User:Stigmatella aurantiaca

I am a professional .NET developer and former molecular biologist, interested in an oddly diverse range of topics. My first Wiki edit was on Feb 1 2012 when I became annoyed at a short article that I was reading, which despite being barely more than a stub, managed to pack in a considerable amount of misinformation.

Articles that are mostly mine[edit]

The following are articles to which I have made a dominant contribution, by which I mean that currently, at least 2/3 of each article reflects my take on the subject. Hopefully you will like them. If not, and if you have some expertise in the subjects, please improve them!

Multicopy single-stranded DNA - This was the one that got me started. I started by deleting a single misleading phrase, then eventually got around to rewriting and expanding the article fourfold.
Retron - My second rewrite.
Allorecognition - I started this one from scratch.
Institute for Systems Biology - After seven years of editing, this article was still a stub with no references.
J. Craig Venter Institute - Another stub of seven years' duration.
Common path interferometer - Expanded a fairly minimal stub with no references.
Interferometry - This article was poorly written and heavily biased towards discussion of astronomical interferometry. It now bears the Good Article tag.
Lloyd's mirror - This was barely more than a stub with no figures, and most of it was copyvio.
Martin Hoek - Hated seeing a red link in Fizeau experiment ...
Charles-Eugène Guye - Another short bio, mostly from the German Wikipedia
Gustaf Wilhelm Hammar - Short bio requiring a lot of research, to eliminate a red link in Hammar experiment
Al-Mohager - The story of Chahine's censorship battles intrigued me
NGC 2467 - Expanded
Stigmatella aurantiaca - My namesake microorganism. Possible COI issue here??? :-)
Next-Generation Transit Survey - Expanded stub
Applegate mechanism - Created from scratch
Fizeau–Foucault apparatus - New illustrations, clarification of text, addition of Michelson's refinements, historical context
Spectro-Polarimetric High-Contrast Exoplanet Research - Created from scratch
Spacetime - Major rewrite of Introduction, Basic mathematics of spacetime, Beyond the basics, Introduction to curved spacetime, and Section summaries.

Articles where I've made a major contribution[edit]

The following are articles to which I have made a substantial contribution, at least 1/3 of each article reflecting my take on the subject.

Hologenome theory of evolution - My second one started from scratch. I'm still a major author, but there have been some recent major contributions by other contributors.
Microbiome - I expanded a pretty minimal stub, and now others have added their expertise.
Human Microbiome Project - updated and added a list of achievements.
Earth Microbiome Project - split from Microbiome and improved style, added sections. Still not very good though, which is why I split it out from Microbiome.
In silico PCR - broadened scope and de-commercialized
Low-threshold treatment programs - Article was originally tagged for speedy deletion, and after being rescued from that, was tagged for its "news release" tone. It needed lots of work.
Fizeau interferometer - had a pretty unclear description of his famous experiment measuring the speed of light in flowing water.
Fizeau experiment - For a while, D.H. and I were working on this at the same time! He's quite good.
Michelson interferometer - Before I worked on this article, it had a mediocre 2.275 average rating (April 25, 2012). As of January 9, 2013, the average rating crept up to 4.125. Unfortunately, it has lately been gutted, so I'll need to do restoration work on it.
White light scanner - Article still needs a lot of work, but at least I can remove the "technical" tag.
Ives–Stilwell experiment - This article badly needed an illustration. I've given it three, which pushes me into this category, assuming 1 picture = 1000 characters. (The standard equation of 1 picture = 1000 words often seems a bit too much. It depends on the picture, of course.)
Kennedy–Thorndike experiment - Added illustrations and explanatory text.
Mach–Zehnder interferometer - Major rewrite of a poorly written article. Still needs a lot of work.
Quadratic equation - Major rearrangements, new text, examples.
Emilio Elizalde - There was some discussion about whether Elizalde was notable or not. He is.
Delayed choice quantum eraser - Major rewrite, new text, new and revised illustrations

Other contributions[edit]

Articles in which I've made a noticeable contribution, at least 10% of each article. Assumed one original figure = 1000 characters. (The classical formula 1 picture = 1000 words seems a bit much.)

Wu experiment - Materials and methods section and made an English version of illustration.
Hughes–Drever experiment - Added illustration and clarified text.
Michelson–Morley experiment - This used to be a pretty mediocre article, but D.H. is a genuine expert in the subject who stepped in to contribute a lot of excellent science and science history, while I've been the native English speaker, knowledgeable but not expert, who has helped organize the article, as well as drew figures and added some supplementary material of my own.
Fabry–Pérot interferometer - Article didn't have any sort of gentle introduction to the subject, but went straight into the math. So I added a basic description and rearranged the sections from easy to highly technical. My contribution is not that much in terms of character count (about 11%), but I believe a big difference in readability. Already rated a decent article (3.9 average as of May 13, 2012), I imagine the rating should go up in the future. Also revised a couple of figures for Srleffler
Emission theory - This is another one where D.H. and I went back-and-forth in our edits. He's an excellent scholar and very enjoyable to work with!
Hammar experiment - Figure and text.
De Sitter double star experiment - Animation and text.
Kaufmann–Bucherer–Neumann experiments - Figures and text.
Tests of special relativity - Figures and copyedit.
Sagnac effect - Animation and text.
DNA replication - Corrected errors, copyedited.

The following are articles that I have helped clean up, copyedit, or re-organize.

Human HGF plasmid DNA therapy, Linguistic sequence complexity, Virtual Cell, GLIMMER, Fizeau–Foucault apparatus, On the Proof of the Reality of the Luminiferous Aether, The Demonstration of the Luminiferous Aether, Folding@home (had long talks with the principal editor), Cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact (GA Reviewer), Condensed matter physics (GA Reviewer), X-ray, Drunkorexia, Phase-contrast X-ray imaging, Seyfert galaxy

Helping to preserve the integrity of these controversial articles:

One-way speed of light (mostly on the Talk page)

Double-slit experiment

~~Needle-exchange programme~~ Sadly, the "Arguments for and against" section has been completely reorganized from where I left it so that it is currently almost unreadable. This whole article is a war-torn battlefield, suffering from politically motivated editing by people from opposite sides of the debate and lacking coherency. Actually, some of the worst edits came from a person whom I consider a misguided peacemaker; his/her efforts to establish NPOV involved scattering text around so that you never know in advance whether a paragraph that you are reading is going to be "pro-" or "anti-" in its sentiments.

Miscellaneous small contributions, a sentence here, a figure here, a few sentences there.