Personal background

I grew up in a wealthy area in the suburbs of Philadelphia, played copious amounts of baseball, and went to public school. My passions growing up were philosophy, politics, health and fitness, yoga, and wrestling. I went to a very liberal college in the northeast where I did an interdisciplinary social sciences program. I also studied abroad in Nepal. After college I moved to Colorado, started a tutoring company, and went a little nutty. I moved back to Philadelphia around the same time that I started editing Wikipedia seriously. My interests these days are Wikipedia, libertarian politics, singularitarianism, and Bitcoin. My favorite movies of the moment are Hanna, Groundhog Day (film), and Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. My favorite book is a tie between the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, The Big Short, and The Singularity is Near. I like to cook, write comics, play chess, read Reddit, 'rassle my Boxer puppy, watch MMA, read about physics and politics, edit Wikipedia of course, and help people with things generally.

Use for admin tools

One of my main focuses has been new editor engagement. Working as an IRC help channel volunteer, in Articles for Creation, and participating in editathons has presented many small opportunities where being an Admin would help me work with new editors. A primary use, for example, would be seeing deleted content, which comes up frequently in dealing with new articles that were put into mainspace without meeting notability criteria or deleted for other reasons. I've also think I've gotten enough experience through AfC to make decent judgment calls with CSD, although I'm in no rush to start closing threads. My WP:OTRS work would certainly benefit from admin tools, as I have access to the emails which involve controversial instances of BLP issues, defamation, edit wars, and protected pages, many of which I cannot properly intervene in without the tools. Being an administrator would be invaluable here so that I can be effective and self-sufficient in those efforts. I might do some block work at WP:AIV as an adjunct to the anti-vandal patrol work I have done in the past, such as with WP:STiki. Along those lines, access to Revision Delete would be helpful. As I do more offline work in educational settings, as a campus ambassador, or a local coordinator for events, I'm confident there are many new uses for admin tools which I will discover, from account creation through to unblock requests.

My strengths and weaknesses

I'm a clear writer. I can explain things in a way that makes people feel good about what they have learned. I'm a patient and engaged helper. I like to make things I work on better, especially the operations of systems themselves. I'm civil by nature. I enjoy finding common ground with people who have differing points of view. I have a belief that even difficult subjects can be amicably discussed. I start projects with passion.

I'm a bit neurotic. I'm a bit longwinded. I deal poorly with confrontation and drama, although I'm working on it. I can overanalyze. I have a desire for recognition that can lead me to be shortsighted. I don't take criticism lightly. I see other people's points of view, even to the exclusion of my own. I approach difficult subjects a bit naively, and wind up in over my head. I'm not skeptical by nature, and I sometimes go too far out on a limb trying to integrate fringe opinions. I sometimes don't follow-through on the projects I start.

I sometimes need clarification on the nuances of policy and complex editing mechanics. I started with relatively inclusionist instincts, and they're particularly inappropriate for biographies of living people and medical articles. Sometimes I am confused by where the use of primary sources borders on original research. I have to remind myself to add fair use rationales in addition to copyright tags. I struggle with the line between paraphrasing and close paraphrasing. I have to remind myself the difference between reference names and reference groups. And templates, don't get me started on templates! That's not to say I haven't learned a lot about these issues--I have--but sometimes I have to remind myself and look it up again or ask for advice. Fortunately, I know where to look and who to ask.

An aversion to drama and conflicts, and a lack of skepticism seem to be an obstacle for an administrator. Yet these all areas where Wikipedia has been great practice and I've improved dramatically. I've found that areas where there are problems can mostly be avoided, and the inavoidable aspects have not been a problem for over part of a year. Even when I found myself in controversial discussions, I remained civil and generally followed policy to the best of my understanding. I think the positive work that I've done has occurred despite some of those weaknesses and I don't know if others would say the same issues if asked about me (perhaps it's more my own level of self-criticism/awareness). Moreso, there is a positive aspect to the weaknesses: I like to avoid drama which leads me to seek out cooperative editors and remain civil with uncooperative ones; I like to avoid conflict, so I may seek out less controversial areas to edit in where I find myself more productive; and my desire for recognition has led me to do a lot of work that other people have found useful. So I think it depends how you look at weaknesses, whether they really are weaknesses.

Editing history

2007-2010

I started editing in 2007, minor copyedits as an ip. I made my first addition of unsourced content, to Arguments for and against drug prohibition, in 2008. It was reverted immediately. I added sources 'in revenge', probably too many. In 2009 I started working on the Aesthetic Realism article, mediating between group/cult members and group/cult ex members and critics. That was a trip, but it was instructive about conflict. In 2010 I began a major copyedit of the extensive but poorly organized Involvement of the People's Republic of China in Africa. Aside from a misguided attempt to just say call the country "China", the copyedit was a success. Then I finally got an account. First, I completely reworked MACD and Relative Strength Index. Then I put my focus on my first major policy issue: the Pending changes debate was steaming, and I took on a roll with Yaris678 of curating arguments into a working summary at the top of the debate. The Deep Water Horizon spill had also just happened, and I worked to reorganize the sections and neutralize the bias that was creeping in to the BP article. Around this time I began anti-vandal work. I have racked up about 6500 edits using STiki, and another several hundred with Igloo and Lupin's Anti-vandal tool. Vandalism patrol was a good way to 'see the wiki' and also learn about the vandal-fighting web that all edits have to go through. I did another significant copyedit at Korean cuisine. Then my real education began, as I challenged a seemingly innocuous sentence at Chiropractic, which lead to an 8 month conflict that struck at the roots of V, MEDRS, GEVAL, NPOV, FRINGE, CIVIL, and POV pushing.

Around this time I went straight to the policy that was causing the greatest controversy, trusty NPOV. I read it, closely. The problem we were having stemmed specifically from WP:ASF which stated that without an actual conflict between reliable sources, a claim could be stated as a plain fact, in Wikipedia's voice. In this case, the plain fact was more or less, "The risk from Chiropractic outweighs the benefit and can result in serious injury including death." The source for that was a researcher and known critic of alternative medicine, Edzard Ernst. My argument was that without this assertion being supported in multiple sources, especially those not from scientists with a reputation for taking down alternative medicine, we should instead attribute the claim to 'A systematic review by Edzard Ernst'. With that debate at its peak, I began a relatively significant copyedit of NPOV and the NPOV FAQ. With the support of several other editors ASF was integrated into the policy in a more balanced way, in my opinion of course. It was a bold and perhaps unwise thing to do at the time, given the context, but I went ahead with it, and believe we improved the cogency and accessibility of both the policy and the FAQ. If I made a greater mistake, it was taking the same approach at MEDRS, where I found my attempts to clarify and question policy rebuffed as tinkering with the steering column to drive the car in my direction. I stopped that, and went back to focusing on policies that didn't have a direct bearing on my content work. In the end we compromised at Chiropractice on a sentence; it was a fine result, but it was a Pyrrhic victory in a way, as it took absolutely forever, eroded good faith, and furthered division. I learned the harm from viewing an article as a battle between sides.

Still, I was intrigued by our policies and how complicated they were. I worked on a userspace draft that would synthesize (no pun intended) V, OR, and NPOV. It was a good way to see what was really in their guts, and as I suspected, there was a fair deal of overlap, especially in the first two.

2011

The next Wikipedia adventure I embarked on was articles in the spotlight of current events. Particularly thrilling were 2011 Egyptian revolution, Wikileaks, and Julian Assange. A group of extremely dedicated and thoughtful editors spearheaded a massive cleanup and organization effort amid a barrage of new information. Here, I came to appreciate what a quality source looks like, and the value of Wikipedia as a news synthesizer. I am very proud of the work I did at those articles, and the excitement of being at the forefront of one of the public's primary resources to understand those epic events was deeply satisfying (as well as exhausting). My work about Egypt lead me to other articles about iconic figures in the uprising, most notably, Death of Khaled Mohamed Saeed. Though I did some expanding of the content, my main contribution was to 'litigate' a marathon review at NFCR of this image. It was a deep and challenging foray into copyright and image use policy, obscentiy, censorship, and our encyclopedic mission. My resolve to include this historic image only strengthened as the debate went on, even as I disabused myself of the somewhat naive conception of fair use that I brought to the debate. In the end the image remained, and I think it is a victory for clarity and common sense in our policy, as well as for human rights.

My content work continued the trends that developed over my first year. In the alternative medicine/pseudoscience area: I mediated disputes at Astrology (particularly over the definition in the Lead); I continued to advocate against what I saw as undue criticism of Chiropractic at Vertebral artery dissection; I dipped my toe into the BLP waters at Stephen Barrett (getting my first lesson about BLPPRIMARY) and at The National Council Against Health Fraud; I debated and expanded content relating to Weston A. Price including Focal infection theory, Mary G. Enig, Holistic dentistry, Coconut oil and Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation; I attempted a major copyedit and reorganization at Pseudoscience (some of which wasn't actually reverted) as well as at Juice Plus; and I started Suzanne Segal. In the policy area, I compiled guides for Image filtering discussions and NFCR debates. In the Middle East/political area, I expanded Wael Ghonim and created Cheng Jianping, Kamal Abbas, Wael Khalil, Hamza Ali Al-Khateeb, Mona Seif, and Amina Abdallah Arraf al Omari. In the COI area, I worked with paid editors at Occidental Petroleum and Monitor Group. I helped copyedit two featured articles while on the main page: Populous:The Beginning and Parkinson's disease. I also started partaking in the Dispute resolution noticeboard and chimed in at the Verifiability not truth debate.

Around this time I began involving myself deeply in our help documentation. I read everything I could find and gathered the pages together in a section on my talk page. One document that seemed useful but needing of a revamp was WP:SIMPLE. So I revamped it. The expanded version became the basis of two more extensive guides I wrote, The plain and simple guide to wikipedia and The plain and simple conflict of interest guide. I'm particularly proud of the latter, as it helps editors who need it most, those with a monetary or organizational bias from the outset. We've used it in the irc Wikipedia-en-help channel, and it's been added to the resources at WikiProject Cooperation. The majority of my time spent recently has been on helping new users directly, in the irc help channel. I spend several hours a day working with editors on their drafts, laying the foundation for lasting articles--sources, citations, inline references, removing bias, adding images, and formatting. This work has immensely improved my understanding of the notability guidelines in a way that I never appreciated until I had to explain it and put it into practice hundreds of times for new editors. You really see that what separates wheat from chaff on Wikipedia are good sources and neutral writing. My latest adventure, pun intended, has been on an educational learning game called The Wikipedia Adventure, which I designed and wrote the script for over the summer. It got a lot of support at first, but languished as we searched for a developer. Very excitingly, User:Dcoetzee has taken it on as a project for his graduate studies, and I couldn't be more pumped to see how it works out. I envision it being a stepping stone for new editors, that is as fun as it is informative—a truly engaging and welcoming way to enter the project and the community.

2012

I also started working on the OTRS queues and was recently accepted as a host at the Teahouse project (I later 'resigned' for a variety of minor reasons). Both of these are just another way to communicate the mission of Wikipedia and help others join it. It's evangelical work, ambassadorial work, and teaching work, all things I enjoy in a non-religious, non-political, non-didactic way. Projects I have currently in the works are a Plain and simple image guide for new users, seeing The Wikipedia Adventure through its coding, doing more in the area of bringing COI editors in from the wilderness and teaching them to operate in a way that benefits our core mission, and pushing for broader adoption of intelligent gadgets and tools such as STiki. I recently created Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement and am looking forward to doing more work with WikiProject Cooperation. I also created Khaled Ali and did some intensive COI work with a conflicted editor at National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012.

I wrote Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement, Khaled Ali, Conflict of interest editing on Wikipedia, and Gabriel Cousens. Gabriel Cousens went through a Deletion Review (my first). That article was been a bit of a minefield since the subject wants it deleted; also, it was harshly criticized and then cut down due to use of marginal sources that weren't seen to meet BLP. Although Gabriel Cousens has been a bit of a mess, I remained civil, continued to discuss issues, and think I can account for my choices, despite the initial criticism I faced. In particular, Drmies was extremely critical. Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement passed AfD closely. Khaled Ali was up for DYK, but got stalled over close paraphrasing issues, which I and other editors worked to correct.

I've also been involved in two very exciting projects. One is the partnership with HighBeam Research I set up: they donated up to 1000 free 1-year accounts for Wikipedia editors ( WP:HighBeam). I've currently proposed a Community Fellowship to expand similar partnerships in a Wikipedia Library—a single access point for approved editors to gain free entry to all participating resource providers. I'm working on a similar type of collaboration with a major plagiarism detection service called Turnitin ( User:Ocaasi/Turnitin), who have informally offered to check all of Wikipedia's articles through their proprietary system, for free. A prototype for The Wikipedia Adventure was made by Dcoetzee for his graduate computer science Technology and Education class. The game is also up for a Community Fellowship, to finally bring it to life and get it into the hands of new editors.

In July I went to my first Wikimania in Washington, D.C. and it was awesome! Wikipedians are inconspicuously fantastic people and I was amazed at how many people I met, how many knew who I was, how enthusiastic people were about their projects, and how friendly and easy to talk to people were. 10/10 would go again.

I drafted a protocol for COI certification to hopefully break the logjam between paid editors and Wikipedia. I'm currently speaking with PR organizations to see if they'll endorse it and promote it to their members.

2013

I co-founded Wiki Project Med Foundation to work on issues relating to medical articles and organizations. I traveled to San Francisco to put on the first-ever week-long Wikipedia lecture series and editathon at UCSF medical school with Michael Turken and James Heilman. I visited the Wikimedia Foundation for the first time. I applied and was funded for two Individual Engagment Grants: the first, funded at $10,000 is to work on The Wikipedia Adventure; the second, funded at $7,500, is to expand The Wikipedia Library. I continued voluntarily working with an employee from Eli Lilly to improve articles on differing regional standards of medical care (this did not involve editing about Lilly's treatments or medications, and it was overseen by WikiProject Medicine). I furthered a partnership with Cochrane Collaboration to obtain access to their evidence-based medical systematic reviews, and to place a Wikipedian in Residence within their organization. I participated in New York's Wikipedia Day conference at NYU. I participated in a Washington D.C. event led by Pete Forsyth which brought the Cato Institute together with Wikipedia editors to build out a metadata system about ongoing congressional bills, and how to integrate it with Wikipedia articles where appropriate. I led the community organizing around the Teahouse Badges program which delivered over 400 badges in its first few months; Heather Walls volunteered to design the badges that Anyashy had developed, and Siko Bouterse at the Wikimedia Foundation led the project-organizing in her volunteer time. I was involved in lengthy discussions about the practices of Arturo at BP and how his transparent proposal of drafts at the BP article should inform The plain and simple conflict of interest guide. I started taking two Coursera courses—one on Human Computer Interaction at Standford, and the other on Gamification at Wharton.

Helping new users

From the beginning I've tried to be friendly and helpful to new users—to talk to them like they are people, to help translate our policies and procedures in non-threatening language, to be patient and give relatable examples, and to assist them however I can. My experience with new users began as one myself, or course, and I tried to read through every piece of help documentation and policy I could find. Once I had a basic understanding, I started welcoming less-experienced editors and helping them with basic policy. I really became involved when I discovered the wikipedia-en-help IRC channel, where I've been a regular for the past 10 months. Over that time I've helped a few hundred users, and I make it a priority to be non-threatening and informative. In the past few months I've worked extensively on help documentation and new editor orientation projects. In general, I'm a fan of anything that makes Wikipedia easier for people to use. One of the great tragedies I witness is when new users are treated like outsiders, or worse, like under-performing insiders who are expected to know how the site operates. It's taken me years to grasp the intricacies of Wikipedia, and I advocate that users should be treated like they're still learning. I find it an incredibly short-sighted and cavalier attitude to treat new editors like a nuisance. It's great for the community to have standards, but not to blindly assume that everyone comprehends them or has even heard of them. Writing an encyclopedia is serious business, but it's not rocket-science; we should do a better job of bringing new editors into the fold and making them a part of the community. The figure-it-out-on-your-own-I-did attitude is a non-starter, literally, for many potentially high quality individuals. We're missing out on them.

Disputes

I was in a protracted debate at Chiropractic. I learned a lot: That you have to know the policies. That you have to actually read what they say. That their spirit is as important the their letters. Early on I understood the concept of neutrality, but not WP:WEIGHT, and especially not WP:MEDRS. It took me a while to get the rigor of medical claims in articles and how differently they're treated from societal and cultural claims. I also learned that it's unwise to focus your energy on the most divisive aspects and individuals in a discussion. It's far better to aim at the middle, where there is consensus and build common ground and consensus across 'enemy lines'. I learned that the debates in the real world are not absent from Wikipedia; they are here in full, especially the divide between science and society. I've learned that some editors value science so much that they elevate it over NPOV. With time I've come to think that MEDRS strikes a fair balance, but there are many areas, even within medicine, that it doesn't strictly apply. I also learned that I don't like content disputes that much, and editing in less controversial areas is an easy way to avoid them.

At Chiropractic I got into a particular but not especially heated debate over whether talk page section headers can be edited and/or must be neutral. Though I learned early on not to edit other people's actual comments, even for grammar or spelling, I maintained that in a discussion thread, the header itself is not owned by the poster, and since all parties have to have a discussion under that title, the title should not express a POV. In my reasoning, this is similar to an RfC, where the phrasing of the poll must not be biased, although the poll comments or !votes indeed often are. I also removed the word 'fuck' from a header and replaced it with 'f-'. I don't mind cursing in real life, but the lack of social cues online and the benefits of civility make me inclined to tolerate those outbursts less. I'd do it again if I saw it, to keep up a modicum of decorum. Just a modicum.

While in the Chiropractic debate, I was on the side of the hippy-liberal-alternative-medicine-kooks, at Astrology I took on a more satisfying role as a mediator during while trying to 'define' the subject in the introduction. It was enlightening to see the other side of the pseudoscience debate, and also how different my view looked when editing a topic I had no personal investment in. (I'm not a chiropractor, but I was sympathetic to the topic, and thought the article took too harsh a stance against it, based primarily off of one source...it's a long story, read about Edzard Ernst if you're interested).

At Stephen Barrett and National Council Against Health Fraud I was attempting to add a source which was considered primary (it was a court ruling). I was accused by another editor who suggested I was risking libel and I asked him if he knew Barrett in some way. Although I was just trying to assess the editor's COI, other editors did not take kindly to my question and thought it was pointy or worse. I didn't think at the time that asking someone if they have a COI is a bad faith practice when there is some reason to think they might. I thought the mention of libel was a bit much, so I asked. I see how asking about a COI doesn't come across well, particularly in heated arguments, but I'm not promising to never ask someone again. COI is an important policy and I think there are occasions where asking about it can be done tactfully.

I clashed over the use of primary and secondary sources in BLP articles about individuals in the alternative medicine/skeptical sphere ( Weston A. Price, Mary G. Enig, Stephen Barrett). I've come to appreciate BLPPRIMARY. I've also come to appreciate the work of editors who keep a level head and remain civil while considering other points of view.

I clashed over my attempt to make Parkinsons disease more accessible to lay readers. In that case, my reception was bitey at first, but I became wiki acquaintances with the editor, and actually did some good work together trying to resolve a dispute at Pseudoscience.

My content work hang-ups have included close paraphrasing, being liberal with marginally reliable sources, and using too many direct quotations. The hurdle for me, having somewhat mastered research for sources, is making sure I use only the reliable ones, and sufficiently distinguish my own work from the supporting references.

I have also learned a lot about my initially inclusionist tendencies at WP:AFC, especially how critical WP:V and WP:GNG are. Sources really matter. You might say they're all that matters. (But that would leave out WP:NPOV and WP:OR).

I briefly "edit-warred" at 2011 Egyptian revolution. I wanted to include an Al Jazeera live-feed from Tahrir square as an external link, on the night Mubarak was giving a speech to the nation. Cptnono thought it violated WP:ELNO. Caught up in the passion of that historical event, I didn't want other people to miss it. I learned that some people take External Link policy very strictly, and that urgency makes discussion difficult (indeed, the crux of Cptnono's argument was that a fleeting source like a live-feed doesn't meet encyclopedic criteria). In the end I think I'd do it again, albeit perhaps more diplomatically. Some moments carry an importance that just don't sit easily with a literal reading of policy, and I think that was one of them.

Gabriel Cousens went through Deletion Review where I argued for the notability of the subject, over his personal objections due to a controversial section involving the death of one of his patients. I was criticized for writing a 'hit-piece' and trying to ruin his reputation; interestingly, once the article was created, it was harshly criticized for being overly promotional. The article was drastically cut down due to the use of marginal sources that weren't seen to meet BLP. I continued to discuss issues and improve sources, and think I can account for my choices, despite the initial criticism I faced.

Corporate Representatives for Ethical Wikipedia Engagement passed AfD closely over objections about notability. Khaled Ali was up for DYK, but got stalled over close paraphrasing issues, which I and other editors worked to correct.

Working closely in the COI area has led some editors to think I am a paid editor or am some type of advocate or apologist for them. I believe that's not the case, but rather a reflection of my desire to reach out and improve our relationship with a marginalized (albeit threatening) demographic. I think paid editing needs to be brought into the light and I don't know how we can do that without civil dialogue and engagement. In particular, the Signpost interview series was initially critiqued for being too pro-paid editing, a perception I hope I corrected with the later interviews of the series.

In September 2012, I sent out a well-intentioned bot message, alerting several hundred users who were active at our main dispute resolution forums to the existence of a new Dispute Resolution Newsletter. The list was collected without approval (although AN/I was asked for feedback prior to the mailing), and the newsletter was opt-out. The messages resulted in a minor to moderate outcry among editors who felt spammed. The nub of what I took away from the situation is that at least a minority of Wikipedians virulently dislike anything being sent to them that they have not chosen to receive. It's part of the culture of freedom and autonomy that shirks at the thought of being constantly bombarded with suggestions of what is important on someone else's agenda. I will say, although I may be biased, that I think Dispute Resolution matters immensely, and I personally think it is vital to our future. I think there's objective data which shows the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of DR is a major reason that people dislike Wikipedia and leave Wikipedia: conflicts become intractable and result in frustration on all sides. People don't keep clear heads or assume good faith, and conduct-disputes mix with content-disputes in a way that spirals out of control. So it is important, but people still have the right to choose to participate in it rather than choose to not participate in it.

Otherwise, my career on Wikipedia has been basically conflict-free. I do mostly anti-vandal work, copy-editing, and massive amounts of new user orientation and articles for creation, and outreach to organizations. I've engaged in several major policy debates, notably Pending Changes and WP:COI, but I try to take a diplomatic role in most things.