User:Paradoxsociety

Me
Hi there, I'm Mike. I'm a Wikipedia editor from the United States. I have been editing Wikipedia since at least June 2005, and on this account since 2006 with waves of activity and inactivity over the years, but (as of June 2020) I am currently very interested in trying to be more consistently active given where I'm currently at in life. I have always been deeply passionate about the mission of Wikipedia, and even during my years of relative inactivity here, I have always tried to at least make one-off edits whenever I happen to notice something incorrect, or when there's a typo, obvious vandalism, or incorrect grammar. Many of my edits have been small. I try to do bigger copyedits when I can.

I am also an amateur photographer and have contributed some original photographic work to Wikimedia Commons for inclusion on Wikipedia pages, and plan to do more of this in the future. I am active on several WikiProjects and patrols, and I keep track of my ideas and planned contributions on my projects page. At the moment I am focusing my time and energy on New Pages Patrol and WikiProject Notability.

In real life, I have been a software engineer, business analyst, trader, and entrepreneur. I am very much a fan of automation and would be happy to help develop tools to make Wikipedians' jobs easier. Feel free to message me on my talk page if your project could use a hand. I have dabbled with running my own MediaWiki software installations for a few different use cases and it has been interesting to see how the software works from the technical / devops side of things.

If you're reading this, thank you for stopping by! If you have any feedback for me for any reason, please drop me a line on my talk page. I would love to have a mentor who is an existing administrator if you happen to be one. I love to learn and I want to be of service to the community.

10 topics I think you should know about
Above all else, I'm here to learn, and I hope you are too. This is a short collection of some of the most interesting and important topics that I think everyone should be aware of on some level. Feel free to share your own suggestions on my talk page!


 * 1% rule - the deeper you get into contributing to Wikipedia projects, the more relevant this becomes.
 * Gender bias on Wikipedia
 * Law of large numbers
 * Long COVID
 * Vaccine-naive
 * Herd immunity
 * Viral load
 * "No Way to Prevent This", Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
 * Wikipedia:Content Assessment
 * New pages patrol

Hobbies

 * I enjoy editing Wikipedia, just like you!
 * I've run the Chicago Marathon
 * I've climbed the 103-story staircase at the Willis Tower
 * I've gone skiing at Vail - the summit has one of the most incredible views I've ever seen
 * I've been programming since I was eight years old. Shout out to my fellow native QBASIC coders!
 * Sports I enjoy doing: Ten-pin bowling, Fishing, Skiing
 * Sports I enjoy watching: American football
 * Musical instruments: piano, synthesizer, guitar
 * Do-it-yourself investing
 * Spending time with my friends
 * Exploration, Cultural tourism
 * Degree Confluence Project
 * Sleep

Notable people I've met

 * Mike Singletary, former Chicago Bears linebacker - 2002 or 2003
 * Robert J. Gordon, economist - January 7, 2008
 * Greg Hastings, professional paintball player - July 26, 2008
 * ZP Theart, former Dragonforce singer - September 20, 2006
 * Herman Li, Dragonforce guitarist - September 20, 2006
 * Sam Totman, Dragonforce guitarist - September 20, 2006
 * Frédéric Leclercq, Dragonforce bassist - September 20, 2006
 * Vadim Pruzhanov, Dragonforce keyboardist - September 20, 2006
 * Dave Mackintosh, former Dragonforce drummer - September 20, 2006
 * Toby Mao, renowned Rubik's Cube solver - September 28, 2008
 * Rick Santelli, CNBC analyst / editor - September 7, 2007
 * Pierre-Cédric Labrie, professional hockey player - September 18, 2014
 * Chris Gronet, founder of Solyndra - 2014
 * Björn Gelotte, In Flames lead guitarist - May 21, 2015 - I managed to give him a fistbump mid-show between songs due to an incredibly awkwardly configured staircase at a smallish concert venue with minimal security

Countries I've visited

 * Canada - Northwestern Ontario has some of the most beautiful forestry and wilderness I've ever seen.
 * Denmark - big fan of the S-tog and smørrebrød, oh and the driverless Copenhagen Metro trains. Impressive!
 * Sweden - where I almost learned the hard way that you still need to carry your passport for Schengen area border crossings.