EpochFail

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You see, one thing is, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.

I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here and what the question might mean.

I might think about it a little bit and if I can't figure it out, then I go on to something else, but I don't have to know an answer, I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it is really in so far as I can tell.

It doesn't frighten me.

Richard Feynman

This user is an administrator and OAuth administrator on Meta-Wiki. (verify)

The majority of my work involves the development and maintenance of wiki tools. I used to work as a research scientist at the Wikimedia Foundation (as User:Halfak (WMF)) from 2011 - 2020. All of my wiki-research, whether staff or volunteer, ends up in the m:Research:Index. I also like to Wikipedia articles relating to computer science, mycology, psychology and philosophy.

Other accounts

I own and use User:PermaNoob, User:GLTester and User:Wiki labeler for testing user scripts. I only use those accounts to perform test edits or to test new interface modifications. Edits I performed as a WMF staff member mostly occur through User:Halfak (WMF). All of my work on the wiki comes from this account.

My essays

• Don't bite the researchers
• What are these researchers doing in my Wikipedia?

Tools I've developed

• ORES is a AI prediction as a service. It hosts machine learning models for predicting vandalism, article quality, etc.
• Wiki labels is a generalized, crowdsourced labeling system for Wikipedia. (see also en:WP:Labels)
• Snuggle supports wiki-mentors by allowing them to find desirable newcomers that need mentorship.
• Mr. Clean allows readers to insert cleanup templates in articles.
• Wikignome allows edits to individual sentences while viewing an article.
• NICE is an experimental interface that asks reverting editors to be nice to newbies.
• HAPPI add highlighting to edit pane to visually present information about who last editing wiki-markup and how long ago.
• NOOB adds a visualization of editor experience to talk pages and the revision history page.
• APS Review is a review system for APS:WI to allow members to more easily submit reviews of the articles that they read.

Wikimedia talks I've given

ORES

• Using AI to Keep Wikipedia Open
• The Keilana Effect: Visualizing the closing of coverage gaps with ORES
• The Revision Scoring Service: Exposing quality to wiki tools
• The People's Classifier: Towards an open model for algorithmic infrastructure
• Case studies in the appropriation of ORES
• Deploying and maintaining AI in a sociotechnical system: Lessons learned

Barnstars

	The Brilliant Idea Barnstar
	The Snuggle tool looks like a great concept. Thanks for working on this! Pine✉ 08:55, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Trout

Personal account of a staff member disclaimer

I used to work for or provide services to the Wikimedia Foundation. This is my personal account. Edits, statements, or other contributions made from this account are my own, and may not reflect the views of the Foundation.

Committed identity

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