User:Stephen Turner

My articles
Most of my contributions are in cricket articles. I didn't really plan to do that &mdash; I just found an active cricket community here and joined in. My other interests include Cambridge and web analytics.

The first article I ever made a substantial contribution to was Degree Confluence Project. Articles I have written much or all of since then include:


 * Karan Bilimoria, Baron Bilimoria [ DYK ]
 * Ravinder Bopara
 * Jan-Berrie Burger
 * Cyril Dessel
 * The Elms School
 * Conrad Hunte
 * Will Jefferson
 * Frank Kelly (professor)
 * Lake Bohinj
 * London County Cricket Club
 * Peter, the Lord's cat [ DYK ]
 * Ellyse Perry [ DYK ]
 * Mike Powell
 * Chandu Sarwate
 * Mike Selvey
 * Kevin Shine
 * Bob Taylor
 * Roger Tolchard
 * Alf Valentine
 * Rudi van Vuuren
 * Web analytics
 * Alan Wells

and probably some more I've forgotten.

My WikiPhilosophy
I tend to spend most of my Wikipedia time checking new contributions, and where necesary copy-editing or reverting them.

If you look at the articles in the list above, you'll see that when I do have time to do some serious research and writing, I'm much more interested in putting together a decent stub (i.e., two or three paragraphs, not just a few words) or a short article about more topics, rather than in spending a lot of time raising existing articles to featured status. Featured status is good too, and I'm not criticising people who want to do that, but to me the great power of Wikipedia is in having a good introduction to everything, and that's what I prefer to spend my time on.

I don't spend as much time on Wikipedia as I used to. In the first few months of 2006, it gradually started to cut into my work time as well as my own time. I took a month-long wikibreak in May and June 2006, and since then I've tried to keep my contributions down to a more manageable level, mainly by not patrolling my watchlist as assiduously as I used to.

My pet hate
Linking years. This is endemic in Wikipedia to the point of being established usage. However, it's unnecessary and distracting. Full dates have to be linked in order to make users' date preferences work. But years should rarely be linked unless they're part of an exact date: the Manual of Style is quite explicit about this (1, 2, 3).

Later: This has become a subject of heated debate since I wrote this. I don't mean what I wrote to be inflammatory. But think of it this way: when linking to a year, as with any other link, ask yourself "would following this link help the reader understand this article?". Usually it won't.

Latest: Ironically, I was the one who rewrote the Manual of Style in May 2006 to make it less definite about this. I actually consider this one of my greatest triumphs on Wikipedia. Although the previous text agreed with my point of view, and probably even with the majority point of view, it didn't command consensus and was the source of endless arguments. I managed to collect everyone's point of view and rewrite it so that both sides could agree with it. My own view hasn't changed though &mdash; I still don't think most years should be linked.

And on linking full dates: Full dates have to be linked in order to make users' date preferences work. This leads to useless links all over Wikipedia. I really, really wish the developers would fix this bug and make formatting dates and linking dates two different operations.

CricketBot
I've started running a bot to correct some common errors in cricket articles. Have a look at User:CricketBot to learn more.

Barnstars
Well, here's a strange thing. I received a barnstar from an anonymous editor whose vandalism I reverted. It comes with two messages; the first one was on this page and the second one was on my talk page.