Cpiral

> sandbox | A | B | C | common.js | /common.css

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Answering technical questions at Help talk:CirrusSearch and at Wikipedia is one way I volunteer.

MediaWiki

For MediaWiki, I presided over CirrusSearch's userland, by virtue of being the main editor of the initial help page and by answering the questions on the discussion page. For many months I documented at Help:CirrusSearch, (now moved to /CirrusSearch). My version of CirrusSearch is now 98% informative, 90% polished. Help:CirrusSearch only 70% informative, 50% polished. My documentation is derived by trial and error experiments, guided by heavy usage on Wikipedia, and by what was missing from the available documentation.

I also interact with the folks phabricator.

Wikipedia

On Wikipedia I seem to be the main developer of help documentation for:

• Search: w:Help:Searching/Draft,
• Search Templates: w:Template:Regex (and w:Template:template usage and w:Template:Search link and w:Template:Linksto)
• Numerous Help pages, w:WP:Page name, w:Help:Linking, etc.
• w:Template:Val documentation

On Wikipedia since 2006, I edit articles, but mostly I edit help pages, and eventually I got into templates. Dozens of help pages and templates on Wikipedia are largely my versions, such as W:Help:Searching and W:wp:pagename.

I'm most interested in Search. I've developed two templates to help teach and practice regexp searches on Wikipedia: (See W:Template:Template usage and W:Template:regex.)

I watch Wikipedia: Wikipedia: Village pump (technical).

Technical background

I have worked with software releases and field testing for Motorola's CDMA networks. I have an electrical engineering degree and my career was a decade in telecom, bringing up Ericsson and Motorola Cellular systems. I've done a lot of software upgrades, for cellular telephone switches, and other network nodes, both in the lab, and in the field all over the world.

Technical

I coddle computers. So

• Languages are a favorite hobby of mine. C and C++ environments are familiar territory.
• Linux. I've installed and configured several Linux systems, and also FreeBSD.
• Text processing. I excel in regex (grep, perl sed, awk), and Vim.
• I prefer the CLI and the keyboard, so my browser and window managers are bound to keys.
• Software development. I've written several medium sized apps in Perl, in Bash, and in Vim. I've done several database applications.

Personal

I've written a mountain technical and an ocean of prose. I spend most of my spare time

• writing in my VimWiki and my paper notebooks
• digesting tech news (http://www.osnews.com, http://www.lwn.net)
• improving Wikipedia
• volunteering at MediaWiki