User:Dosseman
I may not promote myself, but it seems on this page I may. Well:
My full name is Dick Osseman. I love photography and (some aspects of) Turkey. So I created an extensive site (http://www.pbase.com/dosseman ,in 2020 containing 83.500 well-organized pictures), where I treat most of that country. Almost every city is represented, as are most of the major museums and archaeological sites. Whenever possible I add texts taken from authoritative books, local folders, the Encyclopedia Britanica and increasingly the Wikipedia itself, or just original writing of my own or contributed by visitors. The site started May 9th 2004 and has generated (April 2022) 127.000.000 "views". Pictures have been used in over 110 books (https://pbase.com/dosseman/me_in_print ), several newspapers, many sites and at least one (BBC) television program. I received many positive reactions from Turks, either living in the country or abroad and from foreigners who have visited the country as tourists or worked there.
In view of the scarcity of good (links to) pictures of many Turkish cities and their culture I have added "External links" on several Wikipedia pages. I do NOT consider that as promoting my site or myself, but as promoting (knowledge of) Turkey. I suppose I may find some Wikipedian will be taking the links out, considering me to be guilty of self-aggrandizement after all. In that case I thought I'd say good-bye to Wikipedia, and use my energy elsewhere. I did not want to compete on that issue. However, in 2019 I decided I'd contribute part of my archive as Wikicommons pictures (started end of januari, passing 32000 uploads in May 2022 and progressing fast because of the virus, that kept me indoors). I try and put the pictures in relevant articles, editing some as I go along. I'm still struck by the many outdated links in Turkey articles, and sometimes remedy this. However, as I have so many pictures, I will continue to link to pages on my site. In Commons I have been granted "autopatrol" rights on 25-3-2020. That indicates I do not have the ability to mark [other's] actions as patrolled; instead only [my own] actions are automatically marked as patrolled. This right is commonly granted to users who aren't necessarily involved in patrolling pages, edits or uploads, but create a high level of quality pages or uploads that do not require patrolling by other users. It seems to have advantages that I will be working out, and maybe use to good advantage. I mention it because I have on occassion been bothered by other users who thought they ought to correct my work. Please don't, but write to me instead if you feel I'm wrong.
I have also created a large site about Syria, with pictures of monuments that may no longer exist (some used by BBC, UNESCO and others), and a smaller one about Italy. In 2013 I added a site about Jordan. Linking from Wikipedia still serves the purpose of supplying good pictures of often less photographed aspects of countries I visited. I added all relevant pictures I had to the commons for those countries.
After it re-opened I have contributed a little to the Turkish Vikipedi, but my Turkish being poor it is hard going. Assistance of English-speakers knowing Turkish might be useful. Oh, and my name, Osseman, has nothing to do with Osman, it's a Dutch name, and I'm Dutch also.
I hardly ever use Wikidata, but when I found the capital of a district in Turkey (Silifke) was categorized as a village I thought it necessary to edit. In my mind a most annoying problem is that Turkish provinces tend to have the name of their capital, which will also be the name of a district. As a result, one can find pictures of hamlets grouped with major monuments in the capital, all thrown together. This is exacerbated when people group a capital as a village. I have suggested to add "Province", "District" and "Town" to such names, but the problems persists, and also Turkish users protested, thinking their system was perfect.