User:Donovan: Difference between revisions
No edit summary |
|||
| Line 16: | Line 16: | ||
===Wiki standards=== | ===Wiki standards=== | ||
Standards like the [[Date_Format_Convention]] are important in a wiki, they create consistency, help define a framework withing which people can become more productive and in general help to make the wiki more functional. As such I will be editing peoples Logs, please let me know if you would prefer I left them alone. | Standards like the [[Date_Format_Convention]] are important in a wiki, they create consistency, help define a framework withing which people can become more productive and in general help to make the wiki more functional. As such I will be editing peoples Logs, please let me know if you would prefer I left them alone. | ||
===Date formats=== | |||
I have a definite opinion about what the best date format is but I will not be converting dates to this format or pushing this other than reccomending it here. | |||
The best date format is the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 ISO 8601] format. It looks like this: '''2012-11-27''', compare this to '''02/04/03''' which has three possible interpretations. | |||
. | |||
The reasons it is best are: | |||
* it is unambiguous. | |||
* it sorts correctly using string or numeric sorting. | |||
* it is a formal standard. | |||
* it is widely used. | |||
see also: http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/iso-date | |||
==Other Skills== | ==Other Skills== | ||
Revision as of 21:54, 30 November 2012
Introduction
My name is Donovan Jones. I am a software developer from New Zealand. I am a competent wiki editor and plan to assist the OSE in this capacity. I do not plan to collaborate or assist in other ways in the medium term. Essentially I am a WikiGnome, as such it is probably safe to ignore me.
Current objectives
- Improve metric support on the wiki.
- Work on Work_Log_Guidelines particularly Date_Format_Convention.
- Work on and improve categories.
- Wikifying pages: work on wiki linking.
Thoughts
As an outsider there are a few things that i would like to help improve.
Support for the Metric System
Three countries use non-metric measurement systems: Liberia, Myanmar, and the United States. I believe for OSE to a have a global impact it needs better support for the metric system. Many collaborators will only be able to source metric parts. I want to help provide better metric support at leas on the wiki.
Wiki standards
Standards like the Date_Format_Convention are important in a wiki, they create consistency, help define a framework withing which people can become more productive and in general help to make the wiki more functional. As such I will be editing peoples Logs, please let me know if you would prefer I left them alone.
Date formats
I have a definite opinion about what the best date format is but I will not be converting dates to this format or pushing this other than reccomending it here.
The best date format is the ISO 8601 format. It looks like this: 2012-11-27, compare this to 02/04/03 which has three possible interpretations. . The reasons it is best are:
- it is unambiguous.
- it sorts correctly using string or numeric sorting.
- it is a formal standard.
- it is widely used.
see also: http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/iso-date
Other Skills
I do have some other skills that may be useful to the OSE. I am an experienced data munger, if you need scripts written to process and convert data feel free to drop me a line. Things like
- Writing cron jobs
- Talking to databases (postgres/mysql/sqlite)
- Pulling in xml,yaml,json,html,csv,wiki markup
- Spitting out xml,yaml,json,html,csv,wiki markup
- Talking to REST web services.
- Screen scraping and web automation.
My language of choice is perl. My collaboration method of choice is github.