User:Melissa Newman

I have a BS in Computer Science from Rochester Institute of Technology CS Concentration: Software Engineering LA Concentration: History Non-CS Concentration: Biology/Medical Science

I worked as a Software Engineer for about 8 years specializing in writing software code to handle data conversion, data processing, and data organization of large amounts of data. I worked mostly for Pharmaceutical companies or companies that supported the Pharmaceutical industry. I am also experienced in writing unit test plans and software specifications.

I left the industry to be home full time for my children. I am also homeschooling two of my children.

My interest in wanting to be a part of Citizendium is to help establish the foundation of the classification of the articles to work in conjunction with 3rd party filtering products. I personally feel that a project like Citizendium should focus on what it does best, the data, and let the 3rd party products (eg. CYBERsitter and NetNanny) do what they do best, filter the data. But when both sides are speaking the same language, it will make everybody's job a lot easier. Even if Citizendium wants to implement its own internal filtering product will not change the fact that the articles need to be properly classified in order for the filtering product to work as they should.

I am also interested in making sure that the information in the articles related to topics that would interest younger readers can meet the needs of homeschooling parents and teachers. For example, an article on the color Red. A painter will want to know what paints mix with red to produce what colors. A Web designer would want to know what RGB combination will produce what colors. But a teacher of a preschooler will just want 10 pictures of everyday objects that are mostly red to help a preschooler learn what is red.

Melissa Newman