ashawley's editing history

I finally became an editor in April of 2000. I applied earlier, but was turned down (they didn't know what they were missing).

I am really anal and am good at cleaning up categories through reorganization, subcategorization and fixing titles and descriptions and general guideline conformance. I also enjoy digging up sites, and usually am successful. However, it gets lame real fast. I've revolutionized a lot of categories (ODP is a revolution so lets hope I have), and here's how more specifically:

The Regional/../Vergennes and Reference/Education/../University of Vermont, categories were essentially started by myself. They didn't have anything in them before I got to them.

The Cloning categories I am in charge of I revolutionized (they were and are sloppy). I am still working on putting cloning sites in their proper places in ODP.

I took on University of Massachusets Amherst and cleaned it up, categorized, and added a lot more links.

I added @links for Localities in Regional../Vermont/Counties, and also added a few sites. I then took on a few categories in Regional../Vermont/Localities including my hometown Vergennes (as I mentioned), plus Bristol and Ferrisburgh. Then I took on the entire category of Regional../Vermont/Localities. I have added a lot of sites manually. More importantly it was a mess categorically, and other editors (I won't name names) just don't read the guidelines at all, and so I "cleaned house". I can now sympathize with other editors who have to clean up after bad editing. It's the case of people joining ODP as an editor for a week and then leaving. But what I've learned is that one of the best places to start editing is in your hometown, or some locality. They are small categories and there are a lot of them, and nobody really wants them. It's an easy way to join. Speaking of which, Vermont seriously needs some editors. There are only like six people here (2000.Aug), but only about two are actually doing anything. There aren't a lot of submissions to the Vermont directory tree, but there are a lot of sites that could be manually added by hungry new editors.

Vermont/Localities also needed a recheck of what were actually towns and were not just villages or post offices. I think making sure the Vermont/Localities directory is accurate helps to attract more submissions. I then had to redo the @links in Vermont/Counties.

In doing Vermont/Localities a lot of help came from fellow Vermont editor devinbent. He's a great editor, that takes his time, and does a good job, and he has given me a lot of great advice and suggestions. I just can't take full credit for how great Vermont/Localities is organized.

When I was accepted for Vermont/Localities (August, 2000), there were probably less than a thousand sites in the entire Vermont/ category. I took up editing for the entire state in Mid-September 2000, and by the time the year 2000 ended, Vermont had well over 2000 sites. Vermont made moves on many state's in the State Gauntlets, during this period when I was link farming quite heavily.

I haven't done a whole lot of revolutionizing in the Punk/Bands_and_Artists. For one I wasn't sure what the unwritten guidelines were. Also, this section is somebody else's past work, so I tried to not touch too much. However, I have done link farming, adding bands that [i thought] deserved listings, or their own subcategories. Those include Gorilla Biscuits, Groovie Ghoulies, Good Riddance, AFI, Bouncing Souls, and Strung Out. I also gave the Bad Religion category a much needed face lift.

I started the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) category in Society/Issues. I also worked with editor timotten to make an FTAA category in Society/Government/Multilateral/Regional/, a place for official (non-issue) FTAA sites. Furthermore, I did the same for a NAFTA category. I also had the editing priveleges to edit throughout Society/Issues../Trade category, and fixed up the WTO issues category.

When I started editing in Society/Issues/../Prisons/Privatization/ there were six sites. I think I've turned it into a decent resource for private prisons. I am still working on getting the ontology (categorizing) just right.

I want to leave on the note that I am always impressed with this project, and by the people who make it happen. When I think of motivation and the organizational power of people, it sweetens my cynical mind. I'd also like to thank the corporate entity known as Netscape Communications, for the financial and organizational support of a true grassroots project.