)
{{Infobox WikiProject}} (2009-04-23) — I noticed in my watchlist someone tweaking this template in frustration. We discussed things, and by the time I finished, I had nearly rewritten the entire template. The real challenge was adding new features, supporting old implementations without breaking hundreds of pages, and intelligently accepting input that wasn't quite in the proper format according to the instructions. I had to also update the related documentation, too, of course.
Arroyo Grande High School (2009-04-18) — I completely reworked the infobox and throughly sourced the information, wrote a few paragraphs about the school (there was only one before), updated several lists, and added categories.
Pawel Szajda (2009-03-29) — Complete rewrite of the article using material from eight sources I located. Brought the article from a weakly kept AFD stub to probably a start-class article.
Earlene Fowler (2008-08-22) — Cleanup, fixed links, some reorganization, added article information and ISBN numbers.
Cosmopolitan (2008-05-20) — Major update to the article that had gotten rather "worn" since I last worked on it. Incorporated the many changes that had been added over time, and reorganized to help resolve some disputed history issues.
- Update: As of 09:44, 14 April 2009 (UTC) the article I originally rewrote, with only a few modifications, has been rated an A-class article.
Hachette Book Group USA (2008-05-07) — Complete reorganization and a new History section.
Edward Burger (2008-05-02) — Essentially created the article from scratch based on information from 15 sources I tracked down.
Daniel Letterle (2007-07-09) — Added new content, Letterle's homepage, and his video blog; added references; removed unreferenced info.
Bellini (cocktail) (2007-02-06) — Complete rewrite of the article to eliminate earlier probable copyright violations. Some earlier edits not based on the copyrighted parts might remain. Info from many reliable sources now.
Cerveza preparada (2007-01-21) — Consolidated Chavela into Cerveza preparada, along with various other updates.
Bronx (2007-01-18) — Essentially created the article from scratch based on information from several sources I tracked down.
Renamed WikiProject Cocktails to Mixed Drinks (2007-01-17) — There really should be a much easier way to rename entire groups of pages.
Tequila Sunrise (2007-01-12) — Renovation and standardized to IBA
Amaretto (2007-01-01]]) - Major cleanup including reorganization, sourcing unsourced statements, photos. Integrated a few notable cocktails that exemplify Amaretto.
Cosmopolitan (2007-01-01) — Major revision with reorganization, rewritten sections, new photos, and formatting changes.
Bloody Mary (2006-12-31) — Major revision with reorganization, rewritten sections, new photos, and formatting changes.
Incredible hulk (2006-12-20) — Another article that was deleted that I started fresh, added several citations and a photo.
B-52 (2006-12-25) — This article was deleted three times prior, and nobody thought it could be salvaged. I expanded it considerably (partly thanks to the German Wikipedia's related article) and provided a better photo.
Eggnog (2006-12-16) — Major rewrite with lots of research into the real history and two original photos.
WP:MIX (2006-12-04 on) — This WikiProject was barely more than an empty framework lacking any active participants when I started, but now it's one of the more comprehensive WikiProject sites, and participation is growing. I'm still working on improving it in many ways. This WikiProject, and maintaining its related pages, has become the primary activity that fills my time here.
List of cocktails (2006-12-03 on) — I rarely drink, but the article was in such poor shape, I just had to clean it up. It essentially sucked me into the mixed drink article space that has consumed my time here at Wikipedia.

Significant editing

My efforts have resulted in significant improvements to these articles.

James Rollins (2008-08-22).
Flaming Doctor Pepper (2008-05-22) — Reorganization. Removal of trivia. Added citations where possible and {{fact}} added where not.
Shot glass (2007-05-19) — A dispute between the size of a single and double shot started. I researched the information and cleaned up the article layout a tiny bit.
Deck the Halls (film) (2008-04-14) — General cleanup and reorganization.
Daniel Letterle (2007-09-09) — Verification and citation of information related to birth date and location.
Pismo Beach, California (2007-08-03) — Cleanup and wikification.
Punch (2007-01-31) — Reorganization, cleanup, photos, and some additional information on non-alcoholic types.
Clan Murray (2007-01-28) — Replaced the low-quality image with an original one. Corrected and updated the section on the clan badge and crest.
Vesper (2007-01-26) — Reorganization and rewrite of several sections.
Caipirinha (2007-01-14) — Cleanup, reorganization, and citations.
{{Alcoholic beverages}} (2006-12-29) — Added the section for mixed drinks and later some other missing drinks.
Margarita (2006-12-27) — Improved wording in some awkward areas and added a new photo.
Tom and Jerry (2006-12-27) — A lot of effort to track down the real history of this drink.
Cuba Libre (2006-12-25) — Cleanup and a new image; better incorporation of Rum & Coke into article.
Pisco Sour (2006-12-10) — Who knew one little drink could be such a source of international bickering?
After Eight (2006-12-04) — It needed a little help.

Edit counts

Counters

Counters and other tools

Edit counters

Articles created
- Escaladix's tool
- X!'s tool
Automated edits
- X!'s tool

Wikis with this username present
- Purodha's tool
- Huji's tool
Edit summaries
- X!'s tool

(My inspiration for this)

My edit counts as of 00:21, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Live Edits	Wikis	Since	Groups
5020	en.wikipedia	2006-06-15	Patrollers, Rollbackers
1513	commons.wikimedia	2006-11-23	Patrollers, Rollbackers, Reviewers
497	meta.wikimedia	2006-11-25
213	en.wikibooks	2006-12-04
62	de.wikipedia	2008-01-03
59	es.wikipedia	2006-12-14
35	en.wikisource	2006-12-14
30	mediawiki	2008-01-06
28	it.wikipedia	2008-06-19
27	fr.wikipedia	2008-01-03
23	strategy.wikimedia	2009-09-25
21	simple.wikipedia	2006-12-14
7528	12 active wikis
18	en.labs
16	ar.wikinews, pt.wikipedia
12	species.wikimedia
10	ar.wikipedia, de.wikibooks
8	pl.wikipedia
7	simple.wiktionary
6	be.wikipedia, en.wikinews, en.wiktionary, it.wikibooks, ja.wikipedia
5	az.wikipedia, ca.wikipedia, en.wikiquote, en.wikiversity, et.wikipedia
4	ru.wikipedia
3	crh.wikipedia, ia.wikipedia, ie.wikipedia, test.wikipedia
2	ml.wikipedia
170	24 minimally active wikis
7698	36 total active wikis

Projects with 30 or fewer edits generally do not contain substantive edits to the projects themselves, but rather edits to my user page, my user talk page, and cross-wiki compatible template testing.

Service Awards

This editor is an Experienced Editor and is entitled to display the following Service Badges.

Experienced Editor		Yoeman Editor		Journeyman Editor		Apprentice Editor		Novice Editor

Edit:	6000	Edit:	4000	Edit:	2000	Edit:	1000	Edit:	200
Date:	2013-09-26	Date:	2009-04-22	Date:	2007-01-21	Date:	2006-12-29	Date:	2006-12-06

Honors I have received

Special Awards

	The Exceptional Newcomer Award
	I, SilkTork, hereby award Willscrlt The Exceptional Newcomer Award for notable work on the cocktail/mixed drinks project. 03:03, 21 January 2007 (UTC) (KC)
	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	Excellent wikipedian, excellent additions to wikipedia, and lots of them. thuglas^talk\|edits 05:24, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
	The Photographer's Barnstar
	Very impressive images of drinkwear. Much needed. thuglas^talk\|edits 05:24, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
	The Editor's Barnstar
	For some sweet organizational edits. Eustress (talk) 15:20, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
	The Special Barnstar
	Thanks for your significant work in creating and formatting the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Food and drink/Main page layout discussion page. Northamerica1000^(talk) 23:19, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Nominations

Current RfX Report

RfA candidate	S	O	N	S%	Ending (UTC)	Time left	Dups?	Report
RfB candidate	S	O	N	S%	Ending (UTC)	Time left	Dups?	Report

No RfXs since 10:11, 20 November 2024 (UTC).—^{cyberbot I}_{Talk to my owner:Online}

Nominated to be an administrator
- Willscrlt (talk · contribs) - Excellent Wikipedian, he is almost entirely responsible for the organization of mixed drinks in a very short interval of time. He has also encouraged and tried to get other wikipedians involved in the project thuglas^talk|edits 19:45, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
- While very honored, I respectfully declined. Since I was involved with so many other projects, I did not feel I would be able to commit enough time to administrative duties and still complete the other projects.

Gallery

General images

These are some of the original images and photographs I have created and contributed:

My Scottish Clan Badge
The logo I created for the Mixed Drinks and Bartending WikiProjects
Soymilk Nog
Mark Twain Cabin
A question mark icon in a blue box

Logos

Wikibooks and WikiJunior were in need of new logos, so I submitted several images for consideration. See MetaWiki to view them.

Drinkware

I also created a unique collection of 45 drawings of 25 different varieties of drinkware; all the drawings were released into the public domain. Here are my favorites from the collection:

Banquet Goblet
Cocktail Glass
Cooler Glass
Hurricane Glass
Irish Coffee Glass
Margarita Glass
Shooters Glass
Water Pitcher

Licensing of My Submissions

This is a Wikipedia user page.

This is not an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user to whom this page belongs may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia itself. The original page is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Willscrlt.