User:Josiah Rowe

Josiah Rowe was born at a very young age, in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He hasn't died yet.

He currently lives in North Haven, Connecticut, with three daughters and one wife, all of which he's quite fond of.

He rarely refers to himself in the third person.

Josiah on Wikipedia
Josiah is a dilettante at Wikipedia, as he is in many other fields. His work, if you can call it that, can mostly be found in various topics related to Doctor Who. Josiah also dabbles in pages related to comic books and Greek mythology, as well as other random subjects. His best work is the Featured Article Fun Home.

Other articles Josiah has created or contributed substantially to include (in no particular order): Daniel Wakefield Smith, Michelle Paradise, Helen Griffin, Bernard Krigstein, Serenity (film), Science fiction Western, Julie Gardner, James Cobban, The Pirate Queen, John Dempsey (lyricist), Dana P. Rowe (no relation), Winged monkeys, Achilles and Patroclus, Kevin Davies (director), Kate Austin, Nev Fountain, The Sarah Jane Adventures, Yasmin Paige, Gareth David-Lloyd, SantaLand Diaries and A More Perfect Union (speech). Make of that what you will.

And yes, Josiah is his real name (insofar as such a thing exists), and yes, he's aware that by putting his identity on this page he's probably annihilated whatever privacy he might ever have pretended to have. Josiah figures that he doesn't have anything to be ashamed of, and nobody's going to steal an identity as worthless as his anyhow.

Update, 2007
In the summer of 2007 I took an extended wikibreak, for a couple of reasons. Some of them were due to real-life concerns, but others had to do with Wikipedia, its governance and its future. First, Jimbo's initial response to the Essjay controversy showed a troubling preference for loyalty over truth. Second, I was unhappy with the way that some users have been enforcing the non-free content policy, and the consequent valuing of "free" over "encyclopedia" in Wikipedia's mission. Examples of this being taken to absurd lengths include the exclusion of the International Symbol of Access from informational articles, and the removal of an image of a painting from the summary of the article about that painting on Today's Featured Article. These incidents were examples of Wikipedia allowing the "free" goal to harm the "encyclopedia" goal, as well as examples of the third problem I've been having with Wikipedia lately: the cancerous growth of the Wikipedia bureaucracy. Actually, Wikipedia currently suffers from nearly all the problems listed under Bureaucracy. I'm not a management guru, and I don't have the solution to Wikipedia's organizational sclerosis. But I do have the choice of how much time I want to spend working in a bureaucracy-laden environment, and in the summer of 2007 the choice was "not much, thanks".

However, I still feel that Wikipedia is a worthwhile project, and I have the strongest respect for its values of consensus and civility. I have hope that these values will prove stronger than the forces pushing Wikipedia towards bureaucracy, cronyism and absurdities based on ideological purism. Wikipedia can be seen as a model of human society in general. If we can make this work, there's hope for the world.

Update, 2013
I am only occasionally active here. I retain the admin bit, but hardly ever use it.

Perspectives and biases
I recognize the dangers of factionalism on Wikipedia, and have therefore removed several userboxes and categories in accordance with the polite request Jimbo made some time ago. However, I also think it can be important for editors to know each other's standpoints and possible biases. And yes, we all do have biases, both conscious and unconscious. I think the goal for a Wikipedian should be to become aware of one's own biases and strive not to let them affect one's contributions to the encyclopedia. However, I recognize my own fallibility and the likelihood that I will not always live up to that ideal. So, in order to help other contributors recognize areas in which I may be biased, I'm listing a few of my most strongly held beliefs and groups I identify with.

I'm politically liberal. I am also a Christian. I'm a member of the Episcopal Church, and believe that Jesus' teachings don't support preventive warfare or supply-side economics. I strongly support gay rights, including marriage equality. My philosophical views are influenced by Kant, Kierkegaard and Paul Tillich. With Kant, I claim that reason should deal with what can be known, while faith should deal with what cannot be known but must be believed. Therefore, I see no contradiction between Christianity and Darwinian evolution, between the belief that God created the universe and is responsible for everything that exists, and the scientific understanding of how life has developed based on chance and natural selection. (I used to have both an ΙΧΘΥΣ and a Darwin fish on my car, which I hope made people think.)

Again, I hope that I don't let these views affect my editing on Wikipedia, but I'm presenting them here in the interest of openness, just in case they do.

To-do list

 * Finish James Cobban
 * Fix list of graphic novels on Doctor Who Magazine
 * Listen to Circular Time again to get regeneration reference for Doctor (Doctor Who) and Regeneration (Doctor Who)
 * Expand List of Doctor Who writers to include non-television writers
 * Find sources for Doctor Who (1996 film)

Useful links

 * Manual of Style
 * Vandal warning templates on WP:VAND
 * Table of test templates
 * Full list of user talk templates
 * meta:Help:Table
 * meta:Help:List
 * /sandbox
 * /sandbox2
 * /sandbox3
 * /sandbox4 (currently working on Andrew Smith (Doctor Who writer))
 * /sandbox5
 * /Temp (List of non-fictional heroes, for use in developing List of historical people portrayed as heroes if I ever get around to it)
 * /Doctorwhowarning
 * /TVnote