User:Imran

I'm Imran and this is my user page :)

Note: I am (as of Sept 04) curently inactive on Wikipedia

I'm currently a sysop on en. I was also election coordinator (along with Danny) for the Wikimedia board of trustee elections.

I can be reached at imran@bits.bris.ac.uk or via my Blog, I'm normally also around on #wikipedia.

For my image page see User:Imran/photos.

Apart from Wikipedia I can also often be found working on other open source content project, including the other Wikimedia projects, Distributed Proofreaders & Project Gutenberg.

My academic interests include:


 * Computer Science - especially Cryptography and AI.
 * Maths - Mainly Number Theory and Group Theory.

Other interests:


 * Lexicography - especially "first uses" & etymology.
 * Game History - Mainly that of Board Games and of English card games.

I'm not a professional, but when it comes to these two areas I'm probably the closest you're going to find on Wikipedia so feel free to ask me questions relating to these areas.

I am especially interested in the overlap between these areas. I've recently finished a project investigating the application of reinforcement learning (particularlly the temporal difference algorithm td-lambda) to train neural networks to play board games. An initial paper can be found here. -

How I came to join Wikipedia
I've been a Wikipedian on and off for a long time, but only became a logged on contributor in July 2002. I became interested in the idea of a open source encyclopedia in 2000 after reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation which led me to discover the pre-copyleft Nupedia, when the FSF launched their (quickly defunct) gnupedia project I became involved in that. It was through that project I started having email discussions with Jimbo about why I though Nupedia wasn't going to work. During those discussions he mentioned wikipedia,


 * Notice that Nupedia just started up a companion/subset project called 'wikipedia.com' which has *no* controls on article acceptance. It's an interesting experiment. -statement by Jimbo on 20 Jan 2001.

At the time I disagreed with Jimbo about Wikipedia and argued that it went to far the other way, although obviously I was wrong :-)

I made some contributions to the early wikipedia but was put-off by the wiki software in use, I came back occasionaly throughout the year, but never stayed for long.

However by 2002 Wikipedia had got to the stage where I thought Wikipedia had managed to build the dynamics of a successfull open source project, so I decided to make a login and finally join the community.

- Hullo. Welcome to the wikipedia -- Tarquin, Tuesday, July 9, 2002

YAY for someone re-organising the Discworld stuff! will come and poke around once you're done. --AW

I'm attracted by you. Smile 13:19, 8 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Hi. :) Yeah, when I've finished uploading, I'll be going back over my images and sorting them out.  Cheers, fabiform | talk 00:16, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC).


 * Update... all done now. :)  fabiform | talk 17:23, 3 Mar 2004 (UTC)

-

Imran, The Rowlett article is excellent. Thank you. It's the sort of thing I'm not in a position to do, so I'm grateful. ww 18:45, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * Actually I can't claim credit for the Rowlett article, it's mainly a derivative of a public domain biography produced by the NSA. --Imran 18:52, 17 Mar 2004 (UTC)

-

whats a nimrud?
 * It's a city in Iraq, so says here... Nimrud. -- user:zanimum

As asked by Danny, I confirm my candidacy for the Wikimedia Board. Arno Lagrange &#9993; 05:51, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

Hi Imran. I used your photo of a Bristol Sycamore in the article about the Bristol Sycamore... Sam jervis 16:36, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)