User:PalmcottageFM

Newbie Wikipedian here -- please be gentle!

About me

This user is a female contributor.

I'm 28 and live in Sydney, Australia. I'm married to Mercurius but don't hold that against me!

My interests

Fashion blogging

This user is a member of
WikiProject Blogging.

I joined Wikipedia because I noticed the fashion blogs page was only being used for linkspam, which is a pity because there's so much interesting stuff happening with citizen journalists producing their own fashion coverage as an alternative to the mainstream media.

I'm now doing my little bit to make sure that the important developments are recorded here as fashion blogging grows.

Fashion in general

This user is a member of the Fashion WikiProject.

I've been asked a couple of times to help Wikipedians verify fashion-related material that's been added and weed out linkspam. I know more about fashion than I really ought, and I'm happy to offer advice where I can. Leave a comment on my talk page if you need help.

My contributions

I wrote most of the fashion blogs page. I also keep an eye on linkspam on the fashion and fashion on the Internet pages. A lot of linkspam gets added to these pages, which is a shame because there's stuff that's genuinely important happening in these spheres... I'd hate to see the notable stuff get ignored due to the actions of a bunch of spammers.

My credentials

If credentials count for anything here, this is what I've got:

• Masters in Interactive Multimedia from University of Technology, Sydney
• Worked in the IT industry for years doing usability stuff
• Currently co-authoring a chapter for an upcoming Interaction Design textbook. My chapter will be about 'the ideal vs. real consumer / user' and will look at principles from fashion marketing that are / can be applied to designing web sites

Full disclosure

I run a fashion/style blog called The Bargain Queen. It's certainly not notable enough to deserve its own web page (yet!), so there's no danger of me creating one :)

My blog gets a little bit of national media attention in Australia because fashion blogging's still a pretty new thing here, but worldwide it's well along the long tail.

Also, my Dad has a Wikipedia entry, not written by me (he's a well-known jazz musician). I haven't contributed because I'm a very biased source of info about him. I'm tempted to out him for some of the stuff he recorded under pseudonyms, but that would be naughty! (Also, not verifiable ;)

About being new

I read dozens of pages of rules, guidelines and tutorials before I started posting and I've read even more since -- but I still don't know everything. I'd estimate that I currently know less than 10% of the rules and conventions here... there's really a lot to know, and I'm only going to learn by spending time on here doing things.

If I get something wrong, please let me know. I'm a reasonable person so if you tell me nicely, I'll stop doing it. Hubby gets flamed a lot, but I'm not a flamewar kinda gal! :)