User talk:Abyss

Hola!

Abyss, My name is Andrew and I'm working with Ray out in Portland O.R.. I'll be helping quite a bit with the management of all our various writers, the editing process, and improving our site as a whole. I've already taken a look at the articles you've posted thus far. In general the information and writing is good but you seem to have a knack for transferring fairly small articles! As long as these people are relevant (i.e. have photos/caricatures and are still involved in the ICANN and IT community as seen in their LinkedIn or other profile) then we still need them. However, I feel like there is the potential to continue to build SOME of these articles. I recently did two edits of pages you've completed and I'd like to walk you through those in an attempt to clarify what we're looking for, with the goal of improving your work for the remaining batch and continuing to hire you to help with the project.

Okay, Take a look at the edits I've completed for Garth Miller:

First of all, as you may have noticed, searches for Garth Miller turn up a few relevant articles- but many of them say exactly the same thing (regarding his work with CoCCA and there agreement with Minds + Machines). Thus, I've pulled in one more reference and built a quick statement around that. While it may not be adding much size to the article, the fact that we are now referencing the common article available for Garth means we are better representing the available information.. and building credibility through references. I also added one more sentence to clarify what CoCCA does.

Also, you had not redirected Garth's page from ICANNWiki.org. Please be sure to do this.

So the important thing to note here is that we added a reference to reflect the available information and that we added some specificity to make it feel like we have more information than we actually might have.

Next take a look at the edits I completed for Ajit Sharma:

First, It is is of absolute importance that you cite a reference. This article had no reference cited. Granted it is a bit of work to narrow down the many LinkedIn profiles which match the same name, but adding "Fiji" to your search would help with this. So in the first two google pages returned from the search= "Ajit Sharma" Fiji, we can see that there isn't much. But! There are a few pages with direct relevance to ICANN, and therefore very important to include. These sites are the ones that include a photograph of all the Fellows at the meeting and a list of their names. There are two: [1] and [2] Thus, we can add his fellowships as a very important piece of information which will tie him to ICANN. I then noticed that he was a fellow for an APNIC meeting, another related and important piece of info.

Secondly, It is important to note the format changes I made to his "career history" section. The way you wrote it you started with his current position and then continued with "He was...."
"He was....." etc. This repetition is unnecessary. No need to repeat his current position you had just listed above. You can begin to cite his old positions, and you can abbreviate the section by starting with his position (i.e.: Systems Analyst) followed by a comma and then the location of that position ("The University of the South Pacific")... Getting rid of all the "He was.." really cleans up the presentation.

Also I brought in a little more info from LinkedIn. Mainly his certifications. These seemed very relevant to the community, more so than say his education which I decided not to bring over. Also, I noticed his affiliations at the bottom of his LinkedIn profile, one of them was for ISOC, so while I don't know his role at ISOC I can confidently say that he is somehow associated.

Summary

SO! While this note is very long I just want to stress some minor, but very important, changes I hope to see in your work. Please include ALL possible references, Going through the first two pages of Google search results, and searching using different terms (by throwing in the country of origin, their company, or even "ICANN" into your searches) will generally turn up some good leads. Try to build something out of nothing if there is little information on the person in an effort to include more references. And, please pay attention to your formatting decisions and try to not be repetitive.

You can continue to bring over the smaller articles from the .org site, but please give it a solid attempt at trying to expand the articles. I know, for some there is very little information available. But as long as they have the phot0/caricature and are definitely still involved in the great big world of ICANN and the Internet it is important to bring them over. So, if you feel more comfortable with the short articles, by all means continue with these. But please realize that they will demand research time to turn up relevant sources.

I look forward to working with you, and I'm not making these suggestions to nag but only to help you become a better writer for our site so you can continue to work with us. Thanks for all the help, your work really is making the site significantly better. I look forward to honing in on a good technique with you. Be well, Andrew

Reply

Hi, Sure will look into these points noted by you. Will try to create better work.

New Example Section

In the community portal you will a section labeled "great people articles"; I've compiled an example of a great person article from each one of our writers, including you. Take a minute to reflect on why I chose this as your top work, the edits that have been made to it since you completed it; and please take a look at the other writers' articles, it may inspire you and help you make formatting and content decisions in the future. I certainly felt that I learned more just meticulously going through the articles. Again, thanks for all the good work. Andrew

Recent Batch

Thanks for completing your recent batch! I've finished my edits and it all looks real good on the whole. Very few copy and paste issues (which I imagine were a result of the original article from ICANNWiki.org) I've left maybe around a half dozen without AM initials next to them. I was hoping that you could take a look at these and attempt to break these articles into multiple sections. As is the articles have just too much information presented in very big, daunting paragraphs. Even as an editor familiar with the site I am turned off by reading information like this.

Also, there are a few marked for photo issues. If you are able to fix these, please do.

Good Work!Andrew

Done

I have corrected the photo issues and also edited the 4 articles without AM, so that they look clean. These were the articles I directly transferred from icannwiki.org, so I thought that they were alright and needed no formatting.

Inform me if you need any more changes.Abyss

Done!

Hi, done with editing Geir Rasmussen, German Valdez and Ginger Paque. I don't know if Hagen Hultzsch was copied or not. I transferred it directly from icannwiki.org. I think the article looks beautiful after I have divided it into sections. If you still want me to edit it, I can. But, the article I re-write will be short as usual. I guess it is better to leave it as it is because large articles are hard to come by.

Inform me if you need any more edits.Abyss

One last thing! I was hoping you could do a quick run through and just google each person's name to see if there is more information available for inclusion. I marked 3 or so that have more information available. We don't pretend that the stuff from the old site was perfect/complete, so I get the sense that there is some more stuff available on a good handful of these people. So, just a google search of the person's name - or their name along with their company name or just "ICANN"-may turn up some useful stuff. Thanks, let me know what you find! Andrew