 | This Wikipedian is deceased. His user page is preserved here in his memory.
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I'm Kevin Gorman. I'm a recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in geography, although I'm currently living in SD as my doctors figure out the remnants of last year (in large part I've been here so long because when you need to see a particular specialist because no one else in the Western half of the country is familiar with the subject matter, waits are frequently several months. Until recently, I was an administrator until the Arbitration Committee stripped my sysop bit in what has to have been one of the more poorly executed cases in an arbcom tranche that was not known for good judgement.
I dislike systemic biases; both those caused by our gender, racial, and geographic biases, and those cause by no abstract available bias and it's kindred. One of my stronger interests on Wikipedia is making available online in a freely available format content that cannot be currently be found on the Wikimedia projects because of our systemic biases. I think that this is some of the most important work that can be done on Wikipedia at this time. While I was Wikipedian in Residence at UC Berkeley, my students wrote articles about topics of significance not present on the English Wikipedia (or at least lacking in quality,) - every year I was there, the number of reads my students' articles got exceeded the total number of visitors to UC Berkeley's library system - the goal of cultural institutions, at least in part, is to spread the knowledge they hold, and Wikipedia is one of (several, but an exceptional one) ways forward. If you are involved in a cultural instituion in Southern California and would like to chat about a collaboration, please drop me a note. Arbcom's exceptionally poor judgement means that there are certain types of collaboration I can no longer perform, but lots of awesome collaborations I can still
A lot of my writing that isn't related to the above is related to various personal interests - I'm an amateur mycologist, I just painstaking xeriscaped my yard, I'm fascinated with how conceptions of space and place have changed over time, etc. I'm also deeply concerned about Wikipedia's articles about living people, or that have the potential to harm real world people. I think we have an obligation to avoid this as best we can. I've been involved in a lot of real-world outreach about Wikipedia, especially as related to getting higher education involved, our demographic gaps, and the offline accessibility gap represented by galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. I haven't tried to make a list, but I've run quite a few editathons, generally themed around our content gaps I've also taken a stong interest in paid editing on Wikipedia. I think paid editing can have a place on Wikipedia, potentially at least, but also think that pretty much everyone currently doing it is damaging Wikipedia. I've put together a few example pieces from the Wiki-PR (one of the larger groups we publicly damaged,a lthough they are still operating) case in my userspace here, so that people who didn't see the work when it was live can get an idea of the quality of their writing. A lot of paid editing of this quality or worse slips under the radar in to the main encyclopedia.
I think much socialization between Wikipedians is good, and I wrote me an essay about it.