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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.
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.
So, not actually mopping up hobo piss?
Have gnu, will travel.
that this had nothing to do with sandwiches.
as a Teenage Subway Aficionado
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...
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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.
Why can't someone happily be involved in not being practical?
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?
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.
This is my experience too. I've never had a positive experience trying to contribute to a wiki no matter what I did because I apparently dared to step onto the turf of another editor's pet article where I apparently could never please them no matter how hard I tried to follow the rules to a T. I finally gave up on participating in any kind of wiki when another editor reverted my edits on Uncyclopedia where everything is supposed to be intentionally non-sensible and absurd but my edit apparently did not meet his personal definition of funny.
Rents used to be much cheaper in the boroughs, in Jersey, etc. But migration to the area has FAR outpaced new residential construction, and as a result rents have skyrocketed even in formerly undesirable areas like Flatbush, Bushwyck, even East NY. About the only way I could see to live near NYC as a middle-class family of 6 would be to save up about a million dollars (calling into question whether we're really middle-class at that point), buy a house in Staten Island, and plan on an hour or more total commute involving drive to SIRR, train to ferry, ferry to city, then subway or bus to workplace in (hopefully lower) Manhattan. And the taxes alone would kill us, but they're no longer that much better in Jersey or Long Island, nor would commutes from either location be without challenges.
Nonaggression works!