user:Tim Starling

I'm employed by the Wikimedia Foundation as a developer and system administrator.

I became a Wikipedia editor on October 10, 2002. I discovered Wikipedia when searching the web for information about solid state physics. I immediately fell in love with the site and decided to become a contributor. Mav greeted me after I made my first edit.https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Tim_Starling&oldid=459409 It took me a while to realise he was not a bot, just a really friendly guy. I was a very active editor from that time until about 2004. I was granted administrator rights in March 2003, in a [https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2003-March/002166.html very different process] from today's weighing of souls.

I began volunteer development work in 2003. I was given shell access to Wikipedia's two servers in July 2003.https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-July/004751.htmlhttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=Talk%3ANeutrosophy×tamp=20030711000419&diff=prev In 2004, although I had plans for major new article writing projects, I realised that I could help the project best by focusing on technical work. There were plenty of editors, but hardly anybody writing code or looking after the servers. So at that time, I stepped back from editing.

In December 2004, I was invited to speak at Chaos Communication Congress, a daunting prospect for me at age 23. I flew out of Sydney for Berlin on Christmas Day. It was my first trip out of Australia. This conference was the first time I met my future wife Angela in real life.

By late 2005, my incomplete PhD in physics was all but abandoned, and I was essentially a full time volunteer for Wikimedia. In February 2006 I managed to convince the Board to hire me,foundation:Resolution:Additional developer, although it took until April 20 for them to start paying me. Even then I had only an informal contract for many years. I was asked to specify my job title. Ever modest, I chose "Developer / System Administrator". I had my hand in every pie.

Eventually I specialised in the MediaWiki backend, and in 2012 my title was changed to Lead Platform Architect. I'm currently the tech lead for a small but brilliant team of engineers focused on the MediaWiki core. I'm also a member of the Wikimedia Technical Committee.

I now live on the Central Coast of New South Wales with my wife Angela and three daughters.

{{collapse top|title=Various subpages mostly dating from 2002-2004 when I was an active editor}}

• List of contributions.
• /Mapping has been moved back to Talk:Cartographic Congress. I had intended the subpage to be just an archive of my work, but since it still has active discussion, it should be in the talk namespace.
• /Inorganic compound project.
• /Protected page list
• /Greetings
• Not really in progress anymore: a new [http://starling.f2g.net/move.html Special:Movepage] ([https://web.archive.org/web/20050204122949/http://starling.f2g.net/move.html archived])
• /Skeptical solicitation has now been moved to Wikipedia:Skeptical solicitation.
• Picture of me hiding behind my non-US residence. See User talk:Joe Canuck
• /Reddi watchlist -- human edited version
• /Reddi watchlist SQL -- a list of articles Reddi has touched
• How to find out if a user is watching a page:
• SELECT wl_title FROM watchlist,user WHERE wl_user=user_id AND user_name='xxxx' AND wl_title='xxxx'
• /Richardchilton IRC log
• /Feature poll
• /Password matches
• /IP-based evidence
• /Stub thresholds
• [http://www.ph.unimelb.edu.au/~tstarling/21C3/Wikipedia_21C3.ppt Slides from Berlin]
• /List of crackpot theories
• /Free software
• /Gpg4win tutorial

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For purposes of COI disclosure, I note that John Henry Starling was my great-grandfather.

Unless otherwise stated, any edit to Wikimedia projects by myself is an act of a regular member of the community and administrator, not a legal or official action.