Wikipedia

Peteforsyth

Joined 2 January 2006

This user helped "Columbia River" become a featured article. This user helped "Oregon State Capitol" become a featured article. This user helped "1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack" become a featured article. This user helped "Johnson Creek (Willamette River)" become a featured article. This user helped "Hanford Site" become a featured article. This user helped "Portal:Oregon" become a featured article. This user wrote "Columbia River", which became a good article. This user wrote "Neil Goldschmidt", which became a good article. This user wrote "Barlow Road", which became a good article. This user wrote "Fern Hobbs", which became a good article. This user wrote "Celilo Falls", which became a good article. This user wrote "The Register-Guard", which became a good article. This user wrote "Portland City Hall (Oregon)", which became a good article. This user wrote "Brandon Roy", which became a good article. This user wrote "LeGarrette Blount", which became a good article.

Notice of paid work relating to Wikipedia

I advise clients professionally on how to edit Wikipedia ethically, but I do not make edits on their behalf. All paid work relating to Wikipedia is subject to my professional Statement of Ethics. Here I list major projects:

In 2020-2021 I will be leading the News On Wiki campaign, which is funded by a microgrant from the WikiCred initiative. My primary efforts will be to recruit and coordinate volunteers in creating Wikipedia articles about news publications; I will also do some of this work myself. I am doing similar work for the Wikipedia:Architects Build Wiki initiative also in 2021.

In 2012-2014, I lead Communicate OER. This project aims to build the Wikipedia community and the quality of Wikipedia content. I generally do very little editing in article space in connection with this project. When I do, it is in order to assist and train new Wikipedia contributors (not to advance an editorial objective). Currently I am teaching this online course on editing Wikipedia, as part of CommOER: Wikipedia:School of Open course

In 2011-2012 I had business relationship with the charitable organization Consumer Reports, and I made occasional Wikipedia edits in connection to this work. See WP:Consumer Reports, and the announcement on my blog, for more about this project.

Feel free to contact me, either on my talk page or privately, if you have questions, ideas, or concerns relating to my work.

Some personal connections:


 
Photo: Ellis Christopher, CC BY-SA
• email Pete
• Pete on Twitter
• ( 1)-503-383-WIKI (9454) (mobile phone)
• More photos on my Commons profile
The Signpost
The Signpost
Pete is a founding member of
WikiProject Oregon and of the WikiProject Oregon blog.


Hi, I'm Pete.

I've been a Wikipedia contributor since 2006, and co-Editor-in-Chief of the Signpost since 2016. I believe that Wikipedia is changing the way we find information, the way we share information with others, the way we record history, and the way we think about collaborating for the collective good. Decidedly for the better. I help new contributors get involved with Wikipedia, mostly through my free online course Writing Wikipedia Articles -- please sign up for an upcoming session!

My early Wikipedia work focused on the U.S. state of Oregon, and I was able to help establish a strong sense of community and shared purpose among Wikipedia editors in Oregon. I'm especially proud of my work on the Columbia River article, and on the list of Oregon ballot measures. I've also tried to direct my fellow editors' attention outside the Wikipedia site; I helped to end the State of Oregon's claim of copyright over the laws of that state, and established a group blog to explain and expose our work to the broader public. More recently, I have focused on topics like open educational resources and medicine. One of the things I enjoy most about Wikipedia is the ability to move fluidly from one topic to another, and the mixture of my own learning and my ability to teach and guide others.

Writing and media have been a central focus throughout my career. From 1991 to 2004 I worked for a number of newspapers. In 2001 I helped launch the Portland Tribune, a rare startup newspaper in an era when more newspapers were shutting down than starting up. My experience ranges from writing and editing to graphic design, information systems architecture, and advertising sales. In 2009–11 I worked for the Wikimedia Foundation, designing the Wikipedia Public Policy Initiative, a pilot program to support university instructors' use of Wikipedia as a teaching tool, by assigning Wikipedia writing to their students. This pilot evolved to become the Wikipedia Education Program.

My interests and work have increasingly focused on group collaboration, and on the opportunities for improving education and public deliberation offered by wiki software. I have a consulting business, Wiki Strategies, in which I advise organizations on how to engage with the Wikipedia community in accordance with its policies and culture. (More info in this May 2012 interview in the Wikipedia Signpost.) As a volunteer, I plan and facilitate outreach and leadership development events like edit-a-thons and GLAMcamp DC.

Want to get in touch? email me through this form, or follow @PeteForsyth on Twitter.

Disclosures

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I advise clients professionally on how to edit Wikipedia ethically, but I do not make edits on their behalf. I do wish to disclose a few personal connections that could impact my impartiality when working on these articles:

My Wikipedia work

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Pete Forsyth is a Senior Editor.
(Overview of edits to Wikipedia.)
  Pete's Wikipedia
barnstars and awards
 
I award this Barnstar to Pete for his great efforts improving WP Oregon. —Aboutmovies February 2007

Most of my Wikipedia work is related to Oregon, with an emphasis on policy, history, and politics. I am particularly interested in the ballot initiative system. I also focus heavily on strengthening citations, which enables readers to verify claims and explore issues in greater depth. Here are some of the pages I've put the most work into:

  Columbia River
The history of this river, and its role in Oregon's history, is rich and fascinating. I have worked on this article for several years, along with some other excellent Wikipedians; in September 2009, we were successful in getting it approved as a featured article, making it the first article on a major world river to achieve that status.
List of Oregon ballot measures
Keeping track of ballot measures in our state, and nationwide, is pretty damn important. Heavily-financed special interests are nationally coordinated; regular folk oughtta be too. Wikipedia is a great place to keep factual information about ballot measures and the strategies that have been used on both sides.
  Neil Goldschmidt, Wayne Morse, George W. Joseph, and other Oregon political figures
Wikipedia is a resource for getting to know our government officials. I've worked on many Oregon politicians' Wikipedia entries.
  Barlow Road and other aspects of Oregon history.
I'm particularly interested in the development of hydropower on Oregon's rivers, and the story of George W. Joseph.
Oregon statewide elections, 2006
My first major project on Wikipedia. This was meant to provide a central place for information about elections; the Secretary of State's site and others have a good deal of information, but not in a format that makes it easy to absorb or navigate. This page needs more work, especially citations and formatting. If I take this on for a future election, I'll probably do it very differently.
  I helped get the following articles (and portal) to Featured article status
Hanford Site, Oregon State Capitol, and 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack, Johnson Creek (Willamette River), and the Oregon portal.
  I have been known to nominate new articles for the Did you know feature.
There's a full list of Oregon-related DYKs.

A few articles I started, that grew substantially without my direct intervention:

I've built some navigational templates, and worked on nearly all of the articles covered in these ones:

Some useful links and statistics:

I've uploaded many of my own photos, and created maps and charts. I also try to improve image quality whenever possible, adjusting color levels, cropping out unnecessary text from maps and diagrams, etc. A few of my own images below:

This tool shows all the images I've uploaded or edited here on Wikipedia, or at Wikimedia Commons. New articles I've started in the last month. (/New article archive)

some wikitricks

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<div style="background-color: #ECE5B6; padding: 0.5em; border: solid 1px black; -moz-border-radius: 8px;">
makes a background color, when put at the top of a page. Looks really cool on a talk page. No closing /div tag needed? Grabbed this from User:Valentinian.
User:Martha_Forsyth (Pete's Mom) experimented with this, and learned the following:
  • You can change the background color (see tags at Web-safe colors#X11 color names).
  • Adding a </div> tag at the end will give you a box with the background color specified (you can specify text color too. E.g., color:white (or other color).
  • No closing /div tag applies the background to the whole page (section??).
Example
—05:08, 26 March 2008 (UTC)
[[w:User:Peteforsyth]]
links from other Wikimedia projects to this page
InterWikiLinky
how to link to other projects
{{WikiProjectBanners|1={{template1}}|2={{template2}}|3={{template3}}|4={{template4}}}}
collapsible WikiProject banners
Use external editor for images, etc.
Note: Page has been moved to mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:External editors - Martha (talk) 22:27, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
easy columns
{{Col-begin}} {{Col-1-of-2}} {{Col-2-of-2}} {{Col-end}}
list style
  • This is a long list item text in order to show the text wrapping long list item text in order to long list item text in order to long list item text in order to long list item text in order to long list item text in order to long list item text in order to long list item text in order to
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  • This is a long list item text in order to long list item text in order to long list item text in order to long list item text in order to long list item text in order to long list item text in order to long list item text in order to long list item text in order to long list item text in order to show the text wrapping
  1. List Item
  2. List Item
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  1. List Item

  2. List Item
  3. List Item

http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/css/article.php/3470331

resources

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Proper citations are a crucial element of a good Wikipedia article. I use <ref> tags and templates like {{cite news}} to create well-formatted citations, wherever possible. A good source for Oregon-related citations is the Multnomah County Library's NewsBank-based system. My card number: 211680283880xx

Favorite sources:

Time zone converter

stuff to do

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The Portland Tribune has a couple extensive overviews of Southeast Portland: http://www.portlandtribune.com/neighborhoods/story.php?story_id=116172415370358000 and http://www.portlandtribune.com/features/story.php?story_id=30283 and overview of Portland neighborhoods: http://www.portlandtribune.com/neighborhoods/

I want to do some photography on Mount Tabor, and other places in the area.

When I've got a spare $17: this 1931 article discusses public vs. private hydropower in the west.

  • A weird episode to work in somewhere - 1991 legislature "on the lam" due to kerfuffle over redistricting: Lednicer, Lisa Grace (June 29, 2001). "Democrats will return Saturday". The Oregonian.

legislation advocacy

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Make works of the State of Oregon public domain
Works of the United States government are in the public domain, and I believe works of the Oregon government should be as well. Wikipedia would be able to do much more if it could use resources developed by the state gov't. I'm drafting a letter to send to Oregon legislators to that effect. Please help me improve it, or comment on its talk page!
E-waste legislation
Various states, including Washington and California, regulate the disposal of e-waste to some degree. Oregon is likely to join them this legislative session. I've drafted a news release (linked above) on behalf of Free Geek, urging the legislature to prioritize reuse over recycling, and to ensure that waste processors adhere to responsible practices.

my work elsewhere

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My op-ed about Wikipedia, April 2014

I write for other outlets about Wikipedia. This page on my website and this page on Wikipedia link to my the more prominent articles, presentations, and interviews I've done.

Statistics on my Wikipedia editing

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  • As of April 2009, I ranked 2120 among Wikipedia editors in terms of all-time edit count.

sub-pages

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automatic list

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