Personal Information
A «nightstallion» is the male equivalent of a nightmare. I stole this pun from the fantasy author Piers Anthony, well-known for his Xanth novels. I chose to use this name in my internet activities around the turn of the new millenium, as I had grown discontent with my prior alter ego, «Baldur» or «Balduran», which in turn had been inspired by the well-known CRPG series Baldur's Gate. (Almost as great as Planescape: Torment, which is, of course, the best computer game ever to have been programmed.)
For a variety of reasons, I prefer to remain mostly anonymous on Wikipedia for now; since I also consider it important to know whom one is working with, I will, however, divulge information about myself to a certain degree.
I'm a male adult specimen of the species homo sapiens wikipædiacus and live in a rather small town close to my country's capital, Wien. I'm currently studying Technomathematics at the Technical University of Vienna, and will probably study Linguistics or European Studies at the University of Vienna afterwards.
I am one of those people who suffer greatly from the fact that there are only twenty-four hours to a day and only seven days to a week; notwithstanding this, I collect hobbies the same way other people collect stamps; see the next section for more on that. I also love to chat about virtually every subject you could think of (I've been accused of being more communicative than the average girl), so feel free to start a conversation with me about any topic you want.
Hobbies
I like to watch anime and go to the cinema regularly, strongly preferring original versions over dubbed ones. I also like to read, especially alternative history, crime fiction, fantasy and science-fiction. While I greatly enjoy role-playing games (in particular Das Schwarze Auge, GURPS, Paranoia XP, Shadowrun and Vampire: The Masquerade), I haven't been able to play for a few years now, first due to the lack of time and more recently due to the lack of a group to play with.
I enjoy listening to music, with my preferences ranging from classical music and jazz to punk rock and certain kinds of hip hop; the only styles I can't stand are techno and rap. Furthermore, I like to sing, mostly in choir, although I've also started working on my solo voice in the autumn of 2005.
Two of my hobbies were probably strongly influenced by my older siblings: I took up equestrianism in my mid-teens (after having observed my sister partake in uncountable eventing tournaments), and I've always taken great interest in computers and computer games (having looked over the shoulder of my brother playing computer games since I can think).
Last, but certainly not least, I've been dancing at the Tanzschule Rueff since 2003. I also became acquainted with my girlfriend there, whom I've been together with since 21 May 2004. (You're welcome to offer your good wishes on our anniversary.) To get rid of my chronic tensions, I will take up Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga in the near future.
Wikipedia Naming Conventions
I'm rather unhappy with the wikipedia policies of "use common name" and "use English" (WP:NC(CN) and WP:NC(UE)). In my humble opinion, its principle amounts to de facto disinformation of the reader, who is lead to believe that the common name is also the correct name. Examples of this would be:
- Czech Republic → Czechia (Official short name which has not yet caught on in general usage – in part owing to the reluctance of newspapers and official publications to use something not yet widely known, which results in not too many people knowing about the short name, due to which newspapers and official publications... you get the idea.)
- East Timor → Timor-Leste (Case is similar to Côte d'Ivoire.)
(Note: Maybe the Central African Republic and the Dominican Republic should think about adopting short form names at some point, as well...?)
Naturally, I also support the use of ß, Þ, ó, ä and similar characters of the extended Latin alphabet in article titles, as well as the use of diacritics, especially if the only difference between the correct name and the "English" name is the lack of diacritics in the latter.
Wikimedia Projects
There are a number of interesting issues going on at meta: of which the casual user may not be aware; this section is meant to draw your attention towards a few of them which I consider the most important and the ones most worthy of support.
Among the proposals for new projects and development tasks are two which enjoy my highest support. The first is Wikidata, which is meant to store data in a format which can be easily edited and retrieved for use in all other Wikimedia projects; for instance, we would finally have a single authoritative source for data about a country's area and population. The second is WikiMusic/WikiScores/Wikimusic II, a project meant to store data about works of music in the same way that the Wikimedia Commons house images, audio and video files and Wikisource houses textual works.
There are plans to move from various language-specific editions of Wiktionary towards a single one, called OmegaWiki (omegawiki.org); in my opinion, this would be a great step towards making Wiktionary an authoritative source for checking translations of words into various languages.
I believe that Wikibooks and Wiktionary need new logos; this is currently under discussion on meta. Furthermore, discussion is ongoing on Wikispecies about a small change to the current logo, and the new Wikiversity project is also in need of a logo. I've put links to the respective debates near the top of this page, below the navigation bar.
I am against the concept behind simple:. In my opinion, people whose English is rather bad should be integrated into en: as well as possible; after all, there's a sufficient reservoir of people with very good English who can correct mistakes.
Other interesting links:
International Standards
I strongly endorse, regularily use, and am closely accustomed with the following ISO codes, and would strongly suggest the same to you:
Things to Be Proud of
I've written one featured article, two featured lists and one good article:
€2 commemorative coins
- nomination on 10 January 2006
- featured article status on 19 January 2006
- today's featured article on 27 January 2006
List of European Union member states by accession
- Did you know? on 19 January 2006
- nomination on 19 January 2006
- featured list status on 29 January 2006
List of European Union member states by political system
- Did you know? on 27 June 2006
- nomination on 28 June 2006
- featured list status on 10 July 2006
Monarchies in Europe
- Did you know? on 4 July 2006
- good article status on 19 July 2006
Opt-outs in the European Union
- Did you know? on 18 October 2007
Furthermore, on meta: I took care of the organisation and administration of the votes on the name and logo of Wikimedia Incubator, the logo of the Test Wikipedia, the logo of Wikiversity, the new logo of Wiktionary and the new logo of Wikibooks.
Barnometer™
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| n00b | involved | been around | veteran | seen it all | older than the Cabal itself |
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