User:Male1979

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Welcome
I became a contributor on February 1, 2005 after finding repeatedly very useful information there when I was searching some topic. Finding the misspelled name of Anne Treisman, I registered (see below about my user name), and pressed the edit-button. My first non-minor series of edits came about when stumbling over the Adolf Hitler article, which was in a terrible condition. Being unexperienced and bold enough, I thought I would go and save it... I think I helped improving the article considerately and at the same time I learned a lot about wikipedia and other wikipedians. I since have prefered to stay away from controversial topics – well, that is except for Neural Networks and Nuclear power phase-out ;). After my article about Scholarpedia was deleted during a short absence I am very hesitant to start new articles.

I enjoy very much the broad spectrum of ideas and the global perspective that can be found in en.wikipedia. I like meeting different people and to try to figure out how they understand the world.

Contributions
Usually I start reading somewhere and edit when I find something incorrect or inaccurate or have something to add to the article. Most of my edits consequently constitute minor edits or just expansions of articles. Topics are widespread but currently focus around artificial intelligence and free software. I have made many edits to wikipedia.

My favorites among the articles I contributed to (or which I created) include: (earliest first, recent last)

Ukiyo-e | Irony of Fate | Cognitive architecture | Biological neural networks| Japonism | Unified Theory of Cognition | Yamato-e | Brain implant | Sensory substitution | Nuclear power phase-out | Les Nabis

Here is a list of the articles I started. Sometimes I've only created a stub, sometimes it became more.

Other articles to which I contributed considerably large parts:

Attempt at a Declaration of Bias
My user name Male1979 was chosen by accident when trying to register on a very slow server connection via a badly configured proxy. I was timed-out again and again and subsequently found each name already in use (probably by myself when trying before). So, I came to trying names that I would have never be thought of under normal conditions. I didn't like the name at all at first, however at a second glance it is not that bad at all. As for my biases, my user name expresses clearly two essential ones: I am male and born 1979. Of course, first of all I am human. Therefore I am also a vertebrate, tetrapod, primate, ape, and hominid. Born in Germany into a protestant-lutheran family, nurtered with a mix of enlightened philosophy, I later became an atheist for moral reasons, only to become agnostic then existentialist, finally a romantic pragmatist, though I prefer calling myself skeptical instrumentalist. I am a shy extrovert with a disposition towards generalizations. Politically, many of my opinions can be categorized as being European, liberal, and having a strong sense of ethics. Please take these considerations into account in order to eliminate any possible bias I might have introduced.

Political and psychological attitudes
On the political compass I am Economic Left/Right: -8.00 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.97 ... but I am not sure as to what that means. You also have to take into account that it was an American test.

I also took a very strange personality test. See

About wikipedia

 * WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub types - to know what stub to put
 * Template messages
 * mozilla keywords for wikipedia - to be faster in posting and editing (just don't forget them)
 * how to get the (talk) thing next to your signature and help other people save time
 * Public domain resources
 * 2004_Encyclopedia_topics
 * Five pillars
 * User:Angr/Reasons to leave. I strongly support points 2 and 8. I also would like to agree to point 3, but I feel it is too ambitious.
 * de:Benutzer:Southpark/Playing Wikipedia Wikipedia as a MMOG. (German)
 * Erik Möller's comparison of block frequency

Toolbox
I think it is very important to source articles with references. Thus, useful tags are and.

Toolbox adapted from User:FireFox found at User:Tawker. See also Tools

Some popular articles

 * The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll
 * AFI 100 Years series
 * Hitler Has Only Got One Ball
 * Infinite monkey theorem
 * erototoxin
 * cow tipping
 * Inherently funny word
 * Heavy Metal Umlaut
 * Exploding Whale

Licensing
 Wiki user pages: English Wikipedia &mdash; German Wikipedia &mdash; French Wikipedia &mdash; Bulgarian Wikipedia &mdash; Russian Wikipedia &mdash; Japanese Wikipedia &mdash; Spanish Wikipedia &mdash; Italian Wikipedia &mdash; Wiktionary &mdash; Wikimedia Commons &mdash; Wikinews &mdash; Meta &mdash; Wikibooks