User:Mike Peel

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This is the Wikipedia user page on Mike Peel. For Mike Peel, see real life.

I am a researcher of Physics and Astrophysics at Jodrell Bank, part of the University of Manchester. I finished a Masters course in June 2006. In December 2009 I submitted my PhD thesis on simulations and observations of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect, using a receiver on the 32 m telescope at the Toruń Centre for Astronomy, Poland. I am currently carrying out research related to the Planck satellite. For more info about me, see my personal webpage at MikePeel.net.

I am Secretary of Wikimedia UK, an independent organization supporting the Wikimedia projects within the United Kingdom. If you are based in the UK, please become a member, and help make things happen!

Why do I edit wikipedia?

• It makes information easily accessible to all (with a computer).
• It enables the spread of knowledge that would otherwise be ignored, forgotten or lost.
• It (hopefully) encourages people to learn more than they otherwise would.
• The selfish reason: by writing about something I learn about it, with more sinking in than if I just read it.

I believe that knowledge belongs to everyone, and that it should be available freely to all. Wikipedia is a great place to concentrate that knowledge, and I have great hopes for Wikipedia. If it turns into a fad that lasts only a few years, then I will be bitterly disappointed. I hope that Wikipedia as it is now is the seed of something that will continue growing and developing over the coming centuries, becoming a major repository of humanity's knowledge.

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Wikipedia activities

My current Stress (physics) stress level. Finding that I need more time in the day to do everything.

I mainly edit astronomy/astrophysics/physics articles, although I don't confine myself to them. A lot of my editing is related to references for the articles, which is currently one of Wikipedia's biggest weak points. I also do a lot of maintenance work here - the two largest tasks that I've done being the categorization of templates into subcategories of Category:Wikipedia templates, and tagging articles for WikiProject Physics. Neither of which I've completed, but at least I've improved them.

If you've replied to a comment of mine on a talk page of an article, or started one about an edit I've made, and I haven't responded, that's most likely because I don't watch all of the pages that I've edited. Sorry. Please poke me on my talk page, and I'll reply to your comment.

I operate Peelbot, which I hope to use for a variety of things. I'm used to use it to tag the talk pages of physics-related articles with Template:Physics. It's currently idle, as it required Windows XP to run, and I now use an Apple Mac.

I also have an account at Wikimedia Commons: commons:User:Mike Peel, which I use to upload pictures to Wikipedia (under CC-BY-SA), and another on Wikinews: wikinews:User:Mike Peel. I also have fr:Utilisateur:Mike Peel.

I don't like external links sections; I feel that their content is generally best placed under either the References section, or Further Reading, or in an infobox in the case of official links. I find that external links sections invite spam, which is generally bad.

This user is a participant of WikiProject Physics.	This user is a member of the Astronomical Object WikiProject.	This user is a member of the Astronomy WikiProject
This user is a member of WikiProject Greater Manchester	This user is a member of WikiProject Space.	{{t|3}} This user contributes to the template namespace with confidence.
{{t|c}} This user can use and program conditional templates.	This user is or was a jodrellite.

Observations

• August 2010: People have started thinking that guidelines are policies. The rules aren't set in stone, they're flexible for a reason...
• Around November 2006 I noticed a number of editors giving correct edit summaries while vandalising articles. For example, [1] shows an editor giving an edit summary of "spelling errors", while introducing spelling errors into the article! (NB: this is separate from Wikipedia:Automatic edit summaries.)
• During Oct-Nov 2006, I also noticed an increase in the number of anonymous editors either adding wikilinks to articles, or removing some, with no other changes.
• Wikipedia is a bottomless pit, or at least it's a close approximation to one. As aptly illustrated by the way that "bottomless pit" is currently (jan 2007) a red link. It still (may 2008) doesn't talk about the metaphor of a bottomless pit... although it does link to Abyss
• The aims of wikipedians seem to be askew. We seem to have in-depth articles on Pokémon, and all its' characters, yet a disorganized and incomplete set of articles on physics and astronomy, among many other important topics. Huh?
• The template namespace is a mess

Works in progress

• User:Mike Peel/References guide — A guide to the technical aspects of referencing on Wikipedia. Probably perpetually a work in progress now, as I've moved on to other things.
• I'm currently trying to figure out the history of Jodrell Bank Observatory (mainly because I work there). I should probably expand the University of Manchester article sometime, too.
• I'm on-off involved with the organization of Category:Wikipedia templates. I need to find time to sort through Category:Uncategorized templates at some point... Also Category:WikiProject templates, removing non-WP templates.

Featured

I've contributed heavily to the following Featured Articles and Lists:

• Big Bang - mainly bringing it back up to Featured Article status during its FAR
• List of space telescopes - written from scratch
• List of NASA Administrators - merged two existing lists, reformatted, referenced and intro written.
• List of solar eclipses in the 21st century - reformatted, completed and added details to an existing, incomplete list.
• List of moons - based on work by User:RandomCritic, reformatted and referenced. Put through FLC by User:Serendipodous.

... more to come ...

I also got Portal:Physics to Featured Portal status; however this is now maintained by others.

Good Articles

I've contributed heavily to the following Good Articles:

Astronomy	Manchester
AMiBA Jodrell Bank Observatory Lovell Telescope	B of the Bang Hulme Arch Bridge Upper Brook Street Chapel, Manchester

... more to come ...

Did you know

Hulme Arch Bridge	AMiBA
40-foot telescope	Cill Chriosd

• ...that the Mark II radio telescope built in 1964 at Jodrell Bank Observatory, UK was the first telescope to be controlled by a digital computer? 22 November 2006
• ...that Gamma, a gamma-ray telescope, was launched on 11 July 1990, 25 years after it was originally conceived? 7 March 2007
• ...that the first Dutch satellite, the Astronomical Netherlands Satellite, had the Main Belt asteroid 9996 ANS named after it? 8 March 2008
• ...that the Upper Brook Street Chapel in Manchester, designed by Sir Charles Barry shortly before he designed the Palace of Westminster, is said to be the first neogothic Nonconformist chapel? 21 March 2008
• ...that Hulme Arch Bridge in Manchester (pictured) follows the design of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, and rejoins two halves of a road that was sundered in 1969? 5 April 2008
• ...that broken remains of three medieval high crosses were found in 1874 during the construction of Barnes Hospital in Cheadle, Greater Manchester, but the location of only one is known today? 21 April 2008
• ...that Platt Fields Park in Manchester, England, was used as a country park for over 400 years before being converted for public use in 1908–1910? 25 April 2008
• ... that QUIET, an astronomy experiment due to start observing in 2008 at the Llano de Chajnantor Observatory, will make measurements of the polarization of the cosmic microwave background radiation? 28 May 2008
• ... that Cine City in Manchester, England, the third cinema to open in England in 1912 as "The Scala", has recently been demolished? 4 July 2008
• ... that AMiBA (pictured) is a radio telescope located on Mauna Loa in Hawaii that is being used to observe the Cosmic Microwave Background and the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect in clusters of galaxies? 27 October 2008
• ... that William Herschel's 40-foot telescope (pictured) was the largest telescope in the world for 50 years? 27 November 2008
• ... that the ruined Cill Chriosd (pictured), also known as Kilchrist or Christ's Church, was the parish church of Strathaird, Skye, until 1840? 20 June 2010

Bookmarks

These are Wikipedia pages I either find useful but don't edit, or that I do edit but don't want cluttering up my watchlist. Since Wikipedia doesn't have a proper bookmarking system, this seems to be the logical place to put them.

• Wikipedia:Template_messages/User_talk_namespace
• User:Interiot/Tool2/code.js (Edit counter, requires some javascript to work. If you want to use it, read this page. I don't use this much any more - after 9,000+ edits, it's a bit scary)

Special pages

• Special:Allpages
• Special:Prefixindex
• Special:Unusedtemplates really needs clearing out. That'll be a fun job for quiet century.

Places to watch

• Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard
• Wikipedia:Featured article candidates and reviews
• Wikipedia:Good_article_candidates and reviews
• Wikipedia:Peer review and Wikipedia:Scientific peer review
• Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard

Random odd things

• Wikipedia:No climbing the Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man
• m:Association of Wikipedians Who Dislike Making Broad Judgments About the Worthiness of a General Category of Article, and Who Are in Favor of the Deletion of Some Particularly Bad Articles, but That Doesn't Mean They Are Deletionists (... with additional "What the hell???")
• Wikipedia:Rouge admin (trans. "Red admin")

Things I think every Wikipedian should read

(Have you read them all?)

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias. Note that I fall straight into the "average wikipedian" category.
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style
  • If you're writing about fiction, then Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction) is a worthwhile read.
• Wikipedia:Citing sources