About Me

My name is Jay Carriker and I am currently seeking a History degree from East Texas Baptist University, though I'm quite the autodidact. I am highly geographically and politically literate, mostly through my own efforts. I hope to eventually be multilingual, specifically with fluency in English, Español, et Français, and good reading skills in Latina; I also have an interest in learning Deutsch, Português, and Русский as time permits.

I have been at Wikipedia since June 27, 2003 and have been a wikiholic since December 2003. I am an advocate and a administrator. I am a moderate Inclusionist and believe that stubs are better than no article at all. I am strong believer in wikiprojects, in the case of many of the above projects I played an integral part in their creation, and their ability to improve entire genre of articles.

• A column by Mary E. DeMuth about a lady I am proud to call friend and mentor

• My old high school Model UN Team site, which is miraculously still up No picture of me though; proof it sometimes pays to be sick!

My goals at Wikipedia

One of my goals is to expand the scope of the project by devoting most of my effort to subjects that are not usually covered, or generally ignored, by most academics. I am trying to accomplish this by helping to create articles that are thorough enough that they are able to receive Featured Article status. When I feel I have finished my work I then use a selective Peer review where I ask users that I am familiar with to individually review my changes and add to it. Finally, I (or another user) nominates it as a Featured article candidate. When an article becomes featured more people read it-- increasing knowledge of the subject, and more people contribute to it-- improving the quality of the article.

Articles I am currently trying to work up to featured status: (Please feel free to contribute; the more authors the better the article. Bold text indicates articles that are already recognized as a featured.)

• Marshall, Texas
• Great Mosque of Djenné
• Elagabalus
• Hatshepsut
• East Texas
• Eleanor Roosevelt- article is a mess-- no order, possible NPOV problems
• Roland Mesnier- stub only cover early life
• Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba

My To Do List

• Red Chapel | Firdus Square-expand | Gannys | Maya | Potheinus | History of Texas
  • Marhallcentric articles: History of Marshall, Texas | Education in Marshall, Texas | Economy of Marshall, Texas | Newspapers of Marshall, Texas-expand | Architecture of Marshall, Texas | Peter Whetstone

• These articles are possibly biased against their subjects and I would appreciate any help in making them NPOV-- possibly worthy of featured status.
  • Pat Robertson
  • Donna Brazile
  • Bill O'Reilly (commentator)