User:Daniel Quinlan

Current Wikistress

My fields of interest include:

Science and Technology, especially Anti-spam, Open Source, and Linux
Rock climbing and Running
Politics and Government

Here are some articles I started (or rewrote) in order of newest to oldest:

Some Wikipedia writings and projects:

Useful stuff:

Wikipedia:Boilerplate text

Dec 16, 2003

I'm taking an extended leave from editing Wikipedia articles. To be perfectly honest with myself, I'm not sure I'm going to be back. An extended period of editing articles has convinced me that the NPOV policy does not work. Many articles at Wikipedia have evolved into agenda vehicles and Wikipedia lacks the will and the technology to allow neutral authors to effectively overrule vocal minorities pushing various agendas. Since neutral editors must be just as vocal as those minorities, it just takes too much time to keep up with people who have more free time to bias Wikipedia, and it never ends. There are many good articles at Wikipedia and great people, but I came here to support a project representative of general human knowledge, not this. I suppose this will be a victory of sorts for some who don't share this view, but trading it for more free time and fewer confrontations seems like a bargain of a deal. Daniel Quinlan 03:20, Dec 16, 2003 (UTC)

Jan 28, 2005

Well, I edited an article a few days ago and I'm poking around Wikipedia, so I suppose I'm back after a fashion. I don't know if NPOV works any better or not these days, but it'll be interesting to see how things have evolved. Daniel Quinlan 13:24, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)

Mar 27, 2005

I am on vacation for a while. Wikipedia got a few months out of me, but I'm really too busy to get back into the insane politics: anonymity, sock puppets, blocked users editing as anonymous IPs, ever-increasingly complicated rules and regulations, and articles that slowly degrade to muck after both sides of a POV debate have had their way. Daniel Quinlan 01:28, Mar 28, 2005 (UTC)