User:Michael Martinez

BEFORE YOU QUOTE WIKIPOLICIES AT ME
People become protective of the articles they contribute to on a regular basis. That's understandable. However, the tendency to throw short links and warning labels at other people because they don't agree with your decisions is not good Wikipedia practice. I see many editors throw Wikipolicy citations at new Wikipedians and at editors who suddenly show up to leave an opinion on article Talk pages. The policy citations are usually inappropriate.

It's been my experience that the majority of people who cite Wikipolicies in Talk page discussions - especially where they use the shortlinks - haven't actually read the policy pages, or cherry-pick the policy points they want to use to shore up their arguments.

Every time you do this to ME, I click on the links, I read the policy pages, and I may even search for related policies. I make sure I understand what these policies say before I quote them back at you.

Be a good Wikipedian. READ the policies you cite to other people and ask yourself, "Am I being fair or am I just cherry-picking policy points because I want to win an argument and protect my edits?"

If you place a comment about policy or a warning about policy on my User pages, the fact I delete it means I have read it. It also means I'm more likely to out-quote you on policies in whatever Talk page discussion sent you here to intimidate me (which is also a violation of Wikipedia policy). Don't weaponize Wikipedia policy pages to win arguments when other editors question your decisions. That questioning process is part of how Wikipedia works. Don't try to silence other people with Wikipolicy links. Most of the time, they aren't doing anything wrong.

INTRODUCTION
This is not a Wikipedia article. I wrote this bio years ago because certain people repeated false information about me in Wikipedia discussions. This bio is only intended for the use and reference of Wikipedians who want to know my background and why I may be mentioned in Talk pages or some articles. I do not edit articles to promote myself. I do not use this page to promote myself. It could use a little cleanup but I don't have much time for that. The information I provide on this page is true and accurate.

Michael Martinez is an author, theorist, blogger, search engine optimization specialist, and former computer programmer.

Michael's online career began in 1993 when he joined the Compuserve discussion community for a software firm's customers. Expanding to the Compuserve SFLit Forum, Michael joined a budding writers group called the Compuserve IMPs (the Wikipedia article was deleted in early 2015 as award-winning published SciFi authors no longer appear to meet Wikipedia's bizarre "notability" requirements). As Compuserve expanded its services to include access to the World Wide Web and the news groups, Michael's attention turned to the growing Internet.

Essays and Books on J.R.R. Tolkien
Michael Martinez was recruited to write for Suite101 in 1998, launching the Hercules and Xena topic. After a year he switched to writing about J.R.R. Tolkien and Middle-earth, a topic he managed for 3 more years before handing that column over to someone else. Suite101 eventually transformed itself into a very different kind of Website and Michael withdraw all his essays from their archive.

Michael currently writes for the Middle-earth blog on Xenite.Org and the "Tolkien Studies on the Web" blog (both his own sites) as well as occasional posts for the Tolkien Society blog. Many of his essays have been translated (with my permission) into Hebrew, Portuguese, Spanish, Greek, Polish, Hungarian, French, and Italian. Michael's work has been cited and/or featured on thousands of Websites.

Books by Michael Martinez include Visualizing Middle-earth (Xlibris, 2000), Parma Endorion: Essays on Middle-earth (2001), Understanding Middle-earth: Essays on J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth (Vivisphere, 2003), and Mindfaring Through Middle-earth (Amazon Kindle, 2015).

His essay "Why Citations Do Not Make Wikipedia and Similar Sites Credible" was included in Practical Argument: A Text and Anthology, 3rd Edition (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2016)

Search Engine Optimization
Michael became active in the search engine optimization community in 1998 and his experiments in interactions between Websites and search engines have influenced many Web marketing tools and practices. Michael launched the SEO Theory blog in December 2006.

His theoretical work has focused on the Searchable Web Ecosystem and includes proposals for viral propaganda theory, large systems theory, deep Web interferometrical analysis, and applications of swarm theory to the study of Web marketing practices.