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I live in Nottinghamshire, England, and am currently in Year 9 at a High School in the area. I am a self professed expert in the fields of defence, and policing. I have been working on several projects for major press and broadcasting companies, as an investigative journalist, covering areas such as the counter terrorist operation of the British Police, and the Nuclear Decommissioning of Russia's Northern Naval Fleet.

I am currently studying for my GCSE's, and as a result of that, have far too much homework, and spend too much time online. I enjoy programming, and do a bit of web design in my spare time. I also play alot of sports, such as tennis, cross country, orienteering, and badminton. If you really want to know, I am doing the following for GCSE:

  • French
  • German
  • Spanish
  • English Literature
  • English Language
  • Maths
  • History
  • Design Technology or Geography or Religious Studies (dont know)
  • Chemistry or Biology or Physics (dont know)
  • Chemistry or Biology or Physics (dont know)

I'd also like to take Physical Education and ICT, but my school doesnt offer those choices, so i'll just have to make do, or do them by distance learning, or some other way.

PS. I am heavily obsessed with userboxes, so watch out!


Things that Wikipedia could improve on

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  • Instruction creep. The overly long instruction pages actually put me off from following accepted conventions. It just takes so long sometimes to find out how to do things correctly. Even though you sometimes see references to m:Instruction creep in those pages, they still keep growing. The results are that either (a) I go against the rules, or (b) I just don't bother fixing things that I know are wrong.
  • Vandalism. To be honest, I used to find it fun to hunt for and squash vandalism. It's great that the intelligent design of this project means it's usually as easy to undo vandalism as it is to do it in the first place. (If only physical vandalism in real life were as easy to rectify.) However, vandalism is now really annoying me; it's absurd that a large part of people's editing time is taken up with countering it. As maybe 99% of vandalism is from anonymous IP addresses, I now believe all posting should be from registered users. I think some of the proposals in anonymous users should not be allowed to edit are extreme: such proposals undermine the whole point of the project. Allowing people to remain anonymous behind a nickname is fine - in fact, absolutely necessary as many people may not wish to be publicly identified (I ceratinly don't). Generally I do like the approach of User:Anastrophe-wikipedia, though I don't see the necessity for even requiring an e-mail address. The basic principles should be:
    • New users must have a relatively pain-free experience—both in signing up, and in making initial postings.
    • A campaign of vandalism must be a painful experience for the vandal.