User:Macrakis

19Y This Wikipedian joined Wikipedia on December 15, 2004 (19 years, 7 months and 4 days ago). This editorisnotanadministrator and does not wish to be one.

This editor is a Master Editor II and is entitled to display this Platinum Editor Star.

This user has created 655 articlesonWikipedia.

This user was one of the top 2100 English Wikipedians by number of edits in September 2023.

Projects

This user is a member of WikiProject Food and drink.

This user participatesin WikiProject Greece.

This user is a member of WikiProject Computer science.

This user is a memberof WikiProject Mathematics.

This user is a member of WikiProject Boston.

This user is a participant in WikiProject Short descriptions.

Languages

en This user is a native speaker of the English language.

el Μητρική γλώσσα αυτού του χρήστη είναι η ελληνική.

fr-4 Cet utilisateur parle français à un niveau comparable à la langue maternelle.

it-3 Questo utente può contribuire con un livello avanzatodiitaliano.

grc-2 Ὅδε ὁ χρήστης δύναται συμβάλλεσθαι μετρίᾳ γνώσει τῆς ἀρχαίας ἑλληνικῆς.

de-1 Dieser Benutzer hat grundlegende Deutschkenntnisse.

es-1 Este usuario puede contribuir con un nivel básicodeespañol.

pt-1 Este usuário/utilizador pode contribuir com um nível básicodeportuguês.

ar-1 هذا المستخدم يتحدث اللغة العربية بمستوى مبتدئ.

tr-1 Bu kullanıcı Türkçeyidüşük düzeyde anlıyor.

ota-1 Bu zat-ı muhteremin Osmanlıca'ya vâkıf olma yolunda istidâdı vardır.

mnc-0 ᡝᡵᡝ ᠪᠠᡳᡨᠠᠯᠠᠰᡳ ᡠᠮᠠᡳ ᠮᠠᠨᠵᡠ ᡤᡳᠰᡠᠨ ᠪᡝ ᠮᡠᡨᡝᡵᠠᡴᡡ᠉

zh-0 這位用戶無法理解中文，或難以理解中文。 这位用户无法理解中文，或难以理解中文。

Education

PhD This user has a Doctor of Philosophy degree.

H This user attends or attended Harvard University.

This user attends or attended MIT.

PEA This user attends or attended Phillips Exeter Academy.

This user lives in or comes from Cambridge, Massachusetts.

 

Cambridge, Massachusetts

I've worked in software for 50+ years, in a variety of areas: Macsyma, a computer algebra system, and now on its open-source version Maxima; on Lisp language implementation and design; on Ada language design and compilers; on programming language design in general; on operating system kernels; on an architecture-neutral distribution format; on database management systems; on enterprise storage systems; on Web infrastructure software; on Web search; on airline pricing; on enterprise search with rich structured data; etc. My dissertation was on the design of programming languages.

I am now working on the open-source search engine OpenSearch, and my travel guide project is on the back burner.

I have a variety of other interests.

I'm interested in linguistics and languages, especially English, Greek (fluent in modern, rusty in ancient), French (fluent), Italian (good), Latin (rusty), Arabic (basic), and Turkish (including Ottoman) (basic).

I'm interested in encyclopedias both for their form and their content, and have in my personal collection several English, French, and Greek encyclopedias from the 19th and 20th centuries.

I'm interested in architecture and design of various periods, and have a collection of kilims.

I enjoy eating and cooking, and am very interested in food history.

		The Original Barnstar
		Thank you so much for all of your efforts on the article Odwalla, which just recently passed FAC. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have without the work you did. Thanks again. Intothewoods29 (talk) 05:45, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

		The Socratic Barnstar
		I award you this barnstar because you are skilled and eloquent in your arguments. Antidiskriminator (talk) 19:33, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

		The Stub Barnstar
		Thanks for creating the new Lagana (dough) article, and for expanding Wikipedia's coverage of historical foods. NORTHAMERICA1000 04:48, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

	The Original Barnstar
	To counteract the bad faith vandalism warnings, here's a barnstar for your attempts to improve programmatic media. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 20:08, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

	The Barnstar of Diligence
	Thanks for improving my edits to the Dairy products article. I edited it in only about 45 minutes, and your help is appreciated. Thanks! Your Pal, MooperVeltresleex 19:37, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

	The Copyeditor's Barnstar
	Thank you for all of your help. Roy.c.white (talk) 15:22, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

	The Barnstar of Diplomacy
	Thank you for working on Talk:Marvin Minsky to resolve edit wars and conflicts in an unbiased and editorially responsible way. Gnuish (talk) 19:28, 24 September 2019 (UTC) Your patience in resolving the issue on Talk:Marvin Minsky is highly commendable. Barnstar++ from me. 83.100.188.53 (talk) 16:55, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia has tremendous potential, but it is discouraging to see how much effort we have to spend to deal with mindless vandalism, puerile boosterism and nationalism, and crank POV-pushing. It is also time-consuming to correct well-meaning but ill-informed enthusiasts, and to try to educate people about good research practices, but at least there you feel you're acting in an educational role.

I guess my philosophy on participating in WP is to try to be reasonable with reasonable people, and even more reasonable with unreasonable people.

I'm interested in the history of food, and contribute to WikiProject Food and drink. There is a lot of folklore and invention around the history of food, so it's especially important to have reliable sources, not just cookbooks and certainly not random Web pages, which is why I started the page on sources for food history. It's also important to maintain a neutral point of view in food history articles, and not uncritically adopt such terms as "original", "authentic", "traditional", etc. to describe foods and recipes; see my essay "Original", "traditional", "authentic", and other distracting terminology for some further thoughts.

These are some articles where the amount and virulence of edit-warring and tendentious editing is just too much, so I've given up on editing them:

• Baklava
• Vlachs

These are articles I've created, articles I've contributed a lot to, or simply articles where I think I've made a difference.

Americas/Germanic	This user has visited Canada. This user has visited the United States of America.
Americas/Latin	This user has visited Brazil. This user has visited Guatemala. This user has visited México. This user has visited the Canadian province of Québec.
Europe/Germanic	This user has visited Austria. This user has visited Belgium. This user has visited Denmark. This user has visited Germany. This user has visited Ireland. This user has visited Luxembourg. This user has visited the Netherlands. This user has visited Norway. This user has visited Switzerland. This user has visited the United Kingdom.
Europe/Latin	This user has visited Belgium. This user has visited France. This user has visited Italy. This user has visited Luxembourg. This user has visited Madeira. This user has visited Monaco. This user has visited Portugal. This user has visited Romania. This user has visited San Marino. This user has visited the Italian region of Sardinia. This user has visited the Italian region of Sicily. This user has visited Spain. This user has visited Switzerland. This user has visited Vatican City.
Europe/Slavic	This user has visited Bosnia and Herzegovina. This user has visited Bulgaria. This user has visited Croatia. This user has visited the Czech Republic. This user has visited Montenegro. This user has visited North Macedonia. This user has visited Poland. This user has visited Serbia. This user has visited Slovakia.
Europe/Uralic	This user has visited Estonia. This user has visited Finland. This user has visited Hungary.
Europe/Other	This user has visited Greece. This user has visited Ireland. This user has visited Kosovo. This user has visited Latvia. This user has visited Lithuania. This user has visited Malta. This user has visited Turkey.
Africa	This user has visited Egypt. This user has visited Morocco.
Asia/East	This user has visited China. This user has visited Hong Kong. This user has visited Japan. This user has visited South Korea.
Asia/Southeast	This user has visited Cambodia. This user has visited Malaysia. This user has visited Singapore.
Asia/West	This user has visited Jordan. This user has visited Syria. This user has visited Turkey.

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