Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-08-19/Travelogue
Seeing is believing
I have been an editor on Wikipedia since May 2006 when my first edit (made at Blackstone Library) resolved what seemed to me to be a glaring redlink by creating this version of National Recording Registry, which is now a Wikipedia:Featured lists. At last look, I am about 350,000 edits into my Wikipedia career and have now notched nearly 1000 redlink to bluelink creations. I try to keep track of them on one of my user subpages. Most of them have something to do with Chicago, which is where I live, or sports, which is how I relax. I recently was able to celebrate fifty years of seniority on June 24.
I decided to celebrate my Wikipedia contributions for my fiftieth birthday by taking a trip to visit some of them in New York City. This is a celebration of what I do when something that I enter in the search bar does not have an article. I often create the article. I am less apt to create an article for a redlink in an article. However, when the primary topic that I want to learn about on Wikipedia does not have an article, I feel that there is a hole in Wikipedia. I feel that something is wrong because others have probably also searched for the term and often start googling frantically to assess whether encyclopedic content is in the public domain. If I realize that the subject would easily pass the general notability guideline based on secondary sources, I feel compelled to create an article and develop it as fully as I am able.
I arrived in NYC on June 23 and visited Ground Zero for the first time since the development of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. I took a few pictures (7 World Trade and 1 World Trade and The North pool of the 9/11 Memorial). It was very humbling to see the silent majesty that has been constructed upon the hallowed grounds. I have not participated in the editing of these articles but felt compelled to visit these subjects to commence my return to New York City (where I lived during the summers of 1983 and 1985 as well as from 1992-97).
On Wednesday June 24th, I commenced my celebration by attending a 2pm matinee at the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center which featured Misty Copeland (page creator: August 24, 2008, 
: August 31, 2008, 
: October 19, 2008). I first noticed Copeland in a Fall 2008 issue of Uptown when I was subscribed to it. The story may have been a cover story, but regardless I noticed Copeland and was immediately drawn toward the subject. Upon reading the story I knew she was someone that I wanted to know and that I felt others around the world would want to know. Within two months I had developed the article into a Did You Know? and Good Article that was chock full of high-profile references such as The New York Times and Los Angeles Times. Fast forward to summer 2015, she was prominent in the media. Copeland was the subject of a 60 Minutes feature and a Time cover in the month before my birthday. It was incredible to see breadth of her influence, as her fan base includes all races, ages, and genders.
On the evening of my birthday, I attended The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (page creator: April 29, 2013, : May 15, 2013,), starring Alex Sharp (page creator: June 1, 2015, : July 31, 2015). On April 29, 2013, I noticed that no page existed for The Curious Incident even though the day before, it had won a record-tying seven Laurence Olivier Awards. It was inexplicable to me that such an important production did not yet have a dedicated article after achieving such a feat. The show eventually became a Broadway production and went on to win the 2015 Tony Award for Best Play, 2015 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play, 2015 Outer Critics Circle Award Outstanding New Broadway Play, and the 2015 Drama League Award for Outstanding Production of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Play. During the 2015 awards season, it became clear that Sharp, the star of the Broadway run of the show, was making a name for himself. He won the Outer Critics Circle Award on May 11, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play on May 31. It was apparent that since he had won the Drama desk award for the best Off Broadway or Broadway Theatre acting performance, he was a serious contender for the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play, which only considered Broadway performances. Thus, I felt compelled to create his article and he is now the youngest person to have won the Tony Award for Best Actor in Play. This play has been a tremendous success because of the way the performance resonates with so many people who related to challenged individuals. Seeing the play is a much more powerful experience than reading about it in secondary sources or here on Wikipedia.
The Thursday of my trip is a mysterious hole. However, it may be the most important part of my discussion about creating articles. I have never done quid pro quo paid editing. However, in the months before my birthday, I was approached about seeing that a page be created for a subject of marginal import/notability that was very much in keeping with my editorial activities. It is my belief that if I had created such a page, I would have been invited to attend a very high profile event in NYC on Thursday where multiple subjects that I have created, DYK-ed, and GA-ed were prominently involved. Once I began advising the interested parties on acquiring sources for the marginal subject, I was in fact invited to this event. However, as it became clear that I was not going to reconsider my own standards for WP:NPOV article creations, I was disinvited from the event by the powers that be. It is hard to say what I have learned from this experience. I do accept donations for my contributions to Wikipedia. E.g., I have been given pairs of tickets to the Chicago Theatre and the Joffrey Ballet (as it relates to my creation of Joffrey Tower) for prior Good Article work. I don't want to get into the paid advocacy debate, but I think my lesson here is that in the past, I have accepted tickets donated/granted in appreciation for work. The donor had no input into the article and no interaction with me until after I created/edited the content. I made no representation that I would advocate for any subject matter in the article. I continue to watch both Chicago Theatre and Joffrey Tower in the same way that I watch my other 350+ Good and Featured Articles and will continue to edit them without any more regard for the wishes of either institution than I have for the wishes of any other subjects. Over the years, I have made many ongoing edits to Chicago Theatre and not so many to Joffrey Tower. I think tickets promised in advance for an article still in user space may have even bordered on paid advocacy, because the article in user space had been created by the person who contacted me about the subject. I continue to assert that the suggestions made to bring the subject toward notability are the only way I know to get the article created conscionably. I digress. In short, tickets in exchange for advice/creation of article: bad. My ability to create good and featured articles is not for sale. I will continue to create articles for subjects I am interested in. However, hard work donated and completed followed by tickets donated: not so bad. I.e., I will not turn down ticket donations from such institutions any sooner than I will turn down a well-intended cash tip after giving a ride to an Uber customer.
On Friday June 26, I attended the Museum of Modern Art to visit Drowning Girl (page creator: May 12, 2012, : May 24, 2012, : June 21, 2012, 
: July 23, 2013) see here, Girl with Ball (page creator: May 9, 2012, : May 23, 2012, : June 21, 2012) and Campbell's Soup Cans (page creator: October 20, 2006, : December 25, 2006, : March 26, 2007) see here. The largest-ever Roy Lichtenstein retrospective was at the Art Institute of Chicago from May 16 to September 3, 2012. During that time period, I checked out many books from the Chicago Public Library and created dozens of articles about modern art paintings, especially those by Lichtenstein. I believe that the majority of the articles at Category:Paintings by Roy Lichtenstein were created by me during this time period. Campbell's Soup Cans was my first good article and my first featured article and has since become a vital article. During this period of frantic editing, I learned quite a bit about modern art. During my visit, on a Free Friday at the MoMA, I was amazed at the turnout. I don't remember art museums being so popular on Friday evenings. This visit reminds me how many people are touched by visual arts This editorial experience reminds me that there is still lots of room on Wikipedia to contribute to the wealth of knowledge on Wikipedia about works of art. Many important artists still only have Wikipedia articles for a fraction of their most important works.
On Saturday June 27, I attended Kinky Boots (page creator: October 5, 2012, : October 18, 2012, : December 1, 2013). I must apologize for my hazy recollection of my own Wikipedia career. Apparently, I think a lot more of my good work has been Promoted to Featured Article than the edit histories show. Nonetheless, this article development has an interesting history. In Chicago, Cindy Lauper was appearing on local talk shows and in the local press regarding the show when it premiered here in Chicago to rave reviews. It was already anticipating its Broadway run when I decided to create the page. It went on to win the 2013 Tony Award for Best Musical and several other awards. Again, until you see a performance, you can not understand how far secondary sources and our summary fall short in terms of delivering the experience of the show's message.
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On Sunday June 28, I attended the inaugural exhibition at the newly relocated Whitney Museum of American Art, which houses Little Big Painting (: May 27, 2012). Due to a mistake in my own record keeping, I thought I was the page creator for this article, but it existed in this state before my involvement. However, I did take it to DYK. Obviously, it would have been more in keeping with the theme of this visit to NYC if I had gone over to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum to see if Grrrrrrrrrrr!! (page creator: May 9, 2012, : May 24, 2012, 
) was on display. Although Little Big Painting is an important enough work to be in the inaugural exhibition highlighting the collection, it is not a vital article on Wikipedia and not necessarily a cornerstone of the collection like I believe the aforementioned MOMA works are. Thus, the experience was a little bit less here in that respect. However, seeing something you have worked on included in the inaugural exhibition for one of the world's leading museums compensated for that effect. In addition, I did see subjects here that would be welcome additions to the wealth of knowledge on Wikipedia. However, they represented further branches of the tree of knowledge. The artist that I feel closer to understanding as a result of my visit is Chuck Close, who had a piece that impressed me. However, I don't think the art books are going to be as full of encyclopedic content on such work as they were for my Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein subjects.
In retrospect, maybe I should have dined at Argo Tea (PC, , ) or Intelligentsia Coffee & Tea (PC), which both have multiple locations in NYC although they are Chicago companies, or tried to find a Tim Hardaway, Jr. (PC, , ) autograph signing while he was still with the New York Knicks (he was traded to Atlanta on June 25), but the important takeaway is that there are lots of fun things to learn about by creating articles for redlinks. If you notice an article does not exist that you think should, do something about it. However, keep Wikipedia in perspective. Many topics on Wikipedia are real life things that can be experienced. We should not spend so much time on our electronic devices that we do not enjoy Wikipedia subjects in the real world.
Discuss this story
A belated happy birthday, Tony! Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:47, 20 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@TonyTheTiger: Thank you again for contributing this piece. I don't see a lot of comments here so I hope the heat from this week's op-ed didn't distract from your travelogue. I hope you contribute again, perhaps with your next trip, or perhaps our Gallery feature would be a good fit for you. Gamaliel (talk) 17:57, 23 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Pretty cool! - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 18:44, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]