User:Dr. Submillimeter

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1 Brief background
2 Work on Wikipedia
3 Notes on my astronomy edits
4 Created articles
- 4.1 Astronomy
5 Significant astronomy contributions
6 Other Significant Contributions
7 Projects
8 User subpages

[edit] Brief background

I am a professional American astronomer currently working at Imperial College London in the United Kingdom. My specialty is studying star formation and infrared emission in nearby galaxies. I have lived in many locations across the United States, and I have spent a lot of my time traveling.

At the moment, I use a pseudonym instead of my real name on Wikipedia, primarily because Google searches on my name turned up this Wikipedia page instead of other pages related to me. I prefer not to have my Wikipedia contributions appear before my real-life work in Google searches. However, I have no issues with hiding my identity; my homepage and contact information can be located here.

[edit] Work on Wikipedia

My work on Wikipedia has generally been focused on two things:

Astronomy articles - I mostly work on articles related to extragalactic astronomy, particularly nearby galaxies that I am familiar with.
Categories - Wikipedia articles contain categories that are used for organizational purposes. However, the system contains many infeasible category schemes and many inconsistently-named categories. I have spent some time trying to repair the category scheme.

Additionally, I have done some work on articles on placed that I have lived or places that I have visited, and I have done some work on writing Wikipedia guidelines.

[edit] Notes on my astronomy edits

Many of the astronomy-related articles in Wikipedia, particularly articles on galaxies, are poorly written. A large number of the articles are stubs (effectively a title with a one or two line description). Many appear to have been written by amateur astronomy enthusiasts with some enthusiasm for the subject but with only a limited formal education in astronomy. As a result, the articles often contain unreferenced (and possibly plagarized) text, copyright-violating images, erroneous information (including invented object names), and strange, randomly-selected astronomical facts.

I am slowly rewriting many of the articles that I encounter on Wikipedia. Since this has become one of the first references that many members of the general public will use to find information on astronomy, it must contain well-written, well-references, accurate information. However, I am only proceeding slowly in my revisions, as I have other obligations in my life (particularly research). I have selected to keep unreferenced information in articles at the time that I initially rewrite articles unless it is obviously false or misleading. My plans are to eventually build-up the articles until the unreferenced information is referenced or removed.

Therefore, please do not hold me responsible for the complete contents of any individual article. I cannot be responsible for the content written by other users either before or after my edits. Please examine only the changes that I have made to the article. I invite anyone who dislikes any of my changes or has valid reasons (particularly valid scientific reasons) for disagreeing with my edits to change the articles that I have edited.