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I arrived when I did due to a remarkable coincidence. In February 2005, Google, which had a few years before created a vast paradigm shift in internet searches, was used as the search engine for an exciting new venture to produce a corpus of videos ― YouTube, which right from the start, "growed like Topsy". In the second half of October 2005, I thought to look to see if it yet had some old songs I remembered. I particularly wanted to find one which I had only heard a couple of times, while I was at university, but had liked.
I only half-remembered some lyrics, but Google helped me out by guessing correctly, and I was pleased to find YouTube had a video of the song (the one I saw then must have been taken down since, as they don't currently have a version uploaded more than 13 years ago, but this is the best they have now, at a concert in Hamburg in 1975) ― Slade's answer to Paul Simon's Homeward Bound ― Far Far Away ― a 1974 hit worthy of the fluorescent purple flares I had then! (Actually, that's a rather quiet and low-energy performance for Slade; this is more normal one, at a 5,000 seat venue in San Francisco, but it doesn't include Far Far Away).
There was only one problem, a word I didn't know ― the line Those arigato smiles stay in your memory for a while ― whatever was arigato? One lyric site had the mondegreen alligator but the official version was clearly arigato, which I'd never come across before.
Meanwhile, in Melbourne, Australia in the evening of 16 October 2005, an anon editor made a start on a new word, ありがとう; this is how he first saved it; 41 mins later, User:Connel MacKenzie, who must have been online very late in the US, patrolling recent entries, added a "missing language" template. Later in the evening, the anon added "Japanese". The page was not yet in our normal format (another anon in Ireland would handle that 10 days later), but it had all the essential information.
I tried using Google to find the meaning of arigato. Almost certainly, my first attempt was "define arigato", because at that time, that was the format I always used. It failed ― there were some hits, but they included only oriental-looking glyphs which I couldn't read. I tried other formulations; ditto. I went off down a rabbit-hole or two, including different spellings; then gave up and stopped for a snack. I decided to be more methodical, so started as before with "define arigato". This time, a page from site I'd never heard of, Wiktionary, was in the first few hits, and the preview included English words! I clicked on it and found this. I don't know why that didn't appear the first time. Maybe they had only just crawled the new definition; maybe their algorithm had learnt more about me; maybe it was just random. But I must have been one of the first views of the new definition ― it was definitely the not-yet-regularised one.
(Nowadays, a Google search for "define arigato" brings up wholly English entries in the first 10, with Wiktionary's definition of the English word arigato the second on the list, but that wasn't written till 9 years after my search, and yes a modern search does still include, lower down, the present long ― over 4,000 character ― Wikt entry for ありがとう, which Google finds because it includes the Rōmaji transcription arigatō).
When I read about English Wiktionary's aim to include all words in all languages, all defined in English, I found it mind-blowing. TBH, I still do. My first guess was that there might be 100,000,000 words in the world. I now know the answer is more like 700,000,000. But I can now also see our progress, from about 75,000 when I first learnt about en.wikt to about 7,500,000 words (not all lemmas) now. Perhaps only 1% of the total number of extant words in the world, but I suspect we're now adding words faster than new words are being coined, which is a good start.
The advantage of a wiki is that everyone can do the tasks they prefer, and as I found, a 91 byte entry can still give useful information, even if it will later grow to 4,118 (as at the time of writing). The acceleration in adding new words, and of adding senses and general improvements to existing words, has been phenomenal in the nearly 19 years I've been here. If there are equivalent exponential improvements in the next 40 years, we will have broken the back of the task.
So yes, I started minor editing within days of finding the project, and mid-January 2006 I got an account. I almost disappeared for much of the 2010s due to real world commitments, but I now have the ability to contribute most weeks again. IMO, we have a much better atmosphere here than at Wikipedia, and the fact we're a secondary, rather than a tertiary source, with research encouraged and, for many tasks, absolutely required, suits my character. Some who cross over from 'pedia complain that their work is reverted with overly-terse edit summaries. That generally occurs because they have not bothered to read the help pages regarding our strict formatting, CFI, etc, but a question to the reverter will always provide an explanation, or at the very least, a pointer to the appropriate help page. I have never come across an edit war here, nor an editor who acts as if he owns a particular page.
I recommend editing Wiktionary to anyone, except those with oversize egos, who is interested in words and enjoys making useful products. We are many different types of people, but there are also many types of editing, and for all of us, there is work we enjoy.
I lived in Birmingham, West Midlands from 1979-82. It is an old city, with a history of many artisans, the "city of 1000 trades". Notable specialities included manufacture of guns and jewellery. When I was there, in the late 20th century, it generated much of its wealth from a wide range of relatively small light and heavy engineering companies. In some areas, it felt as if one vehicle in 100 on the roads was a small mobile crane driving from one works to another to load or unload a heavy item (the works being too small to afford their own cranes). Of course engineering companies make many things other than engines, but Birmingham certainly did produce a lot of engines, some of them rather beautiful. And other trades, eg jewellery, still prospered.
Nonetheless, I was somewhat in awe when I enquired the purpose of a large building the edge of the traditional Jewellery Quarter and was told it was a large-engine earring works -- if the earrings needed a works that big, how large must the engines be! Next, I became somewhat puzzled -- where did the engines wear their earrings -- I hadn't realised engines had ears. But to parody the proponents of the proto-Indo-European language, if many different engine earrings exist, then there must have been common engine *ears to attach them to.
At that point my own proto-linguistic abilities were pressed into use. I knew most engines, particularly large ones, were fitted with lugs, which I had previously assumed were designed for lifting. But then my experience as a Londoner came into play; I realised two things: firstly that many of us referred to ears as lug'oles, and secondly that a particularly cruel teacher had tried to lift a young troublemaker by his ears. Then I remembered, due to my family's NW England connections, that in the Cumbrian language/dialect, ears are indeed called lugs. Several important minerals important to Birmingham manufacturing, including iron and gold, were previously mined in Cumbria. It would seem that the usage of lugs meaning ears travelled with the minerals.
My usage of the name Enginear is intended to publicise this exciting discovery. As Anne Elk said re the Brontosaurus Theory: That is the theory that I have and which is mine.
An architect friend of mine used the name Archietekt. The idea of using an analogue in this digital medium pleased me.
Answers to most names, but has an aversion to being pronounced /dead/.
Enginear (plural uncited)
Enginear (comparison all too frequent (see Pronunciation), not yet cited as superlative)
Enginear
(Enginear's)
{{en-verb}}