Editing since 2002. Real name: Scott Martin. Location: London, UK. Contact me by email through here, or as @hex on Twitter.
I was granted access to the administrative toolkit in 2007. After a period of reflection from mid-2014 to mid-2015, explained in detail later on this page, I decided that I will no longer:
- Block or unblock any accounts or IP addresses (I've used CSS to remove all "block" links from the interface I see)
- Issue any warnings
- Close any discussions
- Participate in any discussions at WP:AN/I, beyond making simple requests for urgent interventions if absolutely necessary
- Perform any non-"speedy" deletions.
Please don't ask me to do any of these.
I will, however:
- Inspect and perform maintenance on page histories: merges (or even de-merges), splits, and moves
- Appropriately use revision hiding in any cases that I discover of content that contravenes our policies and requires removing from public view
- Be open to answering requests made of me by users to look into matters of article history or revision hiding; whether in the course of normal encyclopedic production, or investigating possible hoaxes, vandalism, or administrative malfeasance.
I have a subpage, /Utilities, that lists useful templates, categories, graphics, and so on, which may be helpful to other editors.
This user edits using their real name. |
This user has been editing Wikipedia for more than ten years. |
This user is a member of WikiProject History Merge. |
This administrator will consider reasonable requests to provide copies of deleted articles. |
Articles
- .shabaka
- Albert Houtum-Schindler (a spin-off from Ganjifa, below)
- Auguste-Arthur Plisson
- Bonnington Square
- Common Query Language
- Dopplr
- Edwardes family
- Extended Semantic Web Conference
- Fabulous Five Inc.
- Fox family (English aristocracy) (including large family tree)
- Fox Primary School (which I attended)
- Gamelan gong gede
- Ganjifa
- George Bishop (astronomer)
- George Bishop's Observatory
- Hall Farm Curve
- Holon (physics)
- Hoxton Square (where I was working at the time)
- Hunguhungu
- International World Wide Web Conference
- Isabel Rich, Countess of Holland
- Kebun Raya Cibodas (visited on vacation in 2004)
- Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012
- Letter-Books of the City of London
- Lovina Beach (visited on the same vacation)
- Lloyd Charles Sanders
- Ludovico Brea
- Nutty Buddy
- Polyethylene glycol propylene glycol cocoate
- Reliance of the Traveller
- Rich family
- Shabaka (domain name)
- Sodium lauroyl sarcosinate
- Sodium ricinoleate
- Spinon
- Surgical tape
- Theresa Thornycroft
- Thornycroft family
- UHU
- Undermind (TV series)
- Val Bennett
- Visard
- Walter Cope
- Zarganar
Templates
- Family trees: {{Ancestors of Charles II of Spain}}, {{Family tree of the Rich family}}, {{Family tree of the Sassoon family}}, {{Family tree of the War of the Spanish Succession}}
- Diagrams: {{Chelsea-Hackney Line}}
- Formatting: {{A note}}, {{Asterisk}}, {{Example HTML comment}}, {{Help link}}, {{Paragraph break}}, {{Square bracket close}}
- Userboxes: {{User free cultural works}}, {{User real name}}, {{User watchlist count}}
- Utilities: {{Bump}}
2015
In August 2014 I gave up being a regular Wikipedia editor on the basis of my belief that this project is fundamentally broken. That belief has not changed. It's impossible to go more than a click without encountering an error, falsehood, or deliberate distortion made for personal gain. The governance model is broken, and, crucially, the underlying technology is painfully feature-poor and out-of-date, with successive showy and poorly-implemented projects by the WMF doing nothing to resolve the core issues, exacerbating the issue of the drop in editor numbers.
My primary interest is no longer in contributing new material; it's in minimizing (by making corrections or removals) the harm that the project's flaws have the potential of causing to readers, and the harm that some contributors can cause to others: by mutilating or misappropriating their work, or losing editing history by unwise use of local software features. There's a lot of early history that needs repairing for those reasons, and that's something I'll be involving myself with. I'm also interested in the significant potential for research into how Wikipedia has evolved as a system, which may be of use to either efforts to reform this project, or found new ones.
The statement I made in 2014 follows.
2002—2014
My name is Scott Martin, and I don't care any more.
No, that's a lie. I do care. I care very much. But I can't keep pretending that anything I do makes any real difference.
I expect to still make edits here and there now and then. It's not practical to imagine that I'll be able to resist editing completely, because it's impossible to ignore Wikipedia completely — you can thank Google for that. But, fundamentally, this project is beyond saving.
If you want to understand what's wrong with Wikipedia, start reading the Wikipediocracy forums. Put aside any ideas you have about the personalities you see there — even though you'll see everyone from banned editors, non-editors, editors in good standing, admins, to former and current members of ArbCom — and read. Keep reading, and reading, and reading, until it sinks in, and you realize that it's never going to stop, and the more you dig, the worse that it gets.
I've given up my admin status. I will freely admit that hurt. I enjoyed using it to try and make things better and help people. Nevertheless, I was entrusted with it by voters in 2007 on the understanding that I would actively use it to benefit the project. It would be disrespectful to them, and current editors with the same expectation, to walk away in this fashion while still retaining access to privileged tools.
If you're curious about my former activities on this project, you can see them on the last active version of this user page.
You'll see posts from me at the Wikipediocracy forums from time to time, with the user name Hex, but a better way to be in touch is Twitter, where I'm @hex.
Adieu.