User:Wmahan

Hi, I've been editing Wikipedia since 2004-03-18.

Contact
NOTE: if you are sending me a message about an external link I removed, please read my page about external links first.

Leaving a message on my talk page is the preferred way of contacting me about Wikipedia.

If you aren't familiar with Wikipedia, you can send me an email using this link (or by going here if you don't have an account).

About
I think Wikipedia is interesting due to the following dichotomy:
 * it's a free and open collaboration of people around the world, and nothing like it has existed before; but
 * it's just a website, and the contents of any particular page or the contributions of any one person are unimportant.

I'm a proponent of free software, and I think the fact that Wikipedia is free is as important as its openness.

I see spam as a greater long-term threat to Wikipedia than vandalism. Vandalism is usually motivated by a desire for amusement or attention, and in most cases it is readily recognized. By contrast, spammers have a direct financial interest in developing more sophisticated methods of self-promotion, and I expect that they will become more organized and harder to detect over time.

Links
Here are few miscellaneous links:
 * a list of spammed external links (help is welcome)
 * a tool for making spelling corrections
 * a list of pages that link to redirects in Category:Redirects from misspellings
 * my page on the Toolserver: http://tools.wikimedia.de/~wmahan/
 * barnstars that people have given me
 * my obligatory boring website. There's not anything notable there yet.

Notice
''This is my &#87;&#105;&#107;&#105; &#112;&#101;&#100;&#105;&#97;  user page. If you are reading this on any site other than &#87;&#105;&#107;&#105; &#112;&#101;&#100;&#105;&#97;, you are viewing a mirror site that I am not affiliated with in any way.''