Reading this now, ^{[when?] [1]} it looks horribly CV-ish. I don't like that. I just want you to have some idea of who I am, and of the areas where I might talk the most sense and the least nonsense.

Anyway, here are some things I think are relevant to my Wikipedia editing. My background includes:^[2]

• a father who was a mechanical engineer and believed, when I was eight, that the test of really understanding something was one's ability to explain it to an eight-year-old.
• a degree in electronic engineering,^[3] relevant mainly because it trained me to think logically and brought me face to face with quantum physics.
• a general interest in many areas of science.
• an occasional interest in mathematics.
• a good few years working mostly on document design, editing and typesetting. (That's probably why this page isn't besprinkled with userboxes; I don't like the visual effect if there are more than a handful.)
• many years of amateur orchestral playing.
• a strong interest in language; I often regret not studying linguistics.
• an interest in the psychology of most of the things I get involved in. (Even mathematics.)

On Wikipedia I typically copy-edit articles on technical subjects which have attracted my interest. This lets me combine learning about the subject with improving the article. As of January 2025, I seem to be spending a lot of time trying to make overly technical lead sections more accessible to non-specialists. I strongly believe that for most subjects this is possible, but it requires the ability to put oneself in the position of someone who's never encountered the subject before. You can, for example, explain a concept in straightforward language before then saying "this is known as . . ." and giving its technical name.

Occasionally I make small edits to Norwegian Wikipedia (Bokmål version),^[4] but only when I'm very sure of my ground linguistically or when language doesn't arise (e.g. inside LaTeX equations).

I read Wikipedia in English, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish.

Should you wish to visit my user page on another Wikipedia:

• på norsk Wikipedia (bokmål/riksmål), finn meg her
• på dansk Wikipedia, find meg her
• på svenska Wikipedia, hitta mig här.

The main thing those pages do is tell you I speak English and direct you straight back here, but of course once you're on one of them you'll also have access to things like my contribution history for that wiki.

Edit summaries document what you've done and why. This helps others working on the page, including your future self. But they're not only for experienced editors to read: they're for everyone who wants to know how an article has been edited, or what kind of edits you make. For example, reading edit summaries is part of learning how Wikipedia works. Good ones can help both new editors finding their way around and curious readers.

Therefore: they should be informative and written in plain English comprehensible to anyone who's never even viewed a page history before, not just to those who know the code and are used to editing Wikipedia.

Cryptic abbreviations like ce, rm and rvt^[5] should be avoided: they help to create an insider culture, and are a barrier to understanding by newcomers. In particular, ce should absolutely never be the entire edit summary: it's hard to pick out visually in the page history because it's so short, and it's exceptionally uninformative since all manner of horrors including outright vandalism get described as copy-edits. In my opinion it's roughly equivalent to leaving no edit summary at all, at least until I've seen enough of your edits to know whether to trust your judgement on what counts as a copy-edit.

Similarly, shortcuts like MOS:MYSTERYSECTION should be either piped or explained, so the shortcut serves simply as a link and not as insider jargon.

Finally, writing a good edit summary is a useful exercise in itself: it forces you to think clearly about your edit and its purpose, and gives you practice in expressing that as clearly and concisely as possible.