User:Cpiral

> /sandbox/ | A | B | C | /common.js/ | /common.css

Answering technical questions at Help talk:CirrusSearch and at Wikipedia is one way I volunteer.

MediaWiki
For MediaWiki, I presided over CirrusSearch's userland, by virtue of being the main editor of the initial help page and by answering the questions on the discussion page. For many months I documented at Help:CirrusSearch, (now moved to /CirrusSearch). My version of /CirrusSearch/ is now 98% informative, 90% polished. Help:CirrusSearch only 70% informative, 50% polished. My documentation is derived by trial and error experiments, guided by heavy usage on Wikipedia, and by what was missing from the available documentation.

I also interact with the folks [//phabricator.wikimedia.org/search/query/Fo0rTDBo2u89/ phabricator].

Wikipedia
On Wikipedia I seem to be the main developer of help documentation for:
 * Search: w:Help:Searching/Draft,
 * Search Templates: w:Template:Regex (and w:Template:template usage and w:Template:Search link and w:Template:Linksto)
 * Numerous Help pages, w:WP:Page name, w:Help:Linking, etc.
 * w:Template:Val documentation

On Wikipedia since 2006, I edit articles, but mostly I edit help pages, and eventually I got into templates. Dozens of help pages and templates on Wikipedia are largely my versions, such as W:Help:Searching and W:wp:pagename.

I'm most interested in Search. I've developed two templates to help teach and practice regexp searches on Wikipedia: (See W:Template:Template usage and W:Template:regex.)

I watch Wikipedia: Wikipedia: Village pump (technical).

Technical background
I have worked with software releases and field testing for Motorola's CDMA networks. I have an electrical engineering degree and my career was a decade in telecom, bringing up Ericsson and Motorola Cellular systems. I've done a lot of software upgrades, for cellular telephone switches, and other network nodes, both in the lab, and in the field all over the world.

Technical
I coddle computers. So
 * Languages are a favorite hobby of mine. C and C++ environments are familiar territory.
 * Linux. I've installed and configured several Linux systems, and also FreeBSD.
 * Text processing. I excel in regex (grep, perl sed, awk), and Vim.
 * I prefer the CLI and the keyboard, so my browser and window managers are bound to keys.
 * Software development. I've written several medium sized apps in Perl, in Bash, and in Vim. I've done several database applications.

Personal
I've written a mountain technical and an ocean of prose. I spend most of my spare time
 * writing in my VimWiki and my paper notebooks
 * digesting tech news (http://www.osnews.com, http://www.lwn.net)
 * improving Wikipedia
 * volunteering at MediaWiki