User:Cool Hand Luke

Frank, a Salt Laker in exile.

I started editing February 7, 2004, and I've been an administrator since October 25, 2004.

From 2009–2011, I was a member of English Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee, our dispute resolution mechanism of last resort.

I'm only half jaded. I love when new editors discover Wikipedia and want to contribute to subjects they love. My goal is to give them a better hello than a rollback and template nastygram.

My time on Wikipedia
I am periodically inactive on Wikipedia due to grave doubts about the merits of this project, which I still have. We've made improvements: we now demand inline citations for controversial claims, we've slowed the creation of unwatched articles by requiring users to log in, we've de-sysoped problematic admins against their will, and we finally proved our devotion to policies like WP:OR and WP:V, which are the foundation for a respectable encyclopedia.

On the other hand, it seems that we've moved toward a kind of caste system with adminship. I think my fellow editors should know that adminship was actually not a big deal when I was handed the mop. I was promoted as a self-nominated candidate with 1055 edits and even made a personal attack on my nomination page.

I'm proud to say that I've never abused the tools or been blocked for any reason, but my contributions should be judged by their own merits, just like any other user's.

Most of my early articles were made before citations were fashionable. Indeed, once upon a time, even most featured articles had no inline cites at all. Therefore, forgive my often poorly-documented and highly biased work. Actually, don't forgive it, just fix it.

My biases
Like most editors, I work on subjects that interest me. I strive to edit neutrally, but people are sometimes oblivious of their own bias. To aid other editors, here are some of my tendencies:


 * I started the LDS wikiproject. I'm a liberal Mormon fond of New Mormon History. That is, I love Mormon history, and I favor the naturalistic accounts of historians like D. Michael Quinn.


 * Trained as a chemist, I think that a scientific point of view (derided as "SPOV") is WP:NPOV when discussing testable claims about our shared physical reality. There's nothing neutral about giving voodoo equal footing.


 * I'm sympathetic toward the Chicago school of economics.


 * I'm trained as an attorney and happen to abhor incorrect statements of law, popular in some media.


 * I believe that copyright law in the United States isn't as bad as popularly imagined.

Misc

 * My images

Useful chemistry links
 * List of compounds
 * User:Magnus Manske/Chemicals
 * List of biomolecules

Useful Mormonism links


 * WikiProject Latter Day Saint movement
 * List of articles about Mormonism
 * Grampa Bill's General Authority PagesLink is outdated.

Licensing
I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

In addition, I agree to multi-license all my contributions to any U.S. state, county, or city article&mdash;including neighborhoods of Salt Lake City&mdash;as described below: