Mannytool

Welcome to my user page. It's a bit drab.

A brief introduction of myself & some ranting

I've been a member of the Wikipedia editing community since 2014. I was only 14 when I made my first edits but did not become significantly involved as an editor until 2023 at the age of 23. I chose my username based off a children's television show called Handy Manny, a show about a handy man named Manny and his tools. Had I known I'd be around this long on Wikipedia editing, I would've chosen something that fits me better, but at this point I wouldn't change it. I have never been the most skilled editor on here as I don't know how to program or write code or anything like that, but I have come to learn some things over the years and have definitely become more skilled. One thing that I enjoy doing the most is researching and finding references for topics that don't otherwise have one. It gives me a great feeling of achievement when I am able to turn a page from a redirect or a stub into something larger and more knowledgeable. While my time on Wikipedia varies over the years and will continue to do so, right now I'm committed to my current projects listed below and would like to have them completed by the end of the year. I am a graduate of Canisius College, class of 2022 (now known as Canisius University, does that make my diploma a relic?) and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in narrative journalism. My interest in journalism definitely has influenced my enjoyment of working with Wikipedia. I'm a massive Baltimore Orioles, Buffalo Bills, and Buffalo Sabres fan, as well as a die-hard supporter of NASCAR driver Denny Hamlin.

Something that I'll never understand is why so many editors tag things rather than fix the issue themselves. When it's something simple like one bare URL in an article, that's an easy fix and should not be worth adding a tag. If an article has poor sourcing, why not try to find sourcing for it yourself? Simple things like that go a long way, but instead we have many articles that go unfixed for significant periods of time because it's easier to just drop a tag. I'll get off my soapbox now.

Current projects

Currently working as part of the College Softball Task Force on creating, updating, and maintaining collegiate softball pages. Articles listed under the "majorly contributed to" section have the main framework that I've been using to make these pages. In the future things such as statistical leaders and other info like that may be added, but I want to get the more basic and easier things done first.

Coastal Athletic Association softball team pages
Northeast Conference softball team pages
Atlantic 10 Conference softball team pages → Completed
Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference softball team pages → Completed (excluding Sacred Heart and Merrimack who were announced to be joining MAAC recently)
Patriot League softball team pages → Completed
Other smaller conference softball team pages

College Softball Task Force

As mentioned previously, I am a member of the College Softball Task Force. The task force as of now is primarily just myself and one or two others. The article page for the task force is very outdated and has not been regularly updated for some time outside of my edits. With that being said, please consider helping us out in our goal of creating these articles of notable persons, seasons, stadiums, statistics, and teams. I am someone who believes in women's sports and believes that it has been under-covered, or has not received the recognition they deserve for a very long time. Some sports obviously do not deserve lengthy Wikipedia pages because they are not notable. College softball is a sport that does deserve that recognition, in my opinion and in the task force's opinion. The majority of NCAA Division I college softball pages are redirects, most of which to articles that don't provide much info on the sport or the program. By helping to create these pages and bringing them up to a notability status that is acceptable on Wikipedia, it helps to bring notoriety to the sport as well as shine some light on persons, statistics, and teams that otherwise go unnoticed without some heavy researching. One of the main things about Wikipedia is making information more easily accessible, and I feel that by helping me and a few others out in making these pages, it does just that for the sport of college softball, as well as the former players, coaches, and teams that have existed for decades without much of a digital footprint on Wikipedia. I would appreciate any help I can get in finishing this task as it will take me a very long to complete. If you are reading this and would like to help, you can reach me on my talk page. I've been using a similar template for all of the pages I've made or updated, so it should not be a difficult thing to follow. Thank you in advanced if you wish to help me out.

Unfortunately, at the moment I'm at a standstill on working on articles. Newspapers.com, one of my primary places to find sourcing for the articles, is having some issues with Wikipedian account access at the moment. So until that is resolved, I can't in good faith publish any articles in my sandbox without getting more legitimate sourcing. I can find plenty of primary sourcing, but not sufficient secondary. Until then, I will be putting a pause on this project. I'm hoping it's resolved soon.