User:Avraham

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Avi is trying to take a short wikibreak and will be back on Wikipedia soon. Most likely, however, Avi will not be able to keep away from Wikipedia for that long, and will probably be back a lot earlier while making some small edits every once in a while anyway.
This is a Wikipedia user page.

This is not an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user to whom this page belongs may have no personal affiliation with any site other than Wikipedia itself. The original page is located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Avraham.
Wikipedia:Babel
en This user is a native speaker of English.
he-1 משתמש זה מסוגל לתרום ברמה בסיסית של עברית.
yi-1 דער באַניצער האָט תּוך־ידיעה פֿון ייִדיש.
A, B, and C This user prefers the serial comma.
LE-0 This individual still maintains a shred of dignity in this insane world by adhering to correct spelling, grammar, punctuation, and capitalisation.
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Gamma distribution—Classic loss severity distribution
Gamma distribution—Classic loss severity distribution

Contents

[edit] Maintenance

Articles I attempt to maintain.

[edit] Wikipedia Philosophy

[edit] Editing

My philosophy in Wikipedia is "No data is better than garbage data." In statistics you know you cannot extrapolate too much from nothing; but given something, one is tempted to build complicated statistical models. Same with Wikipedia; I would rather have a smaller set of useful, verifiable (and verified), clean articles than a large set of borderline trash. This does not mean I prefer to throw out the baby with the bathwater; if an article is sufficiently notable, and has room for improvement, it should be kept. Unfortunately, in my experience, I have found that to be the exception, and not the rule. For every article like V. Kalyanasundaram, there are a hundred others that are blatant advertisement, or {{db-bio}}'s.

[edit] Updating references

One of my favorite wiki-pastimes is to find an article which is poorly referenced, and to update it with proper, and perhaps better, citations, like St. Petersburg paradox [1] and Anti-Zionism [2].

[edit] Sources

I am also a very strong believer in having sources in articles, and quoting them. When an article is unsourced, by nature it is suspect. If it can point to a verifiable source, it is as if it says "Go ahead, check it out." We need more articles of the latter type. There are too many unsourced, or poorly sourced articles that people may take for real research on Wikipedia.

[edit] Administration-related

If you need access to a Wikipedia article that has been deleted, ask me. If it's not a copyright violation, libel, or personal information, and has not been deleted as a suspected WP:BLP violation, I will provide the text for you.

Note that using the text to recreate a deleted article automatically qualifies it for speedy deletion, and keeping deleted content hanging around in your userspace has gotten editors penalized before. But that's your problem.


[edit] Thoughts on sysop and b'crat nominations

This is an essay. It is not a policy or guideline. Please update the page as needed, or discuss it on the talk page.

Over my time here in Wikipedia, as an editor and then an admin, I think I have finally crystallized my thoughts on RFAs and RFBs. In a nutshell, a request for adminship/bureaucratship is a request for the community to comment on the judgement and trustworthiness of the individual under discussion. Do we feel that the candidate will uphold wiki policy and guidelines where they exist, and will make reasoned decisions where policy and guideline is vague?

Wikipedia seems to have a tendency to regress to number counting and cold statistical analysis when faced with difficult decisions. See Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship/Archive 79 for a prime example, although there are many others. Personally, I think that is an error. Anything that can be relegated to nothing more than bean-counting can, and should, be handed off to bots. We have admins and bureaucrats in Wikipedia because there are times we need a human being to make a decision. Usually, those times are when the decision will be unpopular. When we opine on RfAs, RfBs, and ArbCom elections, we are actually saying "we trust so-and-so's judgement, and are willing to allow him or her to make the difficult decisions."

Of course, egregious behavior needs to be addressed, which is why we have WP:ANI and WP:RfAR. Further, it is always a good idea for the admin or b'crat in question to discuss difficult issues beforehand, but that is not a requirement. Excercising judgement is what we ask our admins and b'crats to do, and if that judgement is excercised in a non-capricious, impartial, and reasoned fashion, we cannot fault them for that.

Ask yourself before you opine on a RFA/B/etc., "do I trust this person's judgement?" Then if you do, while you may disagree with it, and post vociferously why so when that occurs, remember that is why you placed your opinion on their nomination. And if you don't, then you should have acted on that during the nomination process.


[edit] Identity

My PGP public key ID is 0x785EA229, expand for key:

If a key is signed by this one, it means that I have either met face-to-face or performed an encrypted challenge-response with the user.

The fingerprint of this key is D233 20E7 0697 C3BC 4445 7D45 CBA0 3F46 785E A229

If you would like to have your key signed, either email me or leave a message on my talk page.

Committed identity: 30b9f8c3449af41b801273e8519878d1ae6df779ab237e1235525f4076b4ef2fa7318693a6302a87a68037077af6d54fd708337e7485646643f76808685226c3 is a SHA-512 commitment to this user's real-life identity.



[edit] Userboxes

23,000+ This user has made over 23,000 contributions to Wikipedia. (total)
This user helped promote the article Actuary to featured article status.
This user helped promote the article Abbey Mills Mosque to good article status.
This user is an administrator on the English Wikipedia. (verify)
This user is a member of the Wikimedia OTRS team. (verify)
This user is an administrator on the Commons. (verify commons)
This user has created a global account.
{#if} This user understands and uses ParserFunctions.
127.0.0.0/8 This administrator understands and performs range blocks.
LaTeX-2 This user is an intermediate LaTeX user.
xhtml-2 This user is an intermediate XHTML user.
css-1 This user is a beginning Cascading Style Sheets user.
Image:WikiGnome.png This editor is a WikiGnome.
This user is a Wikifæry.
This user is a WikiÆlf.


[edit] Barnstars and other thoughtful gifts

[edit] Categories