User:Andrewa
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00:42, Sunday, April 28, 2024 (UTC)
Hi everyone. I'm Andrew Alder, and you can learn a lot more about me on my old, neglected personal website (http://www.zeta.org.au/~andrewa/aja.htm) or have a look at my equally neglected new website (http://www.alder.ws).
Some of the things I'm currently working on (these lists are for my benefit too):
Soon
- Pipe organ/refactor
- Anything that's in my personal sandbox
- Replace the incredibly anglocentric(!!!) redirect from home to house with an article
- Tidy up linkages around identity (mathematics), identity (disambiguation) and identity element articles
Long or medium term
- Untangle the Triple sec and Curaçao articles
- recent changes by anon users (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Recentchanges&hideminor=0&hideliu=1&hidebots=1&days=7&limit=50)
- portable stove
- analogue computer
- Wikipedia:Badly behaved websites (see User_talk:Andrewa/archive1#Wikipedia:Badly_behaved_websites)
- Create some MediaWiki custom messages
- Write an article on structured semantic analysis
I also tend to haunt VfD and the deletion log not because I like to but because it's important, the Pump because it's fun, and cleanup because it's both fun and important. I'd love to find the time to get involved in peer review because the process as described looks brilliant, and whether it's working or not I think it should. And I'm an occasional contributor to the Meta. I tend not to haunt votes for undeletion or redirects for deletion, I can't do everything, I visit them only when something particularly interesting is happening.
I like to welcome new users, particularly ones whose early contributions end up on VfD, perhaps because it happened to me. I use and recommend Isomorphic's greeting skeletons as brilliant collections of links that are kept current, but I also think it's important for the greeting to be personal.
If you have any suggestions about things you think I could particularly help with, add them to the top of my talk page.
Currently I'm a full-time student of pure mathematics, picking up the threads after a seventeen year absence since my first degree which is in pure maths and philosophy (I call it logic). I spend most of the rest of my time on church, music and church music, and computing (my former trade), sailing and cooking get a look in occasionally, I don't know how.
I'm excited about Wiki in general and the Wikipedia in particular. I suspect that Wiki is the fourth killer app for the internet, with usenet, email and WWW being the first three. No, I didn't forget ftp. We'll see. I notice a lot of techies (not all) hate Wiki, and I think there are reasons for this, but the more customer focussed of us love it.
My fields of expertise include mathematics, audit methodology, management controls, philosophy especially metalogic, electronics in particular for music and stage lighting, drums especially their use in contemporary church worship, nuclear power, computing especially configuration management, and I'm an unqualified but enthusiastic occasional contributor to the theology of the Uniting Church in Australia. My unqualified favourite breed of dog is the basset hound but I never yet met a dog I couldn't get along with given time (bitten twice so far, by two dogs with the same owner, who perhaps should be shot but the dogs were fine).
Things I've already worked on include cymbal making and alloys, crocodiles, instrument amplifiers, breeds of dog and particularly golden retrievers, various articles related to nuclear power and drums, the galvanic cell, and chronology. I've taken articles such as Michael Somare, clamp meter and several in the field of electrical connectors from a broken link or less to a reasonably useful article.
I've done major refactors of the controversial persuasion technology and Kinsey report articles which seem to have been well received by both sides, and continue to ponder long over how to help with things like Mother Teresa but no answers yet.
Things I'm hoping to contribute someday include global and linear reasoning. I'm also a working on completing the articles on characters in the Bible, using several references. I have an original copy of a 19th century musical dictionary which offers lots of promise for new articles and some great out-of-copyright woodcuts, and an early 20th century popular science reference which will provide some GPL-able portraits of scientists.
I have been a keen photographer in years past and have recently bought my first digital camera, which is proving a whole new challenge. Some of my first few photographic contributions are of very dubious quality and will hopefully be replaced in time (by me or others), but they are properly GPLed and IMO better than nothing. As my expertise grows I intend to keep a watch on the requested pictures page.
I'm very interested in Wikipedia 1.0. I've put up a proposal regarding a refereeing process for Wikipedia which could be part of this, and the response has been completely underwhelming. In support of that I prepared an annotated copy of the Wikipedia approval mechanism page, which may get some more work someday, and/or may eventually be refactored back into the original page and deleted, or just deleted.
I've also put up a proposal for a disclaimer about probably not famous people. Again, little interest, and the page has now become a redirect. Now archived at user:andrewa/probably not famous people.
More recently, I've written a subpage on Wikipedia values which has also attracted no interest, and a 9/11 victims policy which seems to be helping a little.
Most recently and more radically, I've had a go at whats In whats Out, and a reply to people who post anti-thread mode warnings, and minimum waste of time
Mainly, I just browse, learning, adding links and correcting typos, and putting comments in talk pages about things I can see need fixing but don't have the expertise to fix myself. My immediate objective is to spend less unproductive time joining overlarge teams working on impossible problems, and more time on new articles in fields in which I'm capable of getting them to a fairly useful state unassisted. Hey, this is my user page, it's where POVs such as this paragraph belong!