User:Merrilee/sandbox/Max Klein

Maximilian A. Klein
Max in an actual library with a giant book -- what's with all the paper?
Alma mater	UC Berkeley
Years active	2012-2014
Organization(s)	Wikimedia, OCLC
Known for	Wikistuff
Opponent	Dogs

Maximilian Klein (born September 1989), known also by his Twitter handle @notconfusing, is a Wikimedian and mathematician. Between 2012 and 2014, Klein served as OCLC's Wikipedian in Residence. Born in London, Klein moved to Santa Rosa, California as a young teenager after doing time on a kibbutz in Israel. Despite his extended tenure in the US, he will feign ignorance about American holidays such as the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, and Thanksgiving.

Klein is considered by some to be the inventor of the Klein bottle and has found ways of using what is supposed to be a mathematical example of a non-orientable surface to hold significant volumes of artisanal tea.

Inspired by this concept of a surface without boundaries, Klein produced a visualization of the multiple ways in which Genre labels are used across languages in Wikipedia InfoBoxes. The visualization grew so detailed and extensive that it was thought to be the cause of the World-wide Pixel Shortage of 2013.

Klein was a finalist in the MapReduce X-Prize competition in 2014, having written a Python script for implementing the FRBR algorithm that was short enough to be printed on a handy wallet-sized card. He was edged out by the Tennant Solution, a program written, for some reason, in Perl, that was able to use all of the compute nodes in an Hadoop cluster for over an hour, while only producing as output the number "42" (also known as a “Bib Stat”).

Klein is a rabid proselytizer for keyboard shortcuts, especially those for cutting and pasting.

Keyboard shortcuts give Klein "sense of balance"

Klein is also known for his amazing ability to live out of a backpack and surf sofas for months at a time. Who else would move out of their house because they we going to Wikimania?

Esoteric jewelry

In 2013, Klein became interested in 3D printing while working at his hacker space, Sudo Room. Max quickly prototyped an earring that doubles as a Presta to Schrader converter, reasoning that if he wore this item, he would never again be stranded with the wrong type of bike pump. For unknown reasons, Max switched to sporting paper clips and other office supplies. We aren't sure if he is smuggling office supplies out at a very slow rate, or if being trapped without paper fasteners is a real concern.

One observer noted that Max’s taste in ear hardware harkens to Bajorans on Star Trek.

Bajoran jewelry or future Max earring?

Cubicle life

Close observers of Max in his natural cubicle habitat have noted seven defining characteristics of the species.

First, his working environment shows a complete lack of paper or paper-like materials.

Second, he will drink only filtered water, and that only from a large, crackly oblong plastic container that looks suspiciously like an IV bag.

Third, whether by design, a tendency toward hoarding, or simply delusions of grandeur, the number of screens and monitors that he requires for his work has steadily proliferated until he now possesses way more in the way of visual output devices than all the rest of the Research staff, combined. (And, as the number of screens crowding his desk top grows, he’s taken to laughing convulsively under his breath like the Renfield character in the Dracula movies.)

Fourth, each day – nay, sometimes each hour -- brings with it another new and novel approach to sitting in his freaking adjustable chair. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1: freaking adjustable chair

Fifth, he relates to technology in an organic, hands-on, one-with-the-machinery sort of approach, which often involves rolling on the carpet with it and recreating positions from the Kama Sutra. (See Figure 2.)

Figure 2: Interacting with technology. A hands on approach.

Sixth, the brightness of the color of his socks is the key to his current mood. And you’ll have plenty of opportunity to see those socks, as his shoes rarely stay on his feet long past the lunch hour. Occasionally, the socks also come off. Best not to approach him when he’s sockless; at these times he’s liable to do just about anything.

Seventh, he’s given to making mystical pronouncements in a guttural monotone, especially late in the day. For instance, after five o’clock, if you see him doing contortions in his freaking adjustable chair and ask him if he’s ever going to leave for home, he’s sure to give you a thousand-yard stare and mutter something like “Yes – only I’m waiting for the Oracle bus.” No one’s ever actually seen him leave.

Not Confusing? I think not!

Max tweets under @notconfusing. However, evidence is to the contrary. Some samples:

• even talking about swallowing the frog, is not #swallowingthefrog
• #Wikidata #funnysequences Q190 - God http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q190 Q191 - Estonia http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q191 Q192 David Cameron http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q192
• having just written a function named "uniqueify()" i feel #deepinnnershameformultiplereasons
• @edsu an early version of an #IPythonnotebook for a wiki proj. Then end needs help arranging matplotlibs (awkward)

• Announcement to self just after I woke up today: Save future aggravation by not relearning R and ggplot, just blog.yhathq.com/posts/ggplot-f… #ggpy?

Thanks, Max, for clearing that up! It's definitely notconfusing to us.

Serious contributions to our field

Max is responsible for VIAF and other name authorities surging onto Wikipedias and Wikidata. As an example of impact, from November 7 to Jan 7, 60K people clicked on a link in a Wikipedia page to get to a VIAF page. These inbound links came from 15 different language versions of Wikipedia.

Beyond name authorities, he helped to investigate topics of interest to the Wiki community, like sex properties associated with names (reaffirming confirmation bias in Wikipedias). He has also looked at Dewey classifications and how they might be applied to Wikipedia pages, and in fact how Dewey classifications relate to one another in unexpected ways.

Max, we hope you enjoy all your time away from us!

Max also taught Roy Tennant to edit Wikipedia. He will likely rue the day.

Despite his jam-packed calendar, Klein always found time to meet with colleagues.

Klein has been inspired by his colleagues at OCLC Research. For the most part, he has been inspired not to get old. His colleagues however wish him a long and fulfilling life. And hope that young people ridicule him when he's old.