About Me

I joined in September 2004, and I have picked up some of the tools of the trade, but I still have not mastered everything (yet...). Feel free to correct me if I screw something up, but please do so nicely.

Since I joined Wikipedia I have steadily expanded my horizons here, and have been know to drop welcome messages on the talk pages of new users who happen to edit articles I track on my watchlist. I am a member of the Military history Wikiproject, which seeks to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of military history.

In August of 2007, I was elected by the members of the Military history Project to serve as a coordinator for the project. Coordinators oversee the internal operations of the project and to ensure that the project remains active and healthy on Wikipedia as the encyclopedia continuously evolves. On July 8th, 2008, I became an administrator here on the English Wikipedia, and as such now have a few extra buttons to employ for the betterment of Wikipedia. I also now have a globalized account meaning that TomStar81 on any other Wikimedia project is me as well. In addition to this primary account, I maintain a separate account from which I edit when not logged in from a secured location. I was elected Lead Coordinator for the Military history Project in September 2009, a position I held until September of 2010. In September of 2018, I was unanimously elected as the third Coordinator Emeritus of the Military history Project.

Although a frequent contributor to the encyclopedia I took a leave of absence from Wikipedia in early November 2008 for personal reasons. While working offline I redesigned my user page, using the layout pioneered by Phaedriel (talk · contribs) but substantially tweaking it so that it would reflect my interests. I remained off Wikipedia until early 2009, where upon I returned.

Occasionally, if I am bored or if I have nothing better to do with my time I will check the recent edits log to check for vandalism, or cruise aimlessly through the articles that pop up when I click on "Random Article" to further my own knowledge and to see if I can improve the page(s) in any way.

Lately I have been active here in a severely reduced capacity, owing to difficult real life circumstances surrounding me and what is left on my family. While I do check back here occasionally I find that the free time I have to do so and the joy I get from helping are both rather limited these days, which has helped keep me in a state of reduced activity. Despite this I am and will for the time being remain a wikipedian, and an administrator.

Anyway, if I can help with something, then I will definitely try, and if I can't, I may be able to at least point you in the general direction of assistance.

Oh, and uh, one more thing: My Spelling is Atrocious, so if I made it, and it's misspelled, please fix it. You will be doing us all a favor ;-)

—TomStar81 04:53, 4 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I discovered Wikipedia by accident when searching for information concerning the space ships in the Universal Century (UC) Mobile Suit Gundam anime series back in August '04, and was immediately intrigued with the possibility of writing material that could be published and read on the internet. As an ISP user I created articles for nearly all the UC era space vessels, and at the encouragement of Aqua008 (talk · contribs) decided to register an account on Wikipedia in September 2004.

I chose the name "TomStar81" because I had a (now defunct) Cartoon Orbit account dedicated to Toonami, but the Cartoon Orbit people required users to choose prefabricated names. After much thought I settled on "TomHameStar81" for my Cartoon Orbit account name — "Tom" as a salute to the host of Toonami, "Hame" for the Kamehameha attack in Dragonball Z, "Star" for anime series Outlaw Star, and 81 because a two digit number was required and 77 (my favorite two digit number) had already been taken, and I wanted a number that would at least add or subtract to seven (8-1=7, thus the 81) — and shortened that to "TomStar81" for use on Wikipedia. I should note here that I have no preference on whether you pronounce the number as "eighty-one" or "eight one;" I usually switch between the two options myself, so feel free to use whichever one you prefer.

Initially, my editing was by choice confined to the anime series and video games of the first person shooter and real time strategy genres that I had played here and there, most of which had military-based themes. Owing to the military based themes I did some editing of the military related articles here, but at the time we had no single unified Military History project, so my editing was not so much to help the military projects as it was for my own interest.

Around 2005-2006 two major events occurred that lead to a radical reevaluation of what exactly I do here. First, the vast majority of old Command & Conquer pages I had labored to improve wound up at afd and were ultimately deleted. In the aftermath of losing so many articles — most in a few mass-nom afds — I swore I would never again create a page concerning an aspect of fiction on Wikipedia. At just about the same time as the mass deletions were occurring the formerly independent Wikiproject Battles, Wikiproject Wars, and Wikiproject Military took the unprecedented step of merging to form a single unified Military history Wikiproject, and I officially joined because of a vested personal interest in both World War II and battleships; since then, most of my editing has been for the military history project, although I do edit outside the scope of military history project now and again, usually when I am bored or looking to exercise admin privileges.

Since joining the military history project I have become a driving force behind the improvement of our warship article, in particular the Iowa-class battleships. Without bragging, I do believe that I am the first Wikipedian here on the English Wikipedia to have gotten a battleship class article to Featured Article status, and am numbered among the first to have helped create a ships-exclusive Featured Topic. This in turn seems to have inspired others to take up the challenge of writing about individual ships, as the number of Featured Articles on ships has gradually increased since I began working on them. To better coordinate the ongoing effort to improve Wikipedia's Battleship related articles, I founded Operation Majestic Titan, the very first special project of the Military history Project.

My administrator policy has always been that administrators be thou for the contributors. As an administrator (or admin for short) I firmly believe that it is my duty to assist contributors to the best of my ability and within the confines of all applicable policies and guidelines.

I realize that I am only human, and therefore I will inevitably make a mistake or two in exercising administrative privileges on Wikipedia. In light of this, I invite my fellow administrators to fix any mistake I make here on Wikipedia. I will not consider it wheel-warring if you reverse my admin actions as long as you leave me a civil note telling me what you've done and why and as long as you're open to discussion with me should I disagree. I seek to learn from my mistakes, but learning can only be accomplished if both parties in a disagreement over a course of action are willing to talk to each other in a civil manner.

Finally, I am and always have been an administrator open to recall. To recall me I ask that you initiate a request for comment, explaining in detail the the action(s) that I have taken in the incident(s) that occurred. If consensus emerges during the request for comment that I have acted inappropriately then I will resign my adminship. Adminship is wonderful privilege to be entrusted with, but if you are not enough without the admin tools, you will never be enough with the admin tools.

That which I need I do not want, and that which I want I can no longer have. TomStar81 (Talk) 09:25, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

"For the families of the seven, we cannot bear, as you do, the full impact of this tragedy. But we feel the loss, and we're thinking about you so very much. Your loved ones were daring and brave, and they had that special grace, that special spirit that says, 'Give me a challenge and I'll meet it with joy.'

...We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God'."

— Speech Delivered to the Nation by President Ronald Reagan following the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger.

Dear Madam,
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a
statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts,
that you are the mother of five sons who have died
gloriously on the field of battle.I feel how weak
and fruitless must be any words of mine which should
attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so
overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to
you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of
the Republic they died to save. I pray that our
Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your
bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory
of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must
be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon
the altar of Freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
Abraham Lincoln

- Letter to Mrs. Bixby in Boston