User:NevinThompson

Home Sengoku cleanup Sources Kotobank NAOJ dates Heibonsha Keigo citations Azuma Kondō Kazuo Yamada Commons uploads

What I'm working on

MAIN QUEST:

Sengoku Cleanup Project. I noticed most Sengoku pages need cleanup, so that is my ongoing project.

SIDE QUESTS:

Cleaning up the Keigo / Japanese honorifics page. It had "citations needed" article labels dating back to 2012 (!) and 2017. The article was generally pretty solid, so I just added citations. This sub-page explains my approach.
A NAOJ conversion tutorial that explains how I am using the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan calendar database.

This Kotobank user guide explains how to use Kotobank, a free site, run by the Asahi Shimbun that hosts entries from named Japanese reference works, in order to find canonical dates in Japanese history that can be converted using the NAOJ database.

The Sengoku Cleanup Project has also motivated me to upload my photos of Japan from over the past 25 years to Wikimedia Commons, and begin adding them to improve relevant Wikipedia pages.

Why I'm working on Sengoku Cleanup

I'm not a specialist in medieval or Sengoku-period Japanese history -- I got interested in this project after looking for Japan-related articles to copy-edit. But I’ve lived off and on in Tsuruga since 1994, and I’ve spent a lot of time in the region where much of this history played out: Fukui (the old provinces of Wakasa and Echizen), Ishikawa (Kaga and Noto), Toyama (Etchū), Shiga (Ōmi), and Kyoto, the old capital. I know the general history and chronology, and I’ve visited many, if not most, of the sites these articles describe, usually as just part of a drive with my wife and kids (I'm not an old battlefield obsessive.)

Lately I’ve become a little obsessed with dates. Japan used a lunisolar calendar until 1873, and converting those dates to the Western calendar is easy to get wrong, especially around Europe’s 1582 switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. I check conversions against the calendar database of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

Update: Currently experimenting with API-based editing. I don't feel comfortable with it, yet, so any robust and safe tool tips would be appreciated!

A little about me

I’ve also worked as a Japanese to English translator, including bulk legal discovery documents, but also for major brands. I’ve “transcreated” corporate reports for Honda, and also localized about a decade of television content for broadcast on a specialty channel in the U.S.

Since 2019 I have worked with journalism non-profit Hacks/Hackers since 2019, mostly in a marketing and communications and community management consulting role. I've worked on a number of Wikipedia and Wikimedia Foundation-adjacent projects, notably WikiCred and WikiPortraits.

I am currently helping Wikimedia NYC with newsletters and other communications strategy.

My interests include professional development, such as figuring out how to build AI tools that actually work (and work ethically), and creativity. I like poetry, photography, cooking, languages (especially Japanese), religion (especially Japanese), and movies (especially Japanese).

And Bob Dylan.

Find me here: