User:PhillySaxon

View from Gaviota Peak, southeast into Santa Barbara Channel; my house should be visible to the upper left, but it only takes up about a thousandth of a pixel.

I'm Philly. I'm 17 years old, I'm a complete and utter geek, and I go to college. And that's pretty much all I can ever describe myself as. I like the colour green, I'm not sure why, probably because when the man turns green you've got less chance of being hit by angry red cars. Red cars are bad, Eugene says so.

I like to drink. No, I LOVE to drink. It's usually coffee, but often becomes alcohol of many kinds (I recently even discovered Tequila, wheeeey!), and even the occasional energy drink if I'm absolutely dying. But this morning I found out Red Bull does NOT do hangovers any good. Seriously, I felt like I was gunna get a mild case of exploding heart disease.

I try really hard to be positive about everything in life, except HIV. When I am sad though, I listen to happy music. Not to cheer myself up, but to remind myself of the happiness and joy I'll never be able to have. Now that's some serious emotional torture! Take that, emo kids!

When I go out, I always seem to spend more on other people than I do on myself. I just can't resist, even the Big Issue seems interesting sometimes. Interesting fact: I quite like bananas; they're a good source of potassium and SHOULD NOT BE DROPPED. They don't make very good guns, but they taste nice.

I play piano. When I say play, I really mean that I hit the keys and hope to fucking God that it sounds okay, which it usually doesn't. I also play Harmonica even worse, and I have an addiction of going into Dawsons to look around and hammer some ivories that I'll never be able to afford (£6000 for a baby grand?). I'd love to be able to play the guitar, but too many people do it and I find it hard anyway. Shame. I'd also love to play the bagpipes, 'cause I'd annoy the fuck out of anyone who crossed me.

Currently my social life revolves around Runescape and Torchwood, so I'd quite like to go out my front door into that big room with the blue roof that sometimes leaks. I think it's an expansion pack though, and I just can't afford it. But yeah, I'd quite like new friends, rough sex, and possibly a family (I'm joking about the friends bit, don't worry). So add me and talk to me, and you'll probably find I'm a lot less stupid than I come across as here.

Gaylor Lakes, Yosemite National Park; another place I like to go sometimes. You can't see my house from here.

Music, mainly. So far I have mainly focused on writing articles on "early music" (Medieval, Renaissance, and early Baroque), because I love it, I know a bit about it, and when I joined Wikipedia, no one else bothered with it. Once in a while I contribute to articles on 20th-21st century composers, music, practice, theory, etc. I usually, but not always, avoid the common practice period, since there are plenty of other contributors capable of writing in this area; why not focus on a spot where I can use my specialized knowledge? A lot of the time when I'm feeling uncreative I do RC patrol and eradicate all the vandalism I can find. It's addictive, and once in a while I have to remind myself to stop and write articles again.

As a break from music sometimes I write articles on California geography and history, since I've lived here a while, have studied geography and geology, and have a pretty good library of books on local history. Also sometimes I click on random page and copyedit, if I don't get hooked on reading. Is anyone else surprised at the sheer amount of things you have learned on Wikipedia? In my opinion this is one of the most wonderful things about this project.

Some other random interests: Classics, literature, history, military history, earth sciences, mountaineering, birds, trees, religious traditions, data forensics, European and eastern philosophy. I read a lot, especially English literature, as well as a lot of stuff in translation. While I'm fairly knowledgeable on topics such as Shakespeare, the existentialist writers, Swift, Greek tragedy, epic poetry, and European, Middle Eastern, and South Asian history, I don't usually contribute to articles on those topics; I don't feel my knowledge rises above the high amateur into the "sufficiently expert". There are other writers here who are better, and who know more than I do, and for now I'm going to leave it there. I would politely ask others to at least consider the depth of their knowledge before tackling detailed subjects around which their own experience is limited; but then who am I to tell other people what to do? Do as you will, says Rabelais, but prepare to be reverted (not by me, necessarily, but by someone who actually has studied the topic). This is an encyclopedia, not a trivia site.

Wikipediholic score is usually in the "productive" range; the scores are meaningless since people keep changing the test, and it keeps getting sillier, but it's still fun to take.

As of March 3, 2008: 543 articles, of which 459 were from scratch, mostly on Medieval, Renaissance, and early Baroque composers and theorists, as well as musical techniques and forms. About 375 of the articles I have listed are on early music; about 300 are biographies; 68 are topical overview articles; 24 are about individual pieces of music; only 34 are on 18th or 19th century topics or people. I'm probably about 30% done with finishing the area to my satisfaction, and it's starting to seem like all the low-hanging fruit is gone; now comes the hard work of getting existing articles up to an encyclopedic level of accuracy, detail, prose style, citations, and references. In general, the whole area of early music on Wikipedia still needs a lot of information on just how everything happened, and a lot of articles need to tie in to cultural and political and religious history as well.

Somewhere north of 75,000 edits, though I count them rarely. I reached No. 20 on Wikipedians by Edit Count in May 2007, but have fallen back because I no longer spend much time patrolling recent changes (I don't need to: our bots revert vandalism much more efficiently than they used to, and we also have lots of new users who like to do this job). I've been around here for a while. Edit count is not irrelevant: it gives some indication of one's dedication to the project. Not an infallible one, mind you, but to deny that there is any correlation between edit count and commitment to building the encyclopedia would be rather silly.

I take article requests. If you spot something that is missing, or just substandard, and it is in the area of early music--or indeed, in "classical" music in general--let me know and I'll do what I can to help, if it is within my area of competence. Since this is a big area, that's a big "if."

• Fill out the classical music area in general, and Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque in particular, since the early music area was quite undeveloped when I started.
• Starve the trolls.
• Tithe some of my time helping eradicate vandalism, spam, and conflicts of interest; discussing deletions, new admins, policy, and other matters; and assisting in anything else that comes up, since I think it is a Wikipedian's duty to help out on the maintenance side.
• Stay positive. Laboring in the shadows, unacknowledged, is hard after a while.

• Always acknowledge the good work of others. I'm only a tiny part of the whole.
• Drink some more wikipedihol. It makes me happy. So there.
• Contribute even more content. Avoid the typical burnout curve of ceasing to contribute to articles, increasing edits to policy talk pages, noticeboards, RFCs, Arbcom cases, and so forth: these symptoms precede Wiki death. See number 59 for the analogy with stars on the main sequence. While it may be impossible to avoid, if one is aware of the inevitable, it may be possible to postpone. I have a specialized skill, and I'm not done contributing in my area of expertise yet.
• Create free content only. That includes public domain and GFDL.
• Acquire the knack of page formatting, so I can update this page without borking it. Thanks and gratitude to Phaedriel for the page design.

I am an administrator. Drop me a note on my talk page if you need help with something which requires a mop and bucket. In the interest of transparency and full accountability – pretty important things on Wikipedia – you may review all of my administrative actions here: [1]

As of spring 2007, I have blocked several thousand vandals, and reverted or deleted over 35,000 separate instances of vandalism. Some people don't like me for stopping them from having their childish fun with us, but that's OK: whatever happens, whether I burn out or stay on for a while, I am confident I have done some good for this project.