User:Fredrik Johansson

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Revision as of 11:13, 6 April 2007 by imported>Fredrik Johansson (more personal information; also add thoughts on citizendium and wikipedia)
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I'm 21 years old and an undergraduate student in Engineering Physics at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden. I studied Software Engineering for one year before switching over to physics. My main interests are mathematics and computer science (particularly the intersection thereof). I plan to get a master's degree in engineering mathematics/scientific computing after finishing my bachelor-level studies.

I've been programming on a hobby basis for about 7 years, mostly in Python and to a lesser extent in C.

If I have any claim to expertise, it would be about Doom (the computer game) which I've been playing and making maps for during almost 10 years. I wrote most of the Wikipedia article about Doom, which is a featured article (though I'm not happy with its quality now), and started the Doom Wiki.

I've been editing Wikipedia since 2003 and was an administrator there for roughly one year. Citizendium is an interesting alternative to Wikipedia, I think, mainly for the following reasons:

  • Quality control. The Wikipedia featured article review process is based on popular vote in which many participants only consider superficial article qualities. It is not unusual for incoherent articles with glaring factual errors to pass through.
  • Stability. Wikipedia articles gradually rot over time due to vandalism and scope creep. I used to babysit articles I'd worked on, but I've realized that it's a waste of time.
  • Writing style. From CZ:Article Mechanics: "a Citizendium article is an opportunity to show off not your erudition but your ability to make the difficult seem easy". Wikipedia is fantastic as a collection of hyperlinked facts, but often next to useless for actually learning something you don't already know.

I have a fairly good command of the English language, and have a sensitive eye for inconsistencies and formatting errors. I've done a lot of copyediting at Wikipedia. Nevertheless, as a non-native English speaker, I sometimes make grammatical errors or phrase things awkwardly. Please don't hesitate to mercilessly edit anything I write!