User:Milkmandan

Again, I'm on a Wikivaction. Email is probably the only form of contact at the moment. --Milkmandan 00:42, 2005 Apr 22 (UTC)

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I'm an undergraduate Electrical Engineering/Computer Science student (minoring in Math and Optics) at New Mexico Tech in Socorro, NM, USA. I'm originally from San Jose, CA but spent most of my formative years in Los Alamos, NM. I've been here at NMT since 1999 and finally expect to graduate in May of 2005. I'll be graduating with two full Bachelor of Science degrees (one each in EE and CS) and will have taken 217 course hours when I get done—130 are required to graduate with a four-year degree, and most students graduate from here with around 140. Besides my science subjects, I've taken a good deal of German, Japanese, French, and Arabic (and, while I'm on the topic of languages, I guess I'll mention that I studied some Latin in high school). I've got plans to start my PhD work at a major university by the end of 2005.

Since I've started at NMT, I've gotten a SCUBA certification, amateur radio license, and have accumulated 32 flight hours toward my private pilot's license. I used to be a fairly active autocrosser, but sold my autocross car (my Talon, below) a few years ago and haven't had a chance to race my Scirocco very often.

I've got about a dozen academic publications to my credit and have written an in-house course textbook for a 300-level microcontrollers course (NMT EE308). Although it may not seem like it from my Wikipedia edits, my English is really quite good. I swear.

I'm a member of several projects:

• Automobiles WikiProject (joined August 16 2004)
• Aircraft WikiProject (joined December 28 2004)

Editing philosophy

I've learned a few things in the not-too-many years that I've been writing and editing. Some of the most important of these are listed below.

1. Nothing is too good that it can't be replaced. When I'm editing an article, I make it a point to scrutinize everything I'm reading. I write articles expecting that someone else will go through them and change things that I thought worked just fine.
2. As sort of a corollary, I like to think that even if something is replaced, its spirit lives on in the next incarnation of text. I don't worry much about doing serious rewording because I know that the original authors work has seriously influenced how the next version is written. Accordingly, I don't mind when my thoughts are heavily reworked.
3. As another corollary, my one hangup is thought deletion. With the exception of redundant information, I believe that everything has a place somewhere in the Wikipedia. Moving pages to obscure subpages doesn't bother me as long as they're still available.
4. A halfassed first shot is much better than the perfect article that gets written one line a year. Giving an audience a whole ton of information to digest and improve upon works much better than asking them to come up with something original.
5. Shorter is better.
   1. I almost always forget to apply the previous rule.
      1. See what I mean?
6. There is no such thing as too much information. Although this and the previous point seem to contradict one another, they actually address subtlely different details.
7. Articles that need more details as well as a serious reorganization will benefit most by reorganization first.
8. People are religious about things that you aren't. Always tread lightly.

Generally, my edits fall into one of two categories:

1. Content-free edits, which focus primarily on spelling/grammar and Wikification, and
2. Whole-page rewrites.

Rarely do I add just a sentence or two to the text. Of course, this is just personal style.

Significant contributions

Template:Commons Although I've made somewhat serious changes to many smaller pages (and countless minor edits), I'm not sure that listing them here is worth much. In contrast I've made significant changes (i.e., more than two or three paragraphs) to a few select pages:

• Prague Orloj (My first serious reorganization—this page was nearly unreadable when I found it)
• Diamond Star Motors (Done to support the Eclipse page, below)
• Mitsubishi Eclipse (Still needs some work, I'm afraid)
• Toyota Camry (I think this one turned out great)
• Toyota 4Runner (Wrote it from scratch, and could use more attention)
• Zeiss (Reworked from very broken English)
• Subaru XT (Started from scratch)
• Tsar tank (Wikified some slightly mangled but horribly disorganized text)
• BMW Z1 (Started from scratch)
• De Lorean DMC-12 (Started from scratch)
• PRV engine (Serious upgrades from an acceptable—but not great—page)
• Spoiler (automotive) (Started from stratch based on an entry at the requested articles page)
• Manual transmission (Was poorly organized and filled with misinformation, so I essentially rewrote it)
• Toyota Century (Translated from the Japanese article)
• template:Subaru and template:Mercedes-Benz vehicles (Started from scratch and reworked, respectively)

I have edited some of the above pages because I accidentally ran across them and found them to be unreadable. The Prague Orloj fixes were really my first major edits, and took place because I was interested in the clock and found that the page had a lot of important details mired in indecipherable English. The Mitsubishi Eclipse and Toyota Camry pages were both reworked because I was fairly disappointed at how much information was available and I happened to know a good deal about each of the topics. The Zeiss and Tsar tank pages were found through the Special:Randompage link, and I figured I could probably do something useful with them.

Posted images

My cars
Missing image 1985_toyota_4runner_sr5.jpg My (now my uncle's) 1985 Toyota 4Runner SR5, seen here near Los Alamos, New Mexico	Missing image 1998_toyota_camry_le.jpg My 1998 Toyota Camry (now severely hail-damaged) at New Mexico Tech	Missing image 1986_volkswagen_scirocco_8v.jpg My 1986 Volkswagen Scirocco at my house in Socorro, New Mexico
Other posted images
Missing image Porsche_cayenne_s.jpg A Porsche Cayenne S in Albuquerque, New Mexico	Missing image Cadillac_escalade.jpg A Cadillac Escalade in front of the Wal-Mart in Los Lunas, New Mexico	Missing image Boeing_737_cockpit.jpg The cockpit of a Boeing 737 on display at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Washington

To do

On my to-do list is to fill out the pages for any cars I've ever owned. This includes:

• 1986 Volkswagen Scirocco 8v
• 1998 Toyota Camry LE (done)
• 1970 VW Beetle (looks good, could use some work)
• 1984 Volvo 240 DL (already looks quite good—will nevertheless take a stab at it)
• 1985 Toyota 4Runner SR5 (mostly done)
• 1991 Eagle Talon TSi AWD (mostly done—see Eclipse above)
• 1985 Subaru XT GL-10 Turbo (really moving along nicely)
• 1985 Subaru 1800 GL
• 1972 Dodge Dart

More to-do:

• R1
• Toyota Highlander
• Talk:Honda Type-R (UK)

Toolbox de:Benutzer:Milkmandan fr:Utilisateur:Milkmandan ja:利用者:ミルクマン_ダン