User:Tim Starling

I'm employed by the Wikimedia Foundation as a developer and system administrator.

I became a Wikipedia editor on October 10, 2002. I discovered Wikipedia when searching the web for information about solid state physics. I immediately fell in love with the site and decided to become a contributor. Mav greeted me after I made my first edit. It took me a while to realise he was not a bot, just a really friendly guy. I was a very active editor from that time until about 2004. I was granted administrator rights in March 2003, in a very different process from today's weighing of souls.

I began volunteer development work in 2003. I was given shell access to Wikipedia's two servers in July 2003. In 2004, although I had plans for major new article writing projects, I realised that I could help the project best by focusing on technical work. There were plenty of editors, but hardly anybody writing code or looking after the servers. So at that time, I stepped back from editing.

In December 2004, I was invited to speak at Chaos Communication Congress, a daunting prospect for me at age 23. I flew out of Sydney for Berlin on Christmas Day. It was my first trip out of Australia. This conference was the first time I met my future wife Angela in real life.

By late 2005, my incomplete PhD in physics was all but abandoned, and I was essentially a full time volunteer for Wikimedia. In February 2006 I managed to convince the Board to hire me,, although it took until April 20 for them to start paying me. Even then I had only an informal contract for many years. I was asked to specify my job title. Ever modest, I chose "Developer / System Administrator". I had my hand in every pie.

Eventually I specialised in the MediaWiki backend, and in 2012 my title was changed to Lead Platform Architect. I'm currently the tech lead for a small but brilliant team of engineers focused on the MediaWiki core. I'm also a member of the Wikimedia Technical Committee.

I now live on the Central Coast of New South Wales with my wife Angela and three daughters.


 * List of contributions.
 * /Mapping has been moved back to Talk:Cartographic Congress. I had intended the subpage to be just an archive of my work, but since it still has active discussion, it should be in the talk namespace.
 * /Inorganic compound project.
 * /Protected page list
 * /Greetings
 * Not really in progress anymore: a new Special:Movepage (archived)
 * /Skeptical solicitation has now been moved to Skeptical solicitation.
 * Picture of me hiding behind my non-US residence. See User talk:Joe Canuck
 * /Reddi watchlist -- human edited version
 * /Reddi watchlist SQL -- a list of articles Reddi has touched
 * How to find out if a user is watching a page:
 * SELECT wl_title FROM watchlist,user WHERE wl_user=user_id AND user_name='xxxx' AND wl_title='xxxx'
 * /Richardchilton IRC log
 * /Feature poll
 * /Password matches
 * /IP-based evidence
 * /Stub thresholds
 * Slides from Berlin
 * /List of crackpot theories
 * /Free software
 * /Gpg4win tutorial
 * /Get Well Soon
 * /Weekly reports

For purposes of COI disclosure, I note that John Henry Starling was my great-grandfather.

Unless otherwise stated, any edit to Wikimedia projects by myself is an act of a regular member of the community and administrator, not a legal or official action.