Wikipedia

Brighterorange

Joined 23 March 2005
Not actually orange.

About

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Hello, I am Tom. I just recently got my Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University and now I am a professional software engineer. I consider myself an expert in type theory, programming languages (esp. Standard ML), and logic (esp. modal logic). I also know a lot about some other things, like indie rock, typography and type design, photography, software audio effects, computational biology, machine learning, Nintendo, and First-Person Shooters.

Please use my talk page to communicate with me about Wikipedia rather than e-mail; I more likely to read your communique if it goes there, and definitely more likely to respond.

My real home page is at tom7.org.

Opinions

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I love Wikipedia and have a number of opinions about how it could be improved.

Wish list

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I found out that if I put a wish list of articles on my user page, sometimes they just appear out of nowhere!

Here are some articles I'd like to extend.

Work on

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Started

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Here are some articles that I started.

Here is a project I started.


Notes

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PeriodBot

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I've written some software in SML for mining Wikipedia off-line. One early application is PeriodBot, which searches for article paragraphs that don't end with punctuation (an incredibly common mistake). We manually apply these changes as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Punctuation. (Since this program doesn't automatically interact with the live wikipedia either to read nor write, it doesn't really qualify as a bot as per WP:B). You can get the source code here if you want.

Useful links for database dumps:

Since then I have been more interested in extending the Wikipedia interface using Javascript (ugh) to automate repetitive editing tasks, particularly as respects my superficial editing interests (punctuation and typography, image formats). These are not quite ready for prime time yet, but please ask if you're interested in beta-testing.

I also frequently run my autopunctuation script on featured article candidates and featured articles. If you're working on an article that you would like to have high quality punctuation (particularly en dashes), just leave a message on my talk page and I will run it on your article. (example)

Images

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I like taking photographs, and I've uploaded some images to Wikipedia, too. I occasionally replace poor pictures with better high-resolution ones; when I do, my policy is to use a license at least as generous as the old one.


As an image quality stickler, I also spend a lot of time tagging and converting images to better formats, especially SVG. Unfortunately SVG thumbnail support is pretty unreliable so some of these don't even show up. Does anybody know if I can do anything to make this situation better?

 
 
 
 
Zone plate Absolute complement Relative complement Premature ventricular contraction
 
 
 
Brahmagupta's formula Bohr model of the atom Tartrate crystals from Louis Pasteur's experiments Example for Carathéodory's theorem

To do

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I say old chap have you seen Brighterorange?

Easily improved

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WP:IS a social networking site

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enThis user is a native speaker of the English language.
λThis user is fluent in Lambda calculus.
 This user is an administrator on the English Wikipedia. (verify)
•This user participates in Project Punctuation.
PThis user is a pescetarian.
 This user is a
cross country runner.
 This user enjoys photography.
 This user hacks happily with Emacs.
 This user is a member of
WikiProject Pittsburgh.
SI-0This user thinks the metric system is bureaucratic and inhuman.
 This user lives in the U.S. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
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