User:Moink

I'm a Canadian studying aerospace engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I'm working on a PhD in the field of multidisciplinary design optimization applied to aircraft design. I lived for the first 18 years of my life in Burnaby, British Columbia, the next seven years in Toronto, and I've lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts for the last 18+ months.

I am a Wikipedia administrator. Please use my talk page to discuss any administrative issues.

How I discovered Wikipedia

I'd like to tell you my story of how I became a Wikipedian.

I had a professor (I will not name him, to protect his reputation, though he really is quite good at what he does) of linear programming. As an illustration of semi-definite programming he used a structural design problem in which the goal was to avoid structural resonance. It was really just a toy problem but as a way of motivating it, he mentioned the first Tacoma Narrows bridge, which, as he put it, collapsed due to one of the resonant frequencies of the bridge being the too close to the "gusting frequency" of the wind.

This is a common but fairly ridiculous concept. The wind doesn't normally have a regular periodic character. The bridge didn't collapse because of the poor planning of its structural resonance frequencies. The disaster was much more complex than that, and was due to aeroelastic effects: that is, strong coupling between the aerodynamics and the structural mechanics of the bridge.

Also, he couldn't remember where Tacoma is. He thought perhaps it was in Japan or Korea.

After class, I approached the professor and told him I thought that he was mistaken about the nature of the bridge collapse. He was very good about it, and asked me to make a presentation to the class on the topic later that week.

Oops. Well, I may have known enough about the topic to correct the professor, but not enough to actually make a presentation. Thus, the research began. As usual, I turned to Google. I found a mix of sources, some accurate, some not. The Wikipedia article on the topic at the time (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge&oldid=1891706) was in the innacurate category. I was highly annoyed at all the misinformation out there and this article simply added to my annoyance. But then I saw the edit this page link and was highly intrigued to say the least. I was impressed that I was given the opportunity to correct the misinformation out there. I didn't edit it right then, instead waiting until I had completed my research on the topic and coming back to fix it later.

Intrigued by the Wikipedia concept, and suspecting that it would just be a place for POV arguments, I checked out the article on what I knew to be a topic that, on the Internet at least, is often contentious in a silly way: Lift (force). Too shy to jump in and edit the article right away, I made my first Wikipedia edit (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Lift_%28force%29&diff=1854480&oldid=1854114) on the talk page of that article, pointing out that the debate was moot. GRAHAMUK gave a very polite and reasoned response (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Lift_%28force%29&diff=1854933&oldid=1854480). I think that's what hooked me.

His response was perfect. He was obviously someone with an opinion on what the article should say, i.e., who I would have thought of as a "combatant" but he gave such a great, respectful, curious, open-minded response that I thought this place must be the coolest place ever. I shortly thereafter registered, and made changes to both the Tacoma bridge article and the Lift article, none of which were reverted. It felt great.

Not long thereafter, I wrote a pretty detailed Cessna Citation X article. Instead of criticizing me for not knowing wiki markup etc., people just fixed it. It was amazing.

Anyway, my story is not that exciting, but I've wanted to tell it for some time. I think it helps illustrate why I'm such a big fan of wikiquette and being kind to new editors and anonymous contributors.