User:MartinHarper
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I joined Wikipedia in November 2002, following an outage at my previous outlet for writing: h2g2. I rapidly realised that Wikipedia's system corrected the various problems that were preventing h2g2 from achieving its stated goal, and moved over quite quickly. Initially I copied across content I'd written for h2g2, such as articles on Luke Rhinehart and gender-neutral pronouns, before branching out into other areas, notably around gender and religion. I also spent time trying to broker agreements on the never-ending Israel vs Palestine edit war, and other contentious subjects.
Over time I became involved with policy discussions, became an administrator, and was appointed as an arbitrator in 2004. I'm glad that some of the policy elements I introduced or championed have become fundamental to Wikipedia in a way that I feel is healthy and productive. These include:
- Introducing and awarding the first barnstar. These and similar awards help to motivate contributors in a positive way.
- Introducing or promoting a variety of on-page disclaimers. These help reduce the perceived urgency of problems, thus reducing social stress and heated arguments.
- Introducing the wikipedia:three revert rule (here). This helps limit the maximum damage that can be inflicted by edit wars, and promotes co-operation amongst contributors.
Of course, in doing so I contributed to the ongoing problem of instruction creep, so it wasn't all positive.
I left around February 2005, though I have made occasional edits since then. I am thankful for the things I've learnt from Wikipedia, both factual and social. I am glad I was part of something that is now so useful to so many people. I do regret those problems with Wikipedia that still persist, and hope they will be resolved sooner rather than later.
[edit] Awards
What's this? Some sort of star, it seems... Well, I see that people are giving them out to useful Wikipedians, but you don't seem to have one, and if anyone deserves a star for good deeds (keeping Wikipedia running smoothly and all that), you do, so here you go. -- Oliver P. 09:22, 11 Jan 2004 (UTC)
I award you this barnstar for saying exactly the right thing to a departing Wikipedian. UninvitedCompany 14:27, 23 May 2004 (UTC)
For inventing the barnstar:
- NIRVANA2764 22:33, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
- Altenhofen (talk) 17:19, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Legalisms
I agree to multi-license all my original text contributions to Wikipedia, with the exception of my user pages, and the additional exception of material that I have imported from elsewhere under the GFDL. This multi-license is described below:
| Multi-licensed with the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License versions 1.0 and 2.0 | ||
| I agree to multi-license my text contributions, unless otherwise stated, under the GFDL and the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license version 1.0 and version 2.0. Please be aware that other contributors might not do the same, so if you want to use my contributions under the Creative Commons terms, please check the CC dual-license and Multi-licensing guides. | ||
