User:Ras52
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In real life, my name is Richard Smith. I'm originally from Yorkshire, on the edge of the North York Moors, and now live in Cambridge where I came to read Natural Sciences at Clare College. By the time I received my MSci, my interests were mostly in mathematical physics: particularly in the poorly understood interactions between quantum field theory and general relativity. Although I am not professionally a physicist, I still retain an interest in theoretical physics — and science and mathematics in general.
After graduating, I spent seven years working as a C++ computer programmer, and have recently I have started to work as a Linux sysadmin for a ISP, which I co-founded, called Mythic Beasts. In my spare time, I still actively use C++, and I am great advocate of free software (that's free as in "free speech", not "free beer" — see Stallman's book on the subject).
Other interests include hill walking, change ringing and opera.
[edit] Hills and mountains
The main area of Wikipedia that I edit is hills and mountains of the British Isles, and I am an active member of the British & Irish hills WikiProject. My current pet project is improving the various hill lists in Wikipedia, in particular, the Marilyns and Hewitts.
- Marilyns: Scotland (S Highlands, N Highlands, Islands & Lowlands), Man, Wales, England, N Ireland & R of Ireland.
- Hewitts: England, Wales & Ireland (missing).
At some point I would like to write a page on the history of British hill lists — in particular, the lists of 2000' hills in England and Wales has an interesting history going back at least as far as an article by J. Rooke Corbett in the Rucksack Club Journal in 1911. Of course, the list of Munros pre-dates this having been published in 1891 in the SMC Journal.
Personally, and perhaps due to my mathematical bent, I am more interested in lists that have well-defined criteria for inclusion, rather than the subjective criteria used by Munro or Wainwright. I also find that the overly inclusive criteria used by John & Anne Nuttall in their list results in unsatisfying list because of the inclusion of too many irritating and insignificant outliers. Nevertheless, these lists are all notable and deserve representation in Wikipedia.
Finally, within Britain, I would like to see that each of the 119 mountains in the British Isles with a relative height of at least 600 m has an article — and not just a stub.
Outside of Britain, I am considering writing a page on, and perhaps some lists of, the Ultras — mountains worldwide with a prominence of at least 1,500 m, of which there are believed to be 1,524, including several unclimbed peaks.
[edit] Work in progress
- User:Ras52/List of Marilyns in Ireland — a replacement for List of Marilyns in Ireland that is formatted like the other lists.
[edit] The problems with Wikipedia
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This section is an essay: it reflects the opinions of its author.
If you agree or disagree with it, or otherwise want to comment on it, leave a message on my talk page. |
I haven't been contributing to Wikipedia for tremendously long — since around the end of 2005, if anonymous edits are to be included. However, I believe that I have got a good feel for how Wikipedia works during that period. Whilst I believe that fundamentally Wikipedia has created an unparalleled and easily accessible mine of information, I do believe that there is considerable room for improvement. In particular, I think there are four specific key problems with Wikipedia.
- First, due process in Wikipedia is frequently abused by anonymous users identified solely by IP addresses. This happens at several levels, from new users vandalising pages repeatedly, to existing users logging out to avoid the 3 revert rule. I believe that, collectively, we have become too lax at tackling this. The ability to edit without creating and account and logging in should not be considered a right: rather as a convenience that can, and should, be revoked at the first sign of abuse. I wouldn't go so far as to require that all editors should be logged in; however, I would tighten up handling of edits from anonymous users. In particular, I would favour a "one strike and out" policy towards clear vandalism by anonymous users; I would suggest that reverting anonymous users' contributions shouldn't count towards the 3 reverts; and I don't believe that anonymous users should be entitled to particate in any form of vote or election, even straw polls.
- Second, it is conventional for most users to "hide" behind a nom de plume that gives little away about their real selves which seems to have evolved into a right to anonymity. For much of the time this is as harmless as it is pointless; however, I believe that it also encourages incivility and ad hominem attacks. In real life, most of us are careful not to make a habit of being egregiously unpleasant to others, as this will give us a reputation with which we will have to live: in Wikipedia, this is not true as anyone can discard an identity and gain another with the minimum of hassle. Indeed, the Wikimedia Foundation has granted a formal right to vanish which is often and incorrectly regarded as a right to take on a new identity. I believe that many of these problems can be solved by requiring users to place their real name and broad geographical location (e.g. England) on their user pages, and when there is good reason to suppose that this may be fabricated, I do not feel it is unreasonable for a senior administrator to request and be shown some form of proof of identity.
- Third, at times Wikipedia gets bullied into compromising its neutral point of view stance in favour of an excessively politically correct compromise. This generally happens when a clique of editors co-operate to push a particular agenda, and the eventual result is usually to remove any content from the involved articles that might possibly offend any faction. I'm sure that most editors have particular issues to which they are strongly emotionally attached — I know I do — however, most editors are capable of recognising this and refrain from editing in that area. When users are not able to do this themselves, administrators can and should be more open to using subject-specific bans to enforce this. One common cause of this is nationalism, and at various times I have seen these issues crop up between editors from Pakistan and India over the Kashmir, Israel and various Arab nations over the Occupied Territories, and most recently Ireland and Britain over Northern Ireland. (Note that in that latter case — Northern Ireland — both Republicans and Unionists have strongly nationalist perspectives: they simply differ on the nation to which they are attached.) Similar conflicts have arisen in other fields, such as how evolution should be presented. In this case, Wikipedia has stuck to its principles at the risk of offending a few creationists; we should adopt the same approach with nationalistic disputes too.
- And fourth, it is too easy for the smooth running of Wikipedia can easily be disrupted by small numbers of editors with a specific agenda. The strategy is the same time and time again: the editors tend to be argumentative, belligerent even, in pushing their position, but not so much that they get permanently banned. When others try rationally to discuss the dispute in question, they appear to answer their objects, without actually doing so — straw man arguments are a common, and successful, strategy; throwing around irrelevant references to Wikipedia policies (WP:OR, WP:V, and the like) is good too. As good Wikipedians, the other party will generally assume good faith and explain their questions more explicitly. And so it will go on. Eventually, you are left with a dilemma: do you assume good faith, in which case the only logical explanation is that the argumentative editors are, not to put too fine a point on it, stupid; and if the you assume they are intelligent, you have to assume they are not acting and good faith, are wilfully refusing to participate in proper negotiation, and are generally being a disruptive influence on topic in question. Fortunately Wikipedia provides us with a hint of a solution in its concept of consensus. Determination of consensus is explicitly not the same as taking a vote. If one party is not willing to take a the consensus-building process such as mediation without disingenuity, then they are voluntarily opting out of process, and consensus can and should be determined without their input. And once a consensus has been determined, it should be rigidly enforced and not subject to re-examination every time any dissatisfied party wishes it to be.
Citizendium (link) attempts to solves the first problem by requiring all users to have an account before they can edit, and the second by requiring users to use their real name and attempting to verify this. The third point is not explicitly addressed, though Citizendium's "collegial and mature atmosphere" and greater respect of expert opinion may perhaps solve it. Nevertheless, Citizendium pays a price for aspiring to be an web 2.0 academic utopia — it has a vastly smaller article base when compared to Wikipedia; indeed as of October 2007, whole countries lack articles. I wish Citizendium well for the future (and intend to contribute to it) just as I wish Wikipedia well. However, the fact that both projects exist and are thriving indicates to me that neither project has yet hit on the right balance of academia and anarchy.
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