Figure 1. Aaron Halfaker lookin' cool.
About me
For a quick overview, see my curriculum vitae.
I'm a computer scientist working on my PhD at GroupLens Research, a human-computer interaction lab at the University of Minnesota. I study online communities (like Wikipedia) using data mining, statistical modeling and experimentation. Though I'm primarily trained as a technologist, my interests are spread broadly across the physical sciences and the psychology of groups of people.
I'm currently studying the "moving parts" of online communities. I see them as living (and sometimes dying) complex organisms that we could affect (grow, optimize or adapt) if we understood them. I'm working to build a science around doing exactly that.
If you look at nothing else while you are here, check out my most recent accepted work, The Rise and Decline of an Open Collaboration Community, a data-driven explanation for why the editor community of the English Wikipedia has been declining since 2007.
I science
...because it is the best techique we have for making sense of the world. Empiricism is my modus operandi, but I don't let that get in the way of interesting ideas that are pre-data.
I program
...to create and to understand. Programming serves two functions for me. I build technologies for the systems that I study. Check out my collection of software which includes experimental software built for Wikipedia editors. I also use programming as a means to gain understanding. The majority of my contributions to the scientific community have come directly from computation on a dataset. Most of my day-to-day software is built in python, R, javascript, css/html and long running SQL queries.
I publish
...to make my work available to others and to get feedback. The community to which I publish my work is deeply valuable to me. While I submit my scholarly work to academic conferences and journals that maintain restrictive licensing, I provide free, open access content from all of my papers here on my website for anyone to read.