Stuff
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Note on languages: I can read Danish, Swedish and Nynorsk pretty fluently (especially nynorsk) - everyone who speaks Norwegian will do, because of how closely the languages are related. But asking me to write Danish and Swedish will be a disaster. In German, which I've studied for years in high school, I get the sense of the text, more or less.
If you want to know more about who I am, check out *blush* Harald Tveit Alvestrand.
Projects
editThese days, I don't do much Wikipedia stuff - I've been working over at Geni.com instead.
But most of my on-Wiki time is spent on Wikipedia:Find-A-Grave famous people - which started as a list of ~46.000 persons that might or might not have a Wikipedia article, now whittled down to ~13.000 names of people who probably don't have one. I regard this as a perfect channel for the "do something else" urge that tends to strike at inopportune moments - you can do a worthwhile effort (like search for a person under different spellings and note the result) in a minute or two while waiting for something to compile, or you can check out fifty while lending an ear to the evening news.
Other projects I've been dabbling in:
- Linking all looose pages starting with T
- Looking at dead people starting with T (see /Find-A-Grave)
- Why not T missing articles?
- Keep an eye on Wikipedia:Dead-end pages/P-T#T
- Wikify pages needing wikification at T
- Merge tags left around for a while starting at T
- Perhaps I should consider the T's in Category:Articles with topics of unclear notability? Check User:Alvestrand/Notability.
- Remove disambiguation pages from Special:Lonelypages
- Grappling with Category:All unreferenced BLPs, which is a
disaster waiting to happensolved problem - see /Unreferenced BLPs
The only excuse for my obsession with that particular letter is my middle name....
I have promised to help with:
Also (things that I note here so that I do not forget):
- Trying to document that Aage Kvalbein satisfies the criteria at Wikipedia:Notability (music)
- Tracking down details on Benjamin Chew Tilghman - see /Tilghman notes
- Wondering who Tom Kerr was, apart from a pen name for a British comics artist
- Checking /RFC authors to see who's on Wikipedia
References
editStuff I look for all the time:
- Wikipedia:Vandalism - what to do if the vandals strike again
- Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion - getting rid of some strange stuff
- WP:WSS/ST - stub hierarchy for marking short articles
- WP:PROD - how to mark an unworthy article for deletion in a week or so
- Category:Fundamental is the top of the category hierarchy
- WP:CSD#Deletion_templates - what to do for really nonsense articles
Contributions
editStuff I've started or significantly edited (kept here because my watchlist is too long):
- Relativity priority dispute
- John Seely Brown
- List of computer size categories
- Bell (wind)
- Howie Weinberg
- Royal C. Taft
- Joanna Lee (actor) - seeing that it had been deleted as non-notable twice, I did some actual work on it.
- Gasconade Bridge train disaster
- Charles Jasper Glidden (translated from German)
- Tom Talbert
Pages I watch
editThese are pages I tend to check out when they appear on my watchlist, because of my history with them:
- Relativity priority dispute - I became embroiled in a February 2006 dispute over Albert Einstein, Henri Poincaré and David Hilbert - my notes on the dispute are deleted, since they were felt to be inconsistent with WP:POLEMIC.
- Unity Church - i discovered a debate on Unity Church, and became embroiled. See /Unity Church notes.
- Photon Belt - attempting to keep the article from looking as if Wikipedia is uncritically promoting this crackpot nonsense.
- Battle of Opis - sigh. See /Opis notes.
- The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy - one guy keeps "rebutting" it, now as an IP-hopping anon. See /DeFrancis notes.
- Friedwardt Winterberg - people keep on trying to hide his unfortunate LaRouche connection. /Winterberg notes.
- Sami Yusuf - a couple of words trigger a huge amount of anger, mostly from IPs. /Sami Yusuf notes.
- Office Open XML - since I was part of the Norwegian OOXML committee at the time of standardization (and was on the losing side of the tussle), I don't do much here. But I occasionally speak up against obvious attempts to whitewash the controversies. Notes here.
As part of copyvio stuff and dead-end pages work, I've touched a lot of pages. Some of them rather forcefully.
Latest watch: Pepe Iglesias - exists on other Wikipedia, made an extreme-stub with a translate request. Waited to see if someone picks it up before creating more from the F-A-G people with articles on other Wikipedias - it did happen, but it took 6 months. Useful as calibration.
TODO list
editLearn to use {{cite book}} and {{cite journal}} and apply them to pages above
More generic: Wikipedia:Template messages/Sources of articles
Signs of serious brain damage
editOn Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits of September 23, 2006, I was listed as #2210, with 4366 edits.
- Nov 4, 2006: #2045 - 5262. Worse and worse.
- Nov 30, 2006: #1892 - 5965.
- 9 February 2007: #1798 - 7065
- 27 May 2007: #1660 - 8956
- 2 August 2007: #1639 - 9793
- 1 November 2007: #1410 - 12349
- 20 January 2008: #1251 - 14604
- 23 July 2008: #1410 - 15462 (hooray - finally falling!)
- 25 February 2009: #1154 - 21538 (ouch. Up again.)
- 22 April 2009: #1134 - 22417
- 19 February 2011: #1381 - 26,136. 2010 was a quiet year
The signs of brain damage is that I care enough to note it, and that my user page is the first place I think of to jot down that fact.... of course, number of edits are meaningless (see Wikipedia:Editcountitis for details).
And - someone's nominated me for adminship. Successfully.
In memoriam
editI used to have on my projects list:
- Programmatically inserting names into people named T...., filling in from the list of living people starting at T - see User:Alvestrand/LoP Experiment
But after this discussion, there doesn't seem much point to continuing the work.
And some other stuff
editWhere else should one keep these?
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The Working Man's Barnstar | |
| This well earned barnstar was brought to Alvestrand today by the letter "T". Thank you for all your hard work! — Catherine\talk 20:55, 2 August 2006 (UTC) |
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The Invisible Barnstar | |
| Thank you for your continued work and assistance on Wikipedia:Copyright problems, reviewing copyright status and generally cleaning up articles that need attention or a referee. Your good work goes unseen unless someone disagrees ;) Jeepday (talk) 12:48, 1 April 2008 (UTC) |
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What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar | |
| For finding the sources for Merck headquarters, couldn't have done it without you! MBisanz talk 19:49, 12 October 2008 (UTC) |
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The Articles for Creation Barnstar | |
| For helping to complete the OBI missing biographies list! Jokestress (talk) 21:08, 23 April 2009 (UTC) |
 | This user has been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian and was awarded his own day. |