User:Chealer
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I am Philippe "Chealer" Cloutier, creator of Kune ni povos. My career is in software engineering, but this originates from my passion for languages. Indeed, in 2003, I created the first wiki about Ido, using a CMS engine which was far less mature than it was advertised; IdoWiki never came to public light, but in the process, I became an expert of Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware, and cemented my passion for software development.
I even briefly contemplated creating the first collaborative online Ido dictionary, a couple years before Wikivortaro beat me to it. But even before that, I realized how monumental human languages are and how fast they must evolve, and my hopes for Ido faded.
When I discovered Wiktionary in the next couple years, I refrained from getting involved as I did not believe it could rival regular dictionaries in depth and quality (and my plate was already full). Over years, my plate only got more dense, but Wiktionary did the same. Imports from other dictionaries in particular brought the French and English versions to the point where they became competitive with other dictionaries, making them more and more attractive. It also made it difficult for someone with my passion for communication, collaboration and accuracy to refrain from getting involved and fix the errors I was exposed to.
I still consider the project of properly documenting languages as large, hypersemous, changing and idiomatic as natural languages without qualified staff nor governance utopian, and never intentionally work on Wiktionary. But sadly, the competition is not doing great and the French and English Wiktionaries may have become the best when considering convenience and depth, so I now consult them multiple times per week, making it hard not to fix some of what I find here.
So I fix, clarify, patch, report issues, occasionally fill, update and fix again. I am not a veteran on this Wiktionary, but my analytic capacities, exceptional knowledge and experience with software, languages, LSSP and collaboration allow me to get to the source of issues. When the root problem is in foundations, I will do what is needed to fix infrastructure―including templates or the wiki engine― or solve issues stemming from editors or policy.
I contribute here to see results, not to spare egos. If I track some issue down to you, don’t take it personally; I am just as demanding from bureaucrats, administrators, myself or any other editor. I take great care not to accidentally introduce regressions, but if you find that I did anyway, please tell me, and thank you in advance. I am too old to have an ego.
Besides Lev Landau and many others, I admire: 