Wikipedia

Peter Damian

Joined 4 December 2008
(Redirected from User:Editor with a background in philosophy)
This user has not been blocked for 9 years, 6 months and 17 days.
This user has been on Wikipedia for 21 years, 4 months and 28 days.

About me

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I wrote this book a long time ago. I joined Wikipedia in 2003. There is a list of my articles below. The articles in bold are those to which I was the main contributor, and whose subject is important or notable (e.g. History of logic, which had not been covered properly until 2008). My main area of expertise is in Anglo-American analytic philosophy (I graduated from a well-known British university in the 1970's, did my PhD there, and taught there until the late 1980's. I have work in a number of excellent journals, and continue to work and publish, although I no longer teach). I also have an interest in medieval philosophy, and set theory and mathematics. My contributions to the project mostly reflect these specialisms.

For the entire time I have edited at Wikipedia I have been concerned about the way that experts are treated on the project (often with disdain, often with complete misunderstanding of the principles underlying true expert editing). I was a founder member of the Expert retention project.

Notes

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Emily Gould on photographers

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I know Wikipedia basically has to use some stock photo that some random person took of you because they can’t use anything that anyone wants to claim the rights to. They can’t use for example my author photo or any photo of me that has ever been in a magazine or a newspaper. They can’t use a photo that was taken by a photographer. That’s why everyone’s Wikipedia photo is so terrible. [1]

(My emphasis)

Places

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Resources

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Other accounts

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Articles

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Banned

Mathematics, logic and set theory

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Philosophy and Logic

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Medieval philosophy and logic

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Aristotle

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Biographies

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Gospel music

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Architecture

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Other

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Why actual Philosophers don't write in Wikipedia

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Philosophy I'm a philosopher; why don't I edit the article on my subject? Because it's hopeless. I've tried at various times, and each time have given up in depressed disgust. Philosophy seems to attract aggressive zealots who know a little (often a very little), who lack understanding of key concepts, terms, etc., and who attempt to take over the article (and its Talk page) with rambling, ground-shifting, often barely comprehensible rants against those who disagree with them. Life's too short. I just tell my students and anyone else I know not to read the Wikipedia article except for a laugh. It's one of those areas where the ochlocratic nature of Wikipedia really comes a cropper.

The Bristol Stool Scale

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Thanks for alerting me. To be honest, and I might as well be, I find [him] ludicrous, self-contradictory, often deeply uncivil (and equally often deeply obscure), baselessly arrogant, and lacking in self-control, self-awareness, and understanding of philosophy. He and a few other editors have taken over Philosophy, which is a laughing stock; it and one or two other similar articles have often been cited in my hearing as evidence that Wikipedia shouldn't be taken seriously or used as a reliable resource. Although I find that depressing, I don't feel that there's anything that anyone can do; editors like [him] are tirelessly logodiarrhoeic (somewhere between types 6 and 7 on the Bristol Stool Chart), and have no sense of or respect for Wikipedia policies or guidelines. Even if I had the time and energy to commit myself full time to improving the article, they would frustrate that attempt. Just look at the article's history as soon as the protection was removed: rocket-powered hysterical editing, with edit-warring thrown in, all with the net result of... the usual mess.

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