William Connolley

William Michael Connolley (born 12 April 1964) is a British software engineer and writer known for his work in climatology and for being a very active editor on Wikipedia.

He was born in 1964. He studied mathematics at the University of Oxford and later earned a doctoral degree there. He worked at the British Antarctic Survey as a climate modeler. His research focused on the climate of the Antarctic and the sea ice. He works as a software engineer for Cambridge Silicon Radio.Connolley, William. About Page Stoat Blog

 Wikipedia involvement 

Connolley became a well-known editor on Wikipedia, especially for articles about climate change.See for example,  He was an administrator on the English Wikipedia from 2006 to 2009.

He was a central figure in some disagreements on Wikipedia because he would quickly revert or undo edits he believed were biased or not based on science.Rosen, Larry D., Mark Carrier and Nancy A. Cheever. Rewired: Understanding the iGeneration and the Way They Learn, p. 120, Macmillan (2010) Tammet, Daniel. Embracing the Wide Sky: A Tour Across the Horizons of the Mind, p. 206, Simon and Schuster (2009) Keen, Andrew. The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture, p. 43, New York: Doubleday (2007)  Some editors criticized him for this, but others supported his efforts to maintain scientific accuracy in articles.Mathieu O'Neil: "Shirky and Sanger, or the costs of crowdsourcing". Journal of Science Communication, Vol. 9, Issue 1, March 2010, International School for Advanced Studies

 Controversies 
Connolley has said that Wikipedia's rules are important for keeping the encyclopedia neutral and correct. He believes that Wikipedia's rules on neutrality are sometimes misunderstood.
He was involved in a number of disputes, including one about the global warming controversy article. In 2009, he was removed as an administrator by a special committee because of his actions in some of these disputes.Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Cold fusion 2 However, many people supported him, and an online petition was created asking for his administrator status to be given back.See, e.g.,  and the papers cited therein He continued to edit Wikipedia after this, though not as actively as before.

 References 

Category:1964 births
Category:Living people
Category:British bloggers
Category:Wikipedia people