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Teenage Subway Aficionados Help With the Upkeep of Every One of New York City's 472 Subway Stations -- At Least on Wikipedia (nytimes.com)
The New York Times has a feature story about two incredible teenagers who work behind the scenes to improve all of the Wikipedia articles about the New York Subway system. An excerpt: Ryan Ng is a 19-year-old freshman at Baruch College in Manhattan. He studies finance, lives at home with his parents in Queens and is a member of the college's "League of Legends" video game club. But in the somewhat fanatical world of Wikipedia supercontributors, he is best known by his alias, Epicgenius. As Epicgenius, Mr. Ng has made over 180,000 edits to Wikipedia and created more than 17,000 pages for the site. Most of his work is in the service of his particular fixation: updating the articles associated with all 472 stations of the New York Subway system.
"Sometimes I edit before I do homework, which is not a good thing," Mr. Ng said. But he finds his hobby satisfying. "When I improve an article, I feel like I've accomplished something. I see my editing as more of a mission." Mr. Ng discovered Wikipedia editing when he was 13. He recalled wanting to collaborate on the page for "Gangnam Style," the hugely popular 2012 hit by the South Korean performer Psy. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Ng decided to specialize in public transit, which he considered a somewhat more useful pursuit. He knows his hobby can become obsessive because it's happened before.
"Sometimes I edit before I do homework, which is not a good thing," Mr. Ng said. But he finds his hobby satisfying. "When I improve an article, I feel like I've accomplished something. I see my editing as more of a mission." Mr. Ng discovered Wikipedia editing when he was 13. He recalled wanting to collaborate on the page for "Gangnam Style," the hugely popular 2012 hit by the South Korean performer Psy. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Ng decided to specialize in public transit, which he considered a somewhat more useful pursuit. He knows his hobby can become obsessive because it's happened before.
WORD!
Most of his work is in the service of his particular fixation: updating the articles associated with all 472 stations of the New York Subway system.
Fixation and strange hobby. Sounds like an aspie.
Then all my edits were reverted, so I became an obsessive vandal instead. Plus fuck 331dot and Cordless Larry for becoming admins this week.
So given his parents likely first or second generation upbringing being an aspie probably comes with the territory, based on individuals I knew through my college years with similiar names and ethnic backgrounds.
Having said that, good for him, we need somebody to contribute to American academic pursuits, even ones sometimes seen as banal, like subways in New York. Personally I find this quite interest and hope to read up on these pages more when I have time. So long as he's being relatively impartial in his research and documentation of these stations it seems like a net benefit to society, especially for historical purposes if he can find publicly available photographs, maps, etc of the tunnel systems for when sections inevitably are replaced, fail, or remodeled, so that future generations will have a snapshot of the subway system of the current generation in the future. I only wish more had been documented about the earlier subway lines, and hope that some of the abandoned but still existing lines get excavated, photographed, and otherwise documented for future generations exploration.
Can someone please translate?
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
Autism to the rescue!
So, not actually mopping up hobo piss?
Have gnu, will travel.
Hi, I’m(A) ____________, and I’m (B) _________________
(B) Our greatest responsibility is to serve our ________________(region) communities. We are extremely proud of the quality, balanced journalism that ______________(station) produces.
(A) But we’re concerned about the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country. The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media.
(B) More alarming, some media outlets publish these same fake stories stories that just aren’t true, without checking facts first.
(A) Unfortunately, some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control ‘exactly what people think’This is extremely dangerous to a democracy.
that this had nothing to do with sandwiches.
as a Teenage Subway Aficionado
"In local news tonight, two teenagers are in jail, awaiting questioning by Department of Homeland Security officials. Ryan Ng and Shaul Picker, both of Queens, were found to be obsessively documenting sensitive information on the city's 472 subway stations on the popular website, Wikipedia. When asked why the teens were being kept in jail pending questioning, DHS officials said that they were taking the actions 'out of an abundance of caution.' Neither the teens parents, nor Wikipedia representatives, have made any comment."
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They should take their obsessive editing and specialize in something useful like business or science. Become technical editors and make a good living. Public transportation is a dying industry, financed by stolen tax money, and soaked in literal piss.
Many would not think so, but the NYC subway system (and the London tubes as well. Not to mention the Moscow subway) has a big following that includes lots of YouTube videos and actual established tours. Check out: https://www.youtube.com/result...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Ryan Ng is a 19-year-old freshman at Baruch College in Manhattan. He studies finance, lives at home with his parents in Queens and is a member of the college's "League of Legends" video game club.
And has a fixation on Wikipedia subway articles...
The is certainly one thing we can say for sure: Young Mr. Ng is not getting laid.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Didn't need to be said. All millienial assholes live at home. Fucking hell my own kids didn't move out until they were 25+. It sucked.
but as a conservative Jew, he can’t edit on Shabbat
Has he asked his rabbi about this? It hardly qualifies as 'work' if you ask me.
IMHO, the MTA could care less about how the subway runs. They are only concerned with 20 and out (twenty years service, then pension). It's a real problem here..
It is bad that the first thing I thought of while reading the headline was teenagers skipping out of their first class after lunch to go eat at Subway the restaurant?
A teenager wrote 13,000 Wikipedia pages? No... just no.
One reason why I don't edit anymore.
I used to maintain the german "Scrum" site (some morons put complete bullshit there), but I'm no longer doing that, mainly because I lost my password. And Wikipedia has a broken password recovery page since 5 or 6 years, no one is fixing it ... funny somehow, but actually sad.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.