Dan York

Celebrating 20 Years as a Wikipedia Editor

Today is a special anniversary for me. It was 20 years ago that I set up an account and first made an edit to Wikipedia! On that day I became a "Wikipedian"... although I'm not sure if that name was being used yet. Wikipedia had only been launched in January 2001, so it was a VERY different world in those days.

With the complete transparency of Wikipedia, I can of course go back and see what my earliest edits were. It's fun to scroll down the list. Amusingly, my very first edit would be frowned upon today. I added the URL for my employer at the time, Mitel, to what was then a very sparse article with five paragraphs of text with no sources or references. (Compare that to today's article for Mitel.) Today this would be considered a "COI edit" as I had a "conflict of interest" and per the "WP:COI guidelines" it would be recommended that I not make this edit directly (although it was just adding something factual in the form of a URL, so other editors may allow it).

But back in 2004, those were still the very early days when everyone was still trying to figure out what this Wikipedia thing was all about. The norms and conventions for things such as WP:COI hadn't yet been developed.

The only other edit I made that first year was that same day when I first created my "user page" with one sentence linking to the other sites where I wrote. (How many people remember Advogato?😀) Twenty years later, that user page looks MUCH different!

Then in January 2005 I started creating and editing pages around Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption and later in the year about.. Canadian food! 🤣 (We were living in Ottawa, Ontario, at that time.) And then a whole bunch of other pages, many of which are still in Wikipedia 20 years later, although substantially edited by others since that time.

After that, I didn't really do a whole lot of editing. In the first 15 years (2004-2019) I made a grand total of 146 edits.

And then... came the COVID pandemic.

As one of the ways I dealt with my own mental health during that time, I started livestreaming Wikipedia editing to Twitch! 🤣 (Which I haven't done lately, but will probably do tonight just to celebrate the anniversary.)

Every. Single. Day!  For most of a year-and-a-half! 🤯

You can see this clearly in one of the tools available to see contributions from Wikipedia editors:

You can see there was even a year (2008) when I didn't make a single edit, and one year (2012) where I made only one single edit.

And then... BOOM... 2020 hit and there I was!

What's interesting about 2020 and 2021 is the salmon-colored block on the right. This was what is called a "template" and was where I was manually copying in the daily data from the Vermont Department of Health to update the chart that appears on the side of the article about the COVID-19 pandemic in Vermont. Every single day. Later in 2021 someone thankfully automated that so that it pulled the data direct from the Vermont Department of Health's system, but for all that initial time it was a completely manual process - and was part of what I did each night on my Twitch livestream.

With that burst of activity during the pandemic, it caused me to dive deep into Wikipedia and learn about parts of the site and community that I had never really engaged with, and that in many cases hadn't even been around in the earlier days when I first got involved. I learned a huge amount.

And out of that I became endlessly fascinated with how the whole Wikipedia community - and broader Wikimedia movement - has evolved, and I continue that fascination today. As you can see from the chart, I'm continuing to edit in 2024 and plan to keep on going.

In fact, I'm seriously thinking about bringing back the livestreaming. (Follow me on Twitch to be notified or over on Mastodon where I'll post if I'm streaming.)

Wikipedia has definitely changed a huge amount over time, from being a site that was initially dismissed and derided, to today being one of the sites where you can go for well-sourced information. Sure, it definitely has its quirks and problems, but overall I believe it's definitely a positive force in these times when we are so challenged for good information.

Given all the changes that are happening with the way we find and consume information (thinking of generative AI in particular), it will be interesting to see how Wikipedia evolves over the next 20 years!

Meanwhile, there are articles to edit and users to welcome... 😀🎉

---

An companion podcast episode is available at:

DanYork · TDYR-416-20-years-of-Wikipedia-editing

Should I Stay (In) or Go (Out) Now? The Vermont Eclipse Dilemma

The Vermont Eclipse Dilemma: do we leave our houses and go out and enjoy all the eclipse-related festivities? Or do we just stay at home and leave all the events to the 534,873,937 people that are expected to arrive here to visit?  (Not the actual number, but that’s what it feels like according to the media articles!🤣)

In case you weren’t aware, there’s a solar eclipse happening on this coming Monday, April 8, 2024. And we here in northwestern Vermont are right in the path of “totality”. For about 3 minutes on Monday afternoon, the moon will completely block the sun. It’s supposed to be amazing by those who have seen it!

And … ABC News and other sources have declared the Burlington, VT, area to be THE best place in the USA to view the eclipse! 😲🤯😱

Now, the “path of totality” stretches from western Mexico up through Texas, Ohio, and on up through northern New York (including Niagra Falls), northern Vermont and New Hampshire, and then through Maine into New Brunswick and maritime Canada.

Everywhere along that path, hotel and AirBnB rooms sold out months ago. You can’t book any rooms unless you want to pay obscene amounts of money. Events are sold out. Everything’s sold out! People have been planning trips for years, in some cases. And with all the media attention, so many people are expected to drive to the path of totality on Monday.

Here’s the thing… we here in Vermont were expecting to see some visitors, but in early April it’s usually cloudy and rainy. The early predictions were for all of that. If you really wanted to see the eclipse, the smart approach was to head to Texas where the chances of sun were SIGNIFICANTLY higher!

Still, we have prepared. Our schools are closed on Monday. Many businesses have encouraged people who can work remotely to do so. Everyone has been encouraged to do all their grocery shopping before the weekend. Big signs on the highways are telling everyone to STAY HOME if at all possible!

You see, we’re a rural state. We only have around 646,000 people in total.  And about 150,000 of those people live up in the northwest corner when I live. We have only two Interstate highways: I-91 running up the east side, and I-89 going diagonally northwest across the top half of the state.

Outside of those two interstates, almost all of our other roads are your regular old two lane roads (one going one direction, one going the other). Sure, we sometimes might have sections with two lanes on both sides. Sometimes we’ll throw in a passing lane or a turning lane in the middle. We might even have small stretches of divided highway.

But most of our roads are small. We don’t need them to be huge.

And so… what happens when 10s of thousands - or maybe 100s of thousands! - of people come up to visit? On roads that are really more for hundreds of people? (If that!)

Yeah… that’s why we closed our schools and told everyone to stay home!

And of course, with the weather being as unpredictable as it is, current forecasts for Texas are that it will be CLOUDY on Monday! 🤦‍♂️

And we… are expected to have bright, sunny, clear skies! 🤯

Hence the news from ABC and other places that Vermont is the place to be! 

Add to this the fact that we’re only a few hours drive for people down in Massachusetts and even Pennsylvania and New York… there truly are 100s of thousands of people who could make the drive.

So we’re ready… we have so many different events planned. Restaurants that usually are closed on Monday are all opening up. Massive events are planned for the Burlington waterfront, the airport, and in so many other places. We’ll welcome you all up here warmly!

But for Vermonters we do have the dilemma… do we actually go out and join in any of the festivities? Or do we leave those for the visitors … and just watch the eclipse from our yards? 

Either way… we’ve got our eclipse glasses and we’re excited to experience this once-in-a-lifetime event!

Bring it on!

P.S. Good luck to all the visitors trying to get home on Monday after the eclipse… did I mention about our small roads and only two Interstate highways?  Have you considered staying until Tuesday? 😀

I’m Doing It Again… Getting Sucked Into Consuming Vs Creating

I’m doing it again… instead of writing and creating new posts in the morning, I’m sitting there scrolling through Mastodon… or reading the latest news on Memeorandum or Techmeme… or jumping into work email or Slack before I really need to. And sooner or later, any of the “free” time I had is gone and it’s time to start the work day. The time has melted away.

Consumption has triumphed over creation, yet again.

That’s no way to get back into writing more. That’s no way to develop habits of consistent writing.

And yet it is so incredibly easy to fall into that pattern… again and again and again….

So today I’ll write this small post of self-reflection to start yet again. Here’s to yet another attempt to break that pattern and build newer, stronger habits! 

——

Image credit: a generated image from Leonardo.ai

A New Plan For Getting in the Habit of Consistently Publishing Podcasts and Newsletters

In thinking about my themes for 2024 and specifically about changing my habits, one change that I am going to try is to get consistent with both my “The Dan York Report” podcast and also my “A View From The Crow’s Nest” newsletter.

Right now they are both “irregular” or “periodic”… meaning I just do them whenever I think about them or have some reason for doing them. Which means that sometimes I publish 4 of them in a week… and then I don’t publish anything for four weeks or more! 🤦‍♂️

I want to get in the *habit* of doing both.  I want to instill in myself the discipline of regular production.

And I also want to be realistic by planning a weekly production. Sometimes in the past I have tried to “get back into producing content” and targeted daily production. But that’s not realistic for me with everything else going on in life. 

We’ll see. Weekly may turn out to be too much. Perhaps I will shoot for every other week.

My logic for the podcast being on Mondays is that it gives me time on the weekend to do the production. My logic for the newsletter on Fridays is that sometimes I write about stuff that people might want to experiment with over a weekend - or I have links to other longer reads or items that may take more time than people have in a typical week day.

There’s also a symbiosis where either the Friday newsletter can feed into the Monday podcast… or vice versa where the Monday podcast becomes the topic for the Friday newsletter.

Another aspect is that by limiting myself to weekly, I’m hoping to plan ahead and produce both newsletters and podcasts in advance! (Wild concept for me!!)

Which isn’t to say that I won’t also put out a podcast or newsletter at another time when something interesting or breaking news makes me want to publish a new edition. But I want to get to a consistent cadence.

Again… we’ll see! It’s all a grand experiment. Stay tuned… if I actually execute on this I’ll drop a podcast episode tomorrow…. 🙂

 

Crossing the 45th Parallel in Northern Vermont

From the Burlington, Vermont area, it’s only about a 45 minute drive to the Canadian border. (Yes, we are *that*close!🙂) As you get close to the border on Interstate 89, there is a sign on the right side that says:

Latitude 45° North
Midpoint
Equator to
North Pole

Yes, indeed, once you drive past that point you are now getting closer to the North Pole than the Equator from a latitude perspective!

Wikipedia of course has some interesting info about the 45th parallel, including that it has formed part of the US / Canada border at times. 

In fact, when we lived in Ottawa, Ontario, for five years from 2000-2005, I maintained a blog called “North of 45” about our experience living there. (Sadly now all filled with ads because of the decline of LiveJournal.)

These days, we mostly drive north of the 45th to either: 1) go curling just over the border in Bedford, Quebec; 2) go to the Montreal airport (YUL) to fly somewhere; or 3) go to our closest IKEA in Boucherville, Quebec, just to the east of Montreal. 😀

I just smile whenever I see the sign. We are definitely in the northern part of the northern hemisphere!

 

My Themes for 2024

As I have been doing for the past 15 years (see list), my first post of 2024 across all my sites is of three words that are my aspirations or “themes” for the year ahead. They are not “resolutions” so much as guiding thoughts or principles.

This year I decided on 3 H’s: Hope, Health, and Habits.

Hope

We live in challenging times… and 2024 looks to present even greater challenges. A colleague of mine noted that there will be over 100 elections in 67 countries in 2024 - all of which will undoubtedly create communication and societal challenges in this time of great polarization. I expect great amounts of mis/disinformation, especially in this era of “generative AI”. With the climate, we’re just coming off the hottest year in recorded history, and signs are that 2024 could be even worse. Economic inequality keeps rising. Fewer and fewer people can afford to buy houses around where I live. We have a dictator who wants to be our next US President (and some % of people seem ready to vote for him 🤯). There’s a lot of gloom out there.

And yet… as the good folks at FutureCrunch remind us - there are a lot of good things going on: “66 Good News Stories You Didn't Hear About in 2023”. The challenge is that all of that gets drowned out in the media’s desire to get eyeballs. (“If it bleeds, it leads!”)

A couple of years ago I wrote this (re-shared on Mastodon last year):

The challenge that lies before us is more than choosing hope over fear.

 

It is choosing hope *amidst* the overwhelming narratives of fear and doom.

 

It is choosing hope and optimism *despite* those fears.

 

It is choosing hope as a daily, gritty act of resistance and resilience.

I believe that is truly our calling.

Last year, as I was preparing to become President of our local Rotary Club in July 2023, I was thrilled to find that the “theme” for this year’s Rotary International president is “Create Hope in the World”. That resonates so strongly with me.

Now, more than ever, with so much chaos around us, we need to provide whatever small shreds of hope we can.

Health

Health (or a health-related word) has been one of my three words in 12 of these 15 years, including last year. This year I had some tests done and some checkups, and while I’m okay overall, my bad cholesterol levels are too high, my blood pressure is creeping toward a point where I need to be concerned, and I’m at the heaviest weight I’ve ever been. Addressing this MUST be a focus, or I won’t be here to write the 2025 version. 🙁

Habits

In 2023, I spent some time looking at how I spend my time, and some of the habits I have. Some of those are good (ex. daily language practice), but others need to change, such as being far too sedentary… or doomscrolling through social media instead of creating content. In 2024, I want to change and form some healthier habits… for my actual health, but also just for how I interact in the world. One of these I’ve already started is to rejuvenate my email newsletter (all are welcome to subscribe!) and to start writing there versus on social media.

To that point, I really want to focus on the POSSE model of publishing on my own sites first, and THEN sharing it out on social channels. Too much of what I’ve been writing lately has been on other people’s platforms. I want to form the strong habit of writing on my own sites first.

Interestingly, Om Malik recently wrote about his own desire to return to blogging, specifically to use his blog as more of a “commonplace journal”. I like that framing. Stay tuned to see if I actually do it!

I’m also hoping that the habit I’ve started in 2023 of doing a bit more with music continues. I’m trying to carve out time each day to noodle a bit with the piano or guitar. I want to see about doing even more.

The challenge, of course, will be to excise some of the not-so-good habits that have formed in my life. It will be an interesting year!

That’s what I’m looking forward to this year. How about you?

Three Years Ago Today, Vermont Shut Down Due to COVID-19

Today I was wondering why “March 13” was pulling at the back of my brain as a date of some importance… and then I realized why.

Three years ago today, everything changed.

It was on Friday, March 13, 2020, that Governor Phil Scott issued Executive Order 01-20, “Declaration of State of Emergency in Response to COVID-19 and National Guard Call-Out”. It imposed visitor restrictions at hospitals and state facilities, restricted travel by state employees, prohibited large gatherings, and called up the National Guard to assist. The Executive Order did not itself shut down schools, but it directed the Secretary of Education to prepare for school closings. And only a few days later, all schools would shut down.

It concludes with this section that was in retrospect rather optimistic (my emphasis added):

This Executive Order shall take effect upon signing and shall continue in full force and effect until April 15, 2020, at which time the Governor, in consultation with VDH and DPS/VEM, shall assess the emergency and determine whether to amend or extend this Order.

How little did we know then...

The Governor would of course extend that Order… again and again and again...

Our lives would change in SO MANY ways.

And in fact we would come to divide our lives and world into “now” and a “time before the pandemic”.

 For us here in Vermont, that journey into pandemic precautions all began… three years ago… today.

Waking Up at Times Beginning With A "4"

For most of 50 years, I held very firm to the belief that the ONLY time I should ever see a time beginning with a “4” in the morning was when I needed to get up and go to the airport to catch an early flight. Otherwise, any time like 4:30am was just downright uncivil and hostile. I should be asleep at that time. I should NEVER be awake at times beginning with a 4.

And yet… here I am writing this post at 4:55am. 🤷‍♂️

What happened? Well, our dog got older! (And I might have, too.😉)

For some context, I have always been an early riser. Ever since I was a child.

But for the first 35 years of my life “early” was defined as 6:00am.

That was when I woke up. Never at times beginning with a 5, either. 6:00am or later.

I am also one of those people who snaps wide awake and is fully alert and ready to go. No “wake up time” needed. It’s like a light switch where I am no longer asleep - I am now fully awake. And… fully talkative 😀, to the immense annoyance of every roommate I have ever had, including my wife.  (The success of our marriage for 26 years so far is perhaps in part because I learned NOT to talk to her when she wakes up! 🤣)

And then our first daughter was born… and in a bit of karmic retribution, she had the same “instant on and fully talkative” characteristics as me, but she ratcheted the wake up time back to 5:30am! 😀

Suddenly, I was seeing times that began with a 5!

Seven years later, our second daughter was born and she continued the progression by getting up even earlier, closer to 5:00am!

And so it was for many years until they hit teenage years and flipped to wanting to sleep in later. (They are now 20 and 13.)

By that time, however, I was stuck with a body that had now adjusted to waking up in times beginning with a “5”.

Still, times with a “4” were only ever to be for airport trips!

Then, starting about five years ago or so, our dear dog started to wake up increasingly early and want to go outside. At times like 4:30am!

At 15 years old, she’s still in great physical condition, prancing around sometimes like she is MUCH younger. But… when a girl’s gotta go… someone has to let her outside… and due to the aforementioned “instant on” capabilities, that someone is… me. 

We’ve tried all sorts of things to see if we could get her to just wait until maybe a time starting with a “5”. We kept her up much later. We changed feeding schedules. We let her out very late in the evening. (Okay, which for us.. “very late” means 10pm 🤣)

Nothing worked. She still gets up sometime between 4:30 and 5:00 am.

So here I am! Wide awake, alert, enthusiastic… at a time beginning with a 4!

 

Listening to Hear Versus Listening to Fix

In the last six months or so, I have had an unpleasant revelation about myself. I realized that for most of my 55 years of life whenever I’ve been listening to people, I’ve been listening to offer “fixes”, i.e. solutions. You’ve probably done this yourself at some point. The classic example is something like:

Someone: “Ugh.. my legs hurt so much from <skiing | biking | skating | running | hiking | etc.>"

Me: “Oh, that’s rough! You should take two ibuprofen. You’ll feel better!"

There I was, jumping in with a solution and trying to help.

But here’s the thing - they were NOT asking for help! 

They were simply sharing their current condition. Perhaps looking for sympathy or empathy, but perhaps not. Maybe just saying how they were feeling.

An article I read (and now can’t find) clued me in to my errors. A couple of points:

• If I’m thinking ahead to solutions, then I’m probably only half-listening. I’m not necessarily completely hearing them. I’m hearing enough to send me down the path of thinking of solutions… and so part of my brain is now focused on that instead of hearing all of what they are saying.

• They may already have a solution. In my example, they may have already taken ibuprofen or something else. They aren’t seeking a solution. They just want someone to listen and hear them.

• My quick jump to offering an unsolicited “fix” may cause them to NOT want to share anything with me.. as they don’t want a fix!

Once I became aware of this, I realized that I did this all the time... with our oldest daughter away at university… with my wife… with our youngest daughter… with co-workers… with friends… with probably most everyone. 🙁

Part of it is, I think, my natural desire to help people. Part of it is that I’ve just always been a “fixer”.. the person you drop into a situation to figure out what needs to be done … and to get it done. And I enjoy doing that!

But I’ve realized that this is not always appropriate. That often people just want to share.. that they want to “bend an ear” and have someone listen to them. That they’re not necessarily looking for fixes. And that perhaps a better path is to ask before offering a fix.

So I’ve been trying to change. To listen more fully and to just… listen. To close my mind to what solutions might be out there and to just focus on what they are saying. To truly hear them.

I’m trying to have my responses more along the lines of one of these:

Someone: “Ugh.. my legs hurt so much from <skiing | biking | skating | running | hiking | etc.>"

Me: “Oh, that’s rough!"

Me: "Oh, that’s rough! Are you okay?"

Me: "Oh, that’s rough! Are you okay? Can I get you anything?"

And then depending upon the answer and the situation, I may now try to say something more like:

Me: “Do you want an idea that may help? Or are you all set?"

All of that before getting to offering the solution.

It’s a hard path to being a better listener… to simply “listening to hear” rather than “listening to fix”. But it’s a path I’m trying to follow..

 

 

 

The Awesome Clarity of Prioritizing Health

There is an awesome clarity that comes when you have very clear priorities - and in my case one of those is my health. As I alluded to in my three words for 2023, I’ve had a couple of recent minor incidents that have brought this home to me.

A key one was back in November 2022 when I went for a routine colonoscopy. Having had colon cancer, this was my three year checkup and all was great. No signs of cancer and everything looked good. 

BUT… they had to keep me a bit afterward in the recovery area until they could get an acceptable blood pressure reading. I didn’t think a whole lot of it, but a few days later when I went to our local pharmacy to pick up a prescription for our daughter, I had to wait for a bit and so I sat down in one of those blood pressure test machines that we often have in pharmacies here in the US.

And.. I had elevated blood pressure!

Not high enough to be in the “Get thee to a doctor now!” category, but more in the form of “Dude! You need to make some changes NOW if you want to be around for a while!"

So I have.

I’ve been eating healthier, reducing my sodium intake (such as not eating the pretzels and chips I love to eat), drinking more water, and… a key point… trying to get at least 30 minutes of exercise each day.

Given that I work in a home office and don’t have to go anywhere, it’s tempting on very cold days to just stay inside, but I’ve been forcing myself to leave and go outside.

This health lens has caused me to make some choices:

• If I have a block of time when I can exercise, but I want to write a blog post or record a podcast episode, I ask myself “Is this due TODAY?” and “will it matter if I do it tomorrow?” If the answer is no (as it usually is), then I don’t do it and go exercise.

• If I want to listen to a recording of a work meeting I missed, rather than listen to it while sitting in my office, I open the recording on my iPhone and listen to the meeting recording while walking around my neighborhood. This has the added value that I actually focus on what is being said in the meeting rather than being at my desk only half-listening while I look at Slack, websites, email, etc.

• I have continued my enjoyment of walking at Shelburne Farms, an amazing and beautiful area that I’m lucky to have about 5 minutes away from our house. Living so close, I can time it to fit a good walk in between other things going on in the day. And when it gets lighter (and warmer) I’ll start going in the very early morning again.

• For days when it’s too cold and windy to enjoy an outdoor walk, I have started going to a local ice skating rink. I’ve figured out how I can drive there, skate for 30 minutes, and then get back home all within an hour. 

In general, I’ve used the lens of “will this help me improve my health?"

Owning an Apple Watch has also been helpful. I’d dismissed the “closing the rings” Activity thing as a silly gimmick, but I’ll admit that there is a certain satisfaction in knowing I hit my daily goals. The Health app is also useful, and tracking my heart rates, sleeping, etc, is all useful.

Thankfully I have a job that is project-driven and so I can shift my work hours around and start earlier or work later so that I can do some of these things during the day. (And I do recognize that this is a privilege that many people do not have when their jobs are tied to specific hours or locations.)

My goal is that by the time summer comes around, I’m hoping to get back into the running I used to do. We’ll see. I need to be walking faster before I jump into the running again.

The good news is that this all does seem to be working. Two months later, my blood pressure is back down to near normal levels and in fact is even reading as “normal” sometimes. I’ve lost a little bit of weight (still have a long way to go). I’ve found that “Hint of salt” Wheat Thins taste pretty much the same as the regular ones - and I’ve learned how much additional sodium is in so many different foods! And I’m feeling a bit better in general.

Amazing what happens when you have that clarity of priorities in making daily choices!

P.S. I’m also playing in a curling league every Thursday night an hour north in Bedford, Quebec, which gives me two hours of movement that can be intense at times if you need to do a lot of sweeping. It’s kind of fun to look at the heart rates recorded by the Apple Watch after a game and see how up and down they can be.