User:MartinPoulter

Real name: Dr Martin Poulter

Email: infobomb@gmail.com

Home page: http://www.infobomb.org/

Location: Bristol, UK

I'm a member of Wikimedia UK We are a group of local Wikimedians helping the Foundation to "create a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge". Love Wikimedia? Live in the UK? Join up, Donate and Get Involved

This is why we do this

I have an alternative account, User:MartinPoulter-training, purely for training other people in using Wikipedia. All my editing in controversial areas, and all my significant article improvement, is done through the MartinPoulter account.

Qualifications and approach

• BA in Philosophy & Psychology from University of Oxford, graduated 1994
• PhD in Philosophy from University of Bristol; thesis "Value and Belief" applied decision theory and Bayesian probability to questions of science and belief, degree awarded 2003
• Have been a teaching assistant in courses on Introduction to Philosophy and Introduction to Symbolic Logic at Bristol
• Occasionally give talks about logic, cognitive psychology or the Scientology cult.
• Currently have two part-time jobs, both at the University of Bristol: New Media Manager for the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children and ICT Manager for The Economics Network, in a role which promotes open educational resources.

My main interest is in promoting critical and scientific thinking. I am a logician by background, but since my doctorate I have been expanding my expertise to include cognitive and social psychology.

I'm an Integrationist: one of the reasons WP has millions of articles is that there are sometimes five different articles on the same topic.

Areas of activity

Bias Research (Psychology)

• Confirmation bias: This article was actually misleading in August 2009, when I began a total rewrite. I took it to Featured Article status (and the Wikipedia front page) in July 2010.
• Illusion of control: I've done some rewording here but there is a lot more that could be done.
• Articles created: Introspection illusion, Adaptive unconscious, Mistakes were made (but not by me) (non-fiction book), Attribute substitution, Illusory superiority (since rewritten by a student project), The Halo Effect (business book), Set (psychology)
• Biographies of living persons: Elliot Aronson, Carol Tavris, Daniel Wegner: added multiple reliable third-party refs to fix sourcing problems
• Perception: major overhaul of this centrally important article, which was in a dire state.

Relevant WikiProject: WP:PSYCHOLOGY (Talk)

• Essay for other editors: Wikipedia:WikiProject Psychology/How to write a psychology article

Scientology/Dianetics

I run a site/ media archive about Scientology, from a critical perspective, which I won't link here because it contains potential WP:COPYVIO material. My opinions about the topic, I keep to my own site. Here on WP, I'm interested in raising the quality of certain articles:

• Purification Rundown and New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project: two interlinked articles that I've taken from quite a dire status to being hopefully quite complete. On 4 March 2011, the latter was promoted to Good Article.
• Xenu: I was very active in making improvements to this article when it was put up for Featured Article Review, which it passed on 5 December 2008.
• Disconnection: A large proportion of the content of this page is due to me. At the moment it's a large unstructured stream of instances, which could benefit from better structure.
• Scientology in the United Kingdom: total rewrite, expanding it from 6K to 66K. Not yet a comprehensive article, but more to come
• I helped the L. Ron Hubbard article through the candidacy process to get to Featured Article status, which it passed on 5 March 2011.
• Non-fiction book: Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health: I've expanded this article and added in a variety of sources.
• Non-fiction book: Bare-faced Messiah: I've added a lot of content to this already-existing article: as of January 2011 almost all of the text content is my work.

Relevant WikiProject: Scientology (Talk)

Scientific explanation of paranormal belief

• Psychokinesis: I've made some large changes to this article (which was in a car-crash state), but much more could be done.

Relevant WikiProject: WP:SKEPTIC (Talk)

Reviewing

I've been GA Reviewer or Peer Reviewer for: Nobel Prize, A Journey, Homosexuals Anonymous, Body schema, Peter Hitchens, Requiem for a Species, Social loafing, Stereotype threat

Writing about Wikipedia

• An old post from when I was just starting to "get" Wikipedia: Voluntary work for an obscure educational charity, guest post on the Intute blog, 2 December 2009. Intute (RIP) was a publicly-funded web portal for academic research, teaching and learning.
• I write about aspects of Wikipedia on my personal blog.

Barnstars awarded

The Real Life Barnstar to User:Steve virgin, User:HenryScow, User:Jukesie, User:Panyd, User:RexxS and User:HJ Mitchell. The Psychology Barnstar to User:Lova Falk, User:Fainites, User:Psy3330 W10, User:Jacobisq , User:Morton Shumway, User:Psyc3330 Prof, User:Psyc3330 w11, User:Penbat and User:Haley love. The Original Barnstar to User:Helatrobus.

Awards and boxes

The Xenu Barnstar For your amazing work on the Xenu article. Thank you for helping to keep it at the highest quality rating on the English Wikipedia - Featured Article quality status. Cirt (talk) 03:00, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

The Copyeditor's Barnstar For your help in copyediting the Nobel Prize. Esuzu (talk • contribs) 20:09, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

The Original Barnstar Well done with your successful work on confirmation bias. hamiltonstone (talk) 11:42, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

The Editor's Barnstar I, -- Cirt (talk), award The Editor's Barnstar to MartinPoulter, for excellent efforts contributing to bringing the article L. Ron Hubbard to Featured Article quality status. Well done! Wikipedia is enhanced and the community benefits from your successful efforts to improve the quality of articles on this project. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 16:35, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

		The Psychology Barnstar
		I, Smallman12q, hereby award MartinPoulter the Psychology Barnstar for his excellent article on confirmation bias. Thank you!Smallman12q (talk) 01:13, 23 July 2010 (UTC) For the man who contributes so much in this field.Fainites barleyscribs 18:52, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

	This editor is an Experienced Editor and is entitled to display this Service Badge.

en	This user is a native speaker of English.

This user is block free - (see my block log here!).

PhD	This user has a Doctor of Philosophy degree

ANAL 4	This user advocates good grammar usage.

UOB	This user studied or studies at the University of Bristol.

Oxon.	This user is an Oxonian.

	This user is a member of WikiProject Rational Skepticism.

	This user is interested in psychology.

	This user supports integrated, interwiki, global watchlists.

Sub-pages

• /Inbox
• /Refs for Purification Rundown
• /Refs for Happiness
• /Refs for social perception
• /sandbox2
• /sandbox3