User:SLi

What I do in Wikipedia and elsewhere
I tend to copyedit Wikipedia, occasionally systematically, often just fixing the flaws I find. Sometimes tedious things, like fixing "Euro" -> "euro" (as in currency name). There really should be a better way to do it than a dozen clicks for every article to fix.

When copyediting systematically I tend to focus on issues that are easy to find using search. One example of that is the Islamic custom of using PBUH (Peace be upon him) after prophet Muhammad's (or using Wikipedia guidelines: Muhammad's) name. At the same time I try to fix the articles according to WP:MOSISLAM. I've also been considering downloading the latest database snapshot and grepping stuff in need of copyediting from it. Stuff like no space between number and unit are very hard to search using the Wikipedia search facility, but with the database dump it wouldn't be a big feat. So far I haven't got so far, though.

I think the wikipedians interested in Islam have made a truly excellent style guide in MOSISLAM. I'd like similar (eg. neutrality) guidelines for Christianity-related articles, which is an area I'm more familiar with. However I have mostly refrained from editing Christianity-related articles because I'm a believer myself and I don't want my feelings to interfere too much (although I believe I can be fairly neutral if I try). While Christianity is the most important issue of my life, I don't believe Wikipedia is the place for that discussion (but I feel it's fair to disclose that, especially when I edit religion-related articles).

I also occasionally edit computer science related articles, especially on theoretical computer science. That happens mostly when I read those articles and find them lacking. Theoretical computer science is my area of academic expertise.

Open source (or free software, it really is the same thing) projects are more of my hobby than Wikipedia. I identify more with the "free software movement" and find myself using more often GPL than some more permissive license for code where I get to choose the license, but I couldn't care less of whether you call it open source or free software. I am also somewhat interested in and famialiar with law issues, especially wrt software and open source (copyright, trademark and patent issues), both in Finnish/EU and US law. I care about freedom of speech and civil liberties, and the US 1st Amendment is the one thing (and also pretty much the only) in US law that I envy. WRT civil liberties I can't say I like the direction EU is going into, but there are things like privacy that are better here than in the US (except in recent police states like the UK; OTOH I cannot understand the American obsession with things like opposing ID cards as "fascism").

English is only my second language, so I make the occasional mistake. I also sometimes contribute to the Finnish wikipedia.