User:Stevietheman

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Stevietheman is a member of WikiProject Louisville, an open collaborative effort to coordinate work for and sustain comprehensive coverage of metropolitan Louisville, Kentucky and related subjects in the Wikipedia. [Become a member] [Project Talk]

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Steve Magruder is a dork-savant, Louisville promoter, history enthusiast, good-natured subversive, hacktivist and obsessed follower of the splendiferous power couple Filliam H. Muffman seeking to reformat American culture to bow to the needs of the commons and an open, smart society.

Stevietheman is Steve Magruder from Louisville, Kentucky, USA. Stevie is a freelance web programmer who concentrates on server-side programming and relational database design for websites and web applications, mainly using PHP and MySQL (or PostgreSQL).

Steve also administers the Louisville History & Issues discussion board, an "open, nonpartisan space in which Louisville area citizens discuss our rich local history as well as current political/community issues".

[edit] What the Wikipedia is ultimately about

The Wikipedia is beyond an encyclopedia of all potential notable subjects — it is also an almanac and the beginning of a possibly unforeseen civic infrastructure. I have often thought about what the Wikipedia's raison d'être really is beyond how it is commonly promoted. Ultimately, in my humble opinion, the Wikipedia and derivative efforts are about:

  • Creating a future (not so far away) where everyone on Earth has the right and access to know everything. Everything.
  • Destroying knowledge-based elitism in all its forms.
  • Creating a global expectation of radical transparency in government, business and all other walks of life.

And I think all of these are a Good Thing™.

[edit] Philosophy of participation

Dedicating one's time to the development of anything positively useful by humankind is the highest moral act, especially because these kind of contributions tend to keep on giving past one's existence.

Stevie participates in the Wikipedia to:

  • Ensure that people understand what they need to know about subjects he cares deeply about. This especially applies to Louisville-related things.
  • Give the people of the world the power to control all knowledge and keep it out of the hands of the elite, greedy and power-hungry.
  • Enrich the commons and bolster openness and the public domain.
  • Give something back in appreciation to all those who have taught Stevie something in this thing called life. We stand on the shoulders of giants.
  • Show everyone he's a smart dude.  :)
  • Put Microsoft Encarta and Encyclopædia Britannica out of business. Who needs 'em?

Stevie can accomplish all of the above without ever becoming an admin. He sees no joy in the idea of being an admin (boring, thankless tasks aren't his bag, sorry), while he sees a lot of joy in authoring articles and managing projects (that enhance the process of authoring articles). Unless and until admins are paid a significant stipend, please do not nominate him for adminship.
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[edit] Authorship

Be bold!
Be bold!

Stevie made his first contribution to the Wikipedia on March 20, 2004, adding a self-promotional link to direct democracy (note: he realized not much later that this wasn't appropriate). Ultimately, though, he actually added worthwhile content to this and many other articles related to the subject of democracy.

Stevie contributes to many articles and discussions, especially related to his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, as well as politics and computer science. Stevie has to date completed more than 30,000 edits, over 18,000 of which are directly to articles! See his full list of contributions.

[edit] Approach to editing

Stevie believes in making positive changes to articles in a very bold manner, but whenever a change dramatically alters the content of a well-established article, he tries to seek consensus first from other contributors to the article.

When it comes to editing articles, Stevie addresses obvious spelling, grammar and structural issues. But that's not all. As an editor, Stevie always takes a strong look at:

  • Blatant advertising, esp. of unrelated products/sites, but also of related entities that could eventually get out of hand (e.g., under Internet forum, listing all forums on the web).
  • "Brochure-itis", where the content looks it came from some corporate marketing department. Glowing, flowery language of a subject simply does not belong in an encyclopedia.
  • Non-neutral or imbalanced points of view and subjectivity in general.
  • Lack of encyclopedic relevance — For the subject of an article to have encyclopedic relevance, there must be provable common knowledge and reverence of the article's subject within the subject's expected natural sphere of influence. Further, all references provided for proof should rest outside the direct influence of the subject itself as well as intricately linked parties or organizations. Neither the volume of Google hits nor a subject's ranking in Alexa (if it's a website) provide sufficient evidence for these purposes.
  • Egos of contributors in their promotion of original research and pet ideas that don't belong here.
  • Elitism — Stevie supports a very non-elitist Wikipedia and thus takes a dim view of stuffy, highfalutin wording as well as self-appointed experts who claim dominion over a particular article.
  • Quick radical rewrites — Oftentimes when a long-established article (esp. one related to politics) is virtually redrafted in a short period of time without any discussion beforehand, it is a victim of POV-pushing. As a rule, Stevie reverts these radical rewrites and asks the author of those rewrites to explain their changes and get consensus approval before making them.
  • Whitewashing — Sometimes a contributor loyal to the subject of an article or a discussion within an article will remove inconvenient facts that they believe make their subject look bad.
  • Lack of edit summary — When content is changed significantly and especially if content is removed, the edit needs to have a summary. If it doesn't, Stevie will normally revert.
  • Unwikified unfactored text dumps — On occasion contributors take free content from other sources and dump it into existing articles without wikifying it or factoring it into the article so that the article flows as well as it did before. These contributors seemingly expect others to clean up their shit. This is unacceptable and Stevie challenges these text dumps.
  • Non-adherence to standard reference formats — Some people seem to think they can invent their own style of reference, or go with an off-beat style, when we have easy-to-use templates that enforce reasonable standards. Readers normally expect consistency across a single work, such as an encyclopedia; therefore, all references should have a common appearance.

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[edit] Policies and guidelines

Stevie adheres to the idea that policies are law in the Wikipedia and should be strictly followed. However, he believes that guidelines are just that, guidelines, and are not sacrosanct. Guidelines should only be used to guide in one's contributions and to serve as weighted points in the determination of the correctness of content or its structuring. In some cases, strict adherence to guidelines over common sense or usability has been a bad thing for the Wikipedia. Further, while most guidelines are sensible and well-considered, Stevie every now and then comes across a guideline and thinks "Who wrote this shit?".

[edit] Deletions

Stevie uses {{prod}} to handle articles or other pages he thinks probably shouldn't exist in the Wikipedia. With rare exceptions, he does not participate in XfD processes, as they have moved toward an undemocratic model for decision making in recent times. Stevie is not exactly an "inclusionist", but figures the inclusion disputes are best left to those who enjoy the heat of these kind of disputes. It's also hard for Stevie to think of himself as a truly contributive Wikipedia "author" if he spends much, if any, time deciding whether an article hardly anybody will ever look at should be kept or removed.

[edit] Conflict

When it comes to disagreements over the content in articles, Stevie is a strong adherent to seeking honorable compromises that maintain factuality above all else. However, there are times when some other contributors descend into game playing, personal attacks, muddying tangential discussion or repeated circular argumentation rather than faithfully discussing content disputes and answering straight questions (usually, "Do you have evidence or sources for your position?"). These folks are usually dealt with via consensus of the other involved contributors.

[edit] Louisville disambiguation

Probably one of the most misunderstood edits Stevie makes in the Wikipedia is when he changes [[Louisville]] to [[Louisville, Kentucky]] or [[Louisville, Kentucky|Louisville]]. Some may think this is "anal", but it's not really.

The reason Stevie does this is because on a regular basis, editors use the link [[Louisville]] when they really mean to use [[University of Louisville]] or [[University of Louisville|Louisville]] (or links to specific articles for UofL's sports programs). Searching out these misuses become increasingly difficult as uses of [[Louisville]] (for any reason) accumulate. Therefore, preventing this accumulation is necessary for the continual seeking out of misuses.

[edit] Contributions

Stevie has contributed significant content to the following articles:

[edit] My home area: Louisville and Kentucky

[edit] Politics and political science

[edit] Computer science

[edit] Media and entertainment

[edit] Miscellaneous

* Article, template or project created by Stevie.
† Article or portal created from content to which Stevie had contributed significantly.

[edit] WikiProject involvement

[edit] Membership

[edit] Innovations

  • Comprehensive project change patrol
  • Advanced project banner design, with highlighted project links
  • Todo list discovery and listing in a special project category
  • Project alerts built into member banners

[edit] Awards

The Original Barnstar
For your continued excellent work on the PHP article! --james // bornhj (talk) 10:14, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
The Original Barnstar
I award this Barnstar to Stevie for his tireless efforts in WikiProject Louisville and because he has received entirely too few barnstars for his hard work.

--Carl (talk contribs) 06:29, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
The Editor's Barnstar
For all you have done for Wikipedia, especially in regards to the Louisville Metro, I award you, Stevietheman, the Editor's Barnstar. Keep up the awesome work! --Moreau36 16:48, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
The RickK Anti-Vandalism Barnstar
Thanks for your help in preventing recent vandalism at Louisville, Kentucky and at other articles in the past. Your efforts are much appreciated! Seicer (talk) (contribs) 04:30, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
The Bluegrass Barnstar
I hereby award you with this bluegrass barnstar for your invaluable work to improve articles for the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Keep up the outstanding work! -- Steven Williamson (HiB2Bornot2B) - talk 17:56, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Biography

Stevie's hometown — Louisville, Kentucky
Stevie's hometown — Louisville, Kentucky

Stevie was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. Stevie attended public school at Auburndale Elementary, Parkland Elementary, Lassiter Middle, Butler High and Fairdale High.

In 1984, he began attending J. B. Speed School of Engineering (formerly Speed Scientific School) at the University of Louisville, majoring in Engineering Math and Computer Science (concentrating in Computer Science), and received his B.S. in Engineering Science in 1989. Subsequently, he has worked alternately as a permanent employee and contractor with various firms and organizations (including two Fortune 500 companies) as a software developer. Since graduating from college, he has lived in Endicott, New York, Atlanta, Georgia, Charlotte, North Carolina and Fremont, California.

Stevie is now working on freelance web programming projects, while occasionally writing as a hobby.

[edit] Other interests

Adult Swim, American Idol, Astronomy, Board games, Bowling, Caving, Classic rock, Coffee, The Colbert Report, Comedy, Cooking, Cycling, Family Guy, Fitness, Hiking, Movies, Roller coasters, Romance/Sensuality, Scrabble, SimCity, Slashdot, Theatre, Travel, Wine, Writing, Yard sales

[edit] Favorite Wikipedia/Wikimedia shortcuts

Village Pump
Village pump
Policy (post)
Technical (post)
Proposals (post)
Assistance (post)
Miscellaneous (post)

[edit] Wikipedia

[edit] MetaWiki

[edit] Wikibooks

[edit] External links

[edit] Stevie's stuff

  • Louisville History & Issues (discussion board) — An open, nonpartisan space in which Louisville area citizens discuss our rich local history as well as current political/community issues.
  • WebCommons :: Web Programming Services — WebCommons concentrates on server-side programming and database design for websites and web applications, and specializes in PHP and MySQL. WebCommons' services are especially geared toward small/growing businesses, professionals and non-profit organizations.

[edit] Wikipedia-related

[edit] Non-Wikimedia wikis

[edit] How-to's

  • WannaWiki! — "What do you wanna do?"
  • wikiHow — "The How-To Manual That Anyone Can Write or Edit"
  • WikiHowto — "open, free provider of independent solutions, do it yourself guides, tutorials, and know-how on all subjects."

[edit] Law

  • Jurispedia — "The shared law"
  • Wex — "collaboratively built, freely available legal dictionary and encyclopedia"
  • Wiki-Law — "The Legal Resource Anyone Can Edit"
  • WikiLaw — "the free law library that anyone can edit"

[edit] Contact Stevie

Stevie welcomes suggestions, criticisms, etc. on his talk page (unless it's repetitive or insolent). You may also e-mail Stevie.

[edit] Userboxes

This user is from Louisville, Kentucky, home of the Kentucky Derby.
This user is from the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
This user is a member of WikiProject Louisville.
The WikiProject Council logo This editor is a member of the WikiProject Council.
This user is a member of WikiProject U.S. cities.
This user is a member of WikiProject Kentucky.
This user is a member of the
American Civil War task force of the Military history WikiProject.
This user is a proud member of the Companies WikiProject.
Wikiproject:WikiProject_Indiana This user is a member of WikiProject Indiana.
This user is a member of WikiProject Free Software
30,000+ This user has made over 30,000 contributions to Wikipedia.
This user tries to do the right thing. If they make a mistake, please let him or her know.
en This user is a native speaker of English.
Scotland This user is of Scottish ancestry.
This user identifies as gay.
TCR This user obsesses over the splendiferous power couple Filliam H. Muffman.
TCR This user has balls, and isn't afraid to use them.
TCR This user wants you to know that you're on notice.
php-4 This user is an expert PHP programmer.
Firefox This user contributes using Mozilla Firefox.
This user supports equal rights for homosexual people.
sql-4 This user is an expert SQL programmer.
The English Wikipedia has 2,406,320 articles and 785,869 files.
This user has a boyfriend.
xhtml-4 This user is an expert XHTML user.
This user is opposed to online censorship.
This user supports gender equality.
xml This user can write XML.
This user believes in the separation of church and state.
This user is interested in politics.
mysql This user writes programs that access MySQL.
ath This user is interested in atheism.
ind This user is politically independent.
pgsql This user writes programs that access PostgreSQL.
This user enjoys rock music.
This user is a committed advocate of democracy.
css This user can write Cascading Style Sheets.
This user opposes George W. Bush.


lib This user is a liberal.
This user enjoys skygazing and astronomy.
X This user is a member of Generation X.
This user is a skeptic.
This user enjoys cooking.
GIMP This user contributes using The GIMP.
This user supports racial equality.
This user enjoys bicycling.
Ps This user contributes using Adobe Photoshop.
aBc This user prefers that all categories and stubs be placed in alphabetical order.
This user believes it is every citizen's duty to vote.
BB This user contributes using a broadband connection.
This user is bold, but not reckless, in updating pages.
This user has a website, which can be found here.
This user believes that process is important on Wikipedia and is opposed to its circumvention.
This user has a zero tolerance policy on vandalism.
@ This user can be reached by email at steve@historyandissues.org.
This user has a profile on MySpace as stevietheman.
f This user maintains a facebook profile as Steve Magruder.
This user uses Windows Live Messenger and his/her e-mail address is steve@stevemagruder.com.
This user's AOL Instant Messenger screenname is stevietheman.
Y! This user's Yahoo! Messenger screename is stevietheman66.
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