User:Davidgothberg
David Göthberg
My work at Wikipedia
I mainly program templates and edit articles about cryptography. I mostly work on the English Wikipedia but sometimes I fix stuff on the Swedish and German Wikipedias and on Meta too.
About me
I am a native of Sweden. That's in Scandinavia in northern Europe. I speak Swedish, English and German and understand the Scandinavian languages.
I like Wikipedia since it has provided me with answers to many of my questions during years. So naturally I wanted to join in and make Wikipedia even better.
I think Wikipedia is like the web on steroids. And I think that Wikipedia has become the best encyclopaedia the human race has ever seen. Apart from the web itself that is. But hey, Wikipedia is a part of the web...
I started editing Wikipedia in September 2004 when I saw a red link to filmjölk in an article about Swedish food. And I immediately got hooked. (Now that link to filmjölk sure isn't red anymore!) But I think I will have much more to contribute over time since I am an engineer, researcher and teacher by profession and by habit. By the way, I have used computers since 1982, Fidonet since 1990 and the Internet since 1991. So yeah, I am an old computer geek.
As usual in Wikipedia if you want to communicate with a user (me in this case) leave a message on my talk page. As you might know Wikipedia automatically informs me of any new messages/edits on my talk page when I log in.
.../David Göthberg
Articles and pages I started out
- Filmjölk - A kind of food that we eat in Sweden and some other countries. Unfortunately the article came under extensive attack by some Finns so I gave up on it and left it. However the wiki process seems to work, over time other editors have made it better and in the end the attackers gave up.
- Hash list - A method used to detect errors in data such as files in for instance p2p networks.
- Merkle hash tree - Another method used to detect errors in data such as files in for instance p2p networks.
- Naprapathy - A kind of manual medicine similar to chiropractic.
- One-way compression function - Well, really a merger and major rework and extension of three small articles.
- Merkle-Damgård construction - Based on a section that was in two other articles. I cut them out and reworked and extended the text.
- Ivan Damgård - Translated the french article using www.qwika.com.
- Key strengthening - Cryptographic methods to make weak keys such as passwords stronger.
- Clock drift - Well, really a major rework and extension of the original small and confused article.
- Keystream - A concept in cryptography.
- Shared secret - Unbelievable that such a common and simple concept in cryptography did not already have an article.
- Wikipedia:Ambox CSS classes - A Wikipedia how-to-guide related to the Template:Tl project.
- Wikipedia:Line break handling - The definitive "how-to guide" about how to handle word wraps (line breaks) at Wikipedia.
- Wikipedia:Editnotice – About the editnotice system.
- Wikipedia:MediaWiki messages – The central page to discuss MediaWiki interface messages.
- Wikipedia:Secure server – About the Wikimedia secure server.
- MediaWiki:Accountcreator.css, MediaWiki:Ownuserspace.css – The global CSS-files loaded for accountcreators and when a user edits his/her own user or user talk page. Used in the editnotice system.
Articles I have made images for
- Hash list
- Hash tree
- Hash function - Later remade into svg-format by another user.
- Cryptographic hash function
- Hash table - Later remade into svg-format by another user.
- One-way compression function
- Merkle-Damgård construction
- Public-key cryptography - Two of these images have been reused in a book published by a big US bank, in the chapter where they explain how their security works. They sent me a copy, it looks very nice in my bookshelf.
- Avalanche effect