User:Joseph L. Mabel

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The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.


What I'm doing here (or not)

I'm here mainly to clarify for the benefit of Citizendium that I am who I claim to be. I'm a former mainstay of Wikipedia and still moderately active there: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jmabel and http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jmabel. I originally came over here thinking that Citizendium might be interested in also having some of the many Wikipedia articles I wrote singlehandedly. I see now that you are not. Oh, well. And given that a quick 5-minute browse of the forum turned up a few posts by some participants saying they would would like to destroy Wikipedia, I'm immediately suspecting that I will not find it more collegial over here. Oh, well.

Be that as it may: I've put a good 10,000 or so photos on Commons, including many images of Seattle and nearby locations, of contemporary music critics, and also about 400 images of Bucharest, Romania or of objects in museums there. I've also uploaded perhaps 1,000 public domain images (possibly more, not counting). Just wanted you to know that you can trust these and use them. And if anyone needs to get in touch with me for further clarification, please do. Also, if you want to follow up on any articles I've written in Wikipedia, please feel more than free to get hold of me.

And, by the way, the only reason I'm listed here as "Joseph. L. Mabel" is that they asked for my legal name. Everyone but my banker calls me "Joe".

Credentials

BA (Mathematics), Wesleyan University (Connecticut) 1977

MS (Computer Science), University of Washington 1981

Native English speaker, near-fluent Spanish, reads German, Romanian, Catalan, several other languages.

My undergraduate education included a lot of philosophy, literature and history (especially intellectual history), though Wesleyan does not have formal "minors".

Very well-read on Seattle history, though no formal credential.

Have read most of the works of Jorge Luis Borges (and a lot of related critical works) either in the original or in English translation, though no formal credential. I would say comfortably that a lot of this is material I know intimately.

Certainly more than routinely well-read on 19th century theater, especially blackface minstrelsy and Yiddish theater.

Strong interest in popular music. Again, no formal credential (though I have given a paper at Experience Music Project's Pop Conference, one of the leading conferences in the field).