User:Wikidea

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This user is a lawyer.

This user is a member of WikiProject Law.

This user is interested in Organized Labour.

This user is a proud member of
WikiProject Companies.

4	This user thinks BBC Radio 4 is worth the licence fee alone.

I am British and live in London. My main interests are history, law and physics...

This user drinks beer.

...and beer.

And, for that matter, Wikipedia! I have written quite a few pages. Big pages that I have written which are complete (or almost complete) include, the Law page, History of economic thought, Competition law and UK agency worker law. For a fuller list of all the little bits that I have done, see below.

I really think that Wikipedia will, given 10 years, become for law students a superior learning material to most casebooks, and the first point of call when students do not understand what they've read for class. If you look at how many US Supreme Court judgments are already up, it must be clear that this is the tip of the iceberg. My view is that the most important thing on the law pages is good structure - e.g. headings should always link to main articles - and good references. I've reformatted the law template, and the law portal (and apart from their reordering, giving them their current glossy red/gold). And then I've done loads of other little things, like most Wikipedians do. It's just for fun, and hopefully it's useful.

All comments are welcome.

p.s. have a look at Professor Wikipedia for a good laugh.

p.p.s. here is an interesting new tool; a webpage which shows you how many hits each article gets, at stats.grok.se, created by User:Henrik.

p.p.p.s Recently I've begun a comprehensive drive to create a resource for studying English contract law. That will mean - at some point - a full set of links to all the main cases, complete with descriptions of how it all fits together on a series of main pages. What has shocked me is to find how much trash law is available online. Various websites deal out partial, pointless and sometime wrong information. Many of them are linked to companies whose business is fraud on universities: selling essays to students to submit. At some point, it will be pointed out that this is illegal, firstly because the student is perpetrating fraud (e.g. Derry v Peek), secondly because the essay company is conspiring to commit fraud (e.g. Quinn v Leathem) and thirdly because it could well be argued that universities have a legitimate interest in securing that no profits can come out of it (e.g. Attorney General v Blake). I'm truly shocked that this can go on, not least because these people are idiots. We need to stop it by making Wikipedia better and more reliable than anything else. At least that's what I aim for!