User:Sasuke Sarutobi

{| table style="border:#99B3FF solid 1px;" cellpadding=5 General election 2024 declaration of interest: I am a member of the UK Labour party. I am nonetheless dedicated to making an accurate and unbiased encyclopedia for all, and aim to act in line with this.

About me
I am a graduate with a degree in Martial Arts and Strength and Conditioning, working as a software developer specialising in troubleshooting and product support, and with a background in logistical telematics and electrical telemetry. Until a few years ago, my main interest was reviewing and improving "sub-GA-class" articles, especially if there is a batch of articles that I can quickly and easily improve, but I have gradually worked more with templates, especially where they can be integrated with Wikidata to automate population of data fields. The first such template was Infobox U.S. Presidential Document

Reviewing
I believe that it is important for WikiProjects to have even brief reviews of existing articles in order that workload can be prioritised (especially if 'importance' fields are made available). To this end, I will occasionally work through the backlogs of unreviewed articles at WikiProjects such as WPs Languages and Linguistics, but am also given to stumble across WikiProjects randomly and contribute to clearing backlogs wherever I find them. To also contribute to even higher quality articles, I was also being mentored by Khazar2 for Good Articles reviewing until his sudden retirement. I now rarely get involved with Good Article amendments and reviews, but use the experience to help focus lower-quality articles towards GA-class status.

Wikipedia
When it comes to editing Wikipedia, I take a relativist standpoint; I believe that Wikipedia is a dynamic and organic entity, such that actions may not only be ends in themselves, but means to ends as well (like Wittgenstein's ladder). For this reason, I consider acceptable any edit or addition/subtraction of content made with the intention of making Wikipedia of higher quality, broader scope, and improved informativity. I also believe that Wikipedia is not just an self-contained encyclopaedia, but that Sir Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web should be exploited to its utmost to produce a navigable knowledge resource that also acts as a portal to relevant information throughout the World Wide Web. An article does not need to be directly citable to be useful, as it can still lead readers to further specific information on the topic, such as the sources of books and articles.

For this reason, I am a strong advocate of good referencing. For Wikipedia, I tend to prefer in-line numbering over Harvard & APA styles, with hyperlinking allowing information to be made directly navigable rather than requiring cross-referencing.

My writing style
I am a British English user of the serial comma, and justify use of the singular they by analogy to quantum superposition (i.e. given an indeterminate gender, both and neither gender is therefore correct). Likewise, although I do not use the emphatic double negative, and generally avoid the deletive double negative for the sake of unambiguity, I describe both as correct by analogy to the operations of subtraction and multiplication respectively performed on negative numbers. Having studied the German language to an intermediate level (which has now sadly waned), my English grammar is occasionally also influenced by German grammar in terms of syntax (I learned whom through the German wem, and maintain that it is part of a deprecated dative case in English now mostly restricted to pronoun declension, though am becoming more convinced that the English dative case is a form of lative case). I try to avoid use of 'however', as I feel it dilutes juxtaposition by marking it too obviously (and because I consider it a trope from what I believe to be its original synonymy to 'regardless'). But I do not object to opening conjunctions. (I also tend to abuse parenthesis.)

Languages
You may notice that I have more than a passing interest is languages (or at least, regularly passing, like a postman in my mind); I speak halting German, and understand bits of French. I also know a few bits of other languages here and there, but they're far too insignificant to mention.

I have a long-term goal to eventually improve my languages by translating articles (notably in my chosen WikiProjects, especially on things like Polish RAF squadrons). I am open to any suggestions for translations, but my translation in a number of languages is currently greatly facilitated by machine translation tools, so after manual proofing, my writing is at a very basic level.

Me in other languages:
 * 'Mich' auf Deutsch
 * 'Moi' en Français
 * 'Me' a Italiano
 * 'Ja' w Polskim

Martial arts
I don't currently study any styles, but have a background in both Japanese and Chinese martial arts, such as Karate, Bujinkan Budo Taijutsu, Tai Chi, and Wing Chun, as well as having dabbled in kung fu and modern wushu.

Along the lines of martial arts, my user name comes from Sarutobi Sasuke, a ninja from late 19th-century Japanese literature.

Besides martial arts, my interests also extend to theoretical physics, systems dynamics and mathematics, especially quantum physics, biomathematics, and epidemiology. I will however read anything with the slightest piece of jargon and any unusual symbols.


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