User:Tomruen

Me

Hi, I'm 36 years old and I live near Minneapolis, Minnesota. I do computer programming, mostly in Java, for a living. I have a B.S. in Computer Science and Mathematics, and a fun minor in Physics (astronomy), 1991, from the U of MN.

I'm a Information Junkie in some ways, always collecting little and big ideas that amaze me. I had my own website for a while on a free site, but it got knocked down and I've not found a new home.

Wide-angle map to my home - Just for fun

My work here

I just came on here April 28, 2004 and first tried an edit. It is an addicting idea to try to add to something much bigger than I could ever do. There are many good websites out there, and it seems silly to duplicate too much here. It it hard for me to treat this encyclopedia as an isolated complete resource when it can give brief introductions and link to something much better.

Topics of my interest include Math, science, astronomy, history, genealogy and election methods have been my strongest interests, and I'm sure they will dominate any pages I add or edit.

Good technical writing is a difficult art. I tend to write-up things for my own reference as I learn, but having a public place will encourage me to work on user-friendly writing that others may value as well.

Adding pictures/diagrams is actually very important to me. Pictures can't improve bad writing, but they can help demonstrate simple details quickly, and help motive people to look into a subject.

I've got a nice digital camera. I also can design simple diagrams in MSPaint. I also wrote a slick astronomy program written in Borland Delphi (Windows Pascal) which reproduces astronomy views from any place and time in the solar system.

I've added a number of pages already, and some pictures/diagrams to help some. Sometimes I think it may be good to get something fair in here, and improvements can be added later by myself and others.

There are already so many good pages on subjects of interest to me! I'm very impressed!

Pages I've edited

• Astronomy/optics
  • Created
    • Atmospheric Diffraction
    • Mars photos
    • Saros 131
    • list_of_important_stars
  • Modified
    • Lunar eclipse - add diagrams/photos
    • Mirage - Add photos
    • Libration - Add photos
• Calendars
  • Modified
    • Gregorian calendar - Add graph
    • Iranian calendar - Add graph
• Elections methods/history
  • Created
    • IRV_-_Sample_election_-_favorite_season
    • Minnesota Governor election 1998
    • Plurality Condorcet method
  • Modified
    • Cumulative voting - Add ballot diagrams
    • Instant-runoff voting - Add tie-breaking rules
    • Preferential_voting - Add ballot diagrams
• Words
  • Created
    • List of Homographs
    • Long List of homophones

User:tomruen subpage

• My to-do list

Contact:

• tomruen_@_yahoo_._com
• (underscores added for protection against web spiders)

Comments

According to the dictionary:

• Encyclopedia: a work that contains information on all branches of knowledge or treats comprehensively a particular branch of knowledge usually in articles arranged alphabetically often by subject.

It is hard for me to separate what is "knowledge" and what is, well, opinion. And terminology gets complicated - who defines the terms? Who qualifies the experts on a subject, and when "experts" disagree, which version do you give? I understand when you write an article, it should be neutral voice, objective, offering the spectrum of views on a subject without clearly advocating for a specific view. It is a little funny that an article can quote a critic, but can't be a critic himself.

Science, Mathematics, and observations on natural systems are pretty good objective topics, but History or Culture are get rather murky in interpretations or focus.

It would also be interesting if I quoted or wrote about a living person of fame, and then she found the page and edited it herself! It would be pretty horrible to be written about in the world of fame, money and personality over simple respect for good work published.

Oh, lastly, I wonder about the nature of "author" in a work. I sort of like the idea of a name associated with a writing. It is an issue of "Quality Assurance" of a respected author.

I imagine it might be implemented by a QA checkbox by authors, sort of like "cosponsors" in political bills. If I write an article, I initial it as QA on my limited authority. Another person might add his QA to my article, even if he didn't change it. If a page is changed, a QA state is moved into a past-QA state that needs to be renewed after each QA person reviews it again.

Well, I'm not sure what's next, but perhaps there could be a "Serious" Wikipedia that requires a minimum of 5 QA points before it would register. When a page is changed, an old page would stay in the "Serious" version until the new version gets enough QA points.

Perhaps nonsense AND annoying, but it does match how we do software at my company. We have "Release" versions of our codes posted on the internet for download, and "Latest" versions which are internally tested/reviewed before giving public access. Still some clients, who want bug fixes, or new features may get a "prerelease" version that is User-at-your-own-risk.

Perhaps something like that will develop here someday.