User:William Pietri

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I award you this barnstar for your tireless work defending Wikipedia against those who would seek to abuse it and for tireless investigation of the Jamie Kane scandal Pydos 14:12, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

I award you a long-overdue Barnstar for your work on Gregory Lauder-Frost JzG 20:57, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

The Spamstar of Glory -- Presented to William Pietri for diligence in fighting spam on Wikipedia. A. B. 18:33, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi! A long-time Wiki user and promoter, I only started editing Wikipedia in 2004. Generally, I'm just doing minor edits or cleaning up after vandals, although I'm starting to dig in a little more deeply. My selection of articles probably looks a little random; that's because I will review edits from the recent changes or an anti-vandal tool. If I've made a mistake or am not doing things in proper Wikipedia style, please do let me know. If you want to contact me urgently or privately, I'd welcome an email.

[edit] Brief Bio

Professionally I'm a software development consultant, specializing in object-oriented languages, internet and web-based applications, and agile, team-oriented methods like Extreme Programming. I live in San Francisco and take a great interest in the evolution of the Internet and its effects on society, and especially the many interesting startups that are at the forefront of that evolution.

That interest is partly what has drawn me into Wikipedia. There are at least two important areas where Wikipedia is on the cutting edge: the collection and organization of large amounts of unstructured information, and the (self-)organization of large numbers of volunteers. I think it will be decades before we really know the answers to some of the questions that Wikipedia raises, but it's fascinating to watch it happen. For me, one of the most effective ways to learn is by doing, so I'm trying to dabble in a variety of ways.

[edit] Vandalism

I've been doing web community stuff off and on for a decade now, and before that I ran mail servers, so I have developed a strong dislike of vandalism, spam, and other community resource abuse. Happily, serious vandals are a small, small fraction of any user base. Many people who start out as vandals eventually become good contributors, so I try to be both implacable and friendly. Let me know if I err too far on one side or the other.

Here are some related pages, mainly for my own reference:

There are some people I wanted to keep an eye on after their involvement in the Jamie Kane thing. For handy reference, I'm putting them here. If you know of a better trick, please let me know.

And here are other dubious characters: