User:Mike Peel

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Mike Peel (talk) is busy in real life and may not respond swiftly to queries.
This is the Wikipedia user page on Mike Peel. For Mike Peel, see real life.

I am a student of Physics and Astrophysics at the University of Manchester. I finished a Masters course in June 2006, and am currently studying/researching for a PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics at Jodrell Bank Observatory, with a focus on the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. I am hoping to use the telescope at the Toruń Centre for Astronomy, Poland, for my observations. For more info about me, see my personal webpage at MikePeel.net.

Why do I edit wikipedia?

  • It makes information accessible to all (with a computer).
  • It enables the spread of knowledge that would otherwise be ignored, forgotten or lost.
  • It (hopefully) encourages people to learn more than they otherwise would.
  • The selfish reason: by writing about something I learn about it, with more sinking in than if I just read it.

I have great hopes for Wikipedia. If it turns into a fad that lasts only a few years, then I'll be bitterly disappointed. I hope that Wikipedia as it is now is the seed of something that will continue growing and developing over the coming centuries, becoming a major repository of humanity's knowledge.
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Contents

[edit] Wikipedia activities

My current Stress (physics) stress level. Finding that I need more time in the day to do everything.
My current Stress (physics) stress level. Finding that I need more time in the day to do everything.

I mainly edit astronomy/astrophysics/physics articles, although I don't confine myself to them. A lot of my editing is related to references for the articles, which is currently one of Wikipedia's biggest weak points. I also do a lot of maintenance work here - the two largest tasks that I've done being the categorization of templates into subcategories of Category:Wikipedia templates, and tagging articles for WikiProject Physics. Neither of which I've completed, but at least I've improved them.

If you've replied to a comment of mine on a talk page of an article, or started one about an edit I've made, and I haven't responded, that's most likely because I don't watch all of the pages that I've edited. Sorry. Please poke me on my talk page, and I'll reply to your comment.

I operate Peelbot, which I hope to use for a variety of things. I'm used to use it to tag the talk pages of physics-related articles with Template:Physics. It's currently idle, as it required Windows XP to run, and I now use an Apple Mac.

I also have an account at Wikimedia Commons: commons:User:Mike Peel, which I use to upload pictures to Wikipedia (under CC-BY-SA), and another on Wikinews: wikinews:User:Mike Peel. I also have fr:Utilisateur:Mike Peel.

I don't like external links sections; I feel that their content is generally best placed under either the References section, or Further Reading, or in an infobox in the case of official links. I find that external links sections invite spam, which is generally bad.

This user is a participant of
WikiProject Physics.
This user is a member of the Astronomical Object WikiProject.
This user is a member of the Astronomy WikiProject
This user is a member of
WikiProject Greater Manchester
This user is a member of
WikiProject Space.
{{t|3}} This user contributes to the template namespace with confidence.
{{t|c}} This user can use and program conditional templates.
This user is or was a jodrellite.

[edit] Observations

  • Around November 2006 I noticed a number of editors giving correct edit summaries while vandalising articles. For example, [1] shows an editor giving an edit summary of "spelling errors", while introducing spelling errors into the article! (NB: this is separate from Wikipedia:Automatic edit summaries.)
  • During Oct-Nov 2006, I also noticed an increase in the number of anonymous editors either adding wikilinks to articles, or removing some, with no other changes.
  • Wikipedia is a bottomless pit, or at least it's a close approximation to one. As aptly illustrated by the way that "bottomless pit" is currently (jan 2007) a red link. It still (may 2008) doesn't talk about the metaphor of a bottomless pit... although it does link to Abyss
  • The aims of wikipedians seem to be askew. We seem to have in-depth articles on Pokémon, and all its' characters, yet a disorganized and incomplete set of articles on physics and astronomy, among many other important topics. Huh?
  • The template namespace is a mess

[edit] Works in progress

[edit] Featured

I've contributed heavily to the following Featured Articles and Lists:

... more to come ...

I also got Portal:Physics to Featured Portal status; however this is now maintained by others.

[edit] Good Articles

I've contributed heavily to the following Good Articles:

... more to come ...

[edit] Did you know

Hulme Arch Bridge

[edit] Bookmarks

These are Wikipedia pages I either find useful but don't edit, or that I do edit but don't want cluttering up my watchlist. Since Wikipedia doesn't have a proper bookmarking system, this seems to be the logical place to put them.

[edit] Special pages

[edit] Places to watch

[edit] Random odd things

[edit] Things I think every Wikipedian should read

(Have you read them all?)

[edit] Disclaimers

This is a Wikipedia user page.

This is not an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user to whom this page belongs may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia itself. The original page is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mike_Peel.