User:Deco

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Hi! I'm Derrick Coetzee, an American software developer carrying a masters in computer science and bachelor degrees in computer science and mathematics. In addition to my primary background I also have some experience with graphical design, photography, and writing, so I wanted to get involved with this project in order to help all the people out there who need the info, to help fix nasty pages so that Wikipedia's name is not degraded, and for minor bragging rights. Since I joined Wikipedia in 2003 I've found working on articles strangely addicting, and hope to continue to do so, if sparingly, for a long time.

I've contributed a significant amount of content to each of the articles listed in the Articles section below. I'm the original creator and primary proponent behind the failed proposal for a standard Wikipedia pseudocode, wikicode, now archived at User:Dcoetzee/Wikicode. I am also an administrator on the English Wikipedia, and am happy to help in any tasks requiring admins.

I have created diagrams and taken photos for several pages that I felt desperately needed them, as listed in the Images section. I've also done extensive disambiguation, page moving, link fixing, editing for wording and clarity, RC patrol, fact checking, adding redirects, and many other minor editing tasks — most of my work is not reflected on this page. I am a member of WikiProject Mathematics and WikiProject Computing.

To summarize my Wikipedia philosophy: I try to be moderate and give thought to each issue that arises, not consigning myself to labels, but in general I would call myself a tolerant inclusionist. I follow the spirit of the rules but not always their letter; the most important rules to me are don't bite the newbies and "assume ignorance, not malice", because editors are our lifeblood. I tend to prefer normal editing work to administravia despite my status, and I believe the most important contributions are the addition of new raw text and ideas to articles, however unpolished it is. None of this is to say that I don't become very frustrated on occasion; when I feel that I'm losing objectivity, I try to withdraw.

Please feel free to contact me (by talk or e-mail) with any requests or comments, or if you need help from an admin.

Derrick Coetzee

1 License of my work
2 Articles
3 Images

[edit] License of my work

Informally, I'm only currently concerned about retaining ownership of major changes to articles, such as extensive copyediting/rewriting of entire sections, writing entire sections or articles, and so on. Trying to state this precisely however proves difficult, so I'm going to be somewhat more conservative and irrevocably release all rights to all my minor edits, as indicated by the minor change flag, and all my Rambot article changes. Formal statement follows.

I, Derrick Coetzee, irrevocably release all rights to my text contributions to any U.S. state, county, or city article. Moreover, I irrevocably release all rights to changes to any article that are marked in the edit history as minor edits. However, I retain ownership under the GFDL of all other changes, including any change to any project page, talk page, or user page.

[edit] Articles

[edit] Compilers

[edit] Topology

[edit] Other math

Bimodal distribution
Connected component
Matroid (weighted matroids and greedy algorithms, proofs of examples' properties, references/most of history)
Nicholas Mercator
Skew line