West.andrew.g

.. is the Wikipedia handle of Andrew G. West.

Dr. West is a Principal Research Scientist at Verisign in the greater Washington D.C. area.

He received his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Pennsylvania while working on the topic of wiki and open collaboration security, writing over a dozen academic papers relevant to Wikipedia's operations (see his C.V. and website). English Wikipedia was a primary case study in these efforts, motivating much of the community involvement detailed below.

Now, all participation is done on a purely volunteer/unaffiliated basis.

Project Involvement

Of particular interest to Wikipedia, Dr. West has developed several tools:

STiki (inactive) – A collaborative anti-vandalism/spam GUI tool characterized by machine-learning and prioritized inspection (1.2M+ reverts!)
WikiAudit – Given an IP range(s), produces an audit report of suspicious users and editing activity

Several other projects are ongoing or in development:

WP:MED statistics - Cross-language analysis of medical page view statistics (w/ User:Doc James); see our paper in JMIR (and some raw data)
Turnitin Collaboration – Copyright detection via machine-learning and a third-party anti-plagiarism service
Untitled – Using graph-based learning, metadata, and NLP towards category suggestions for articles (and possible HotCat integration?)

Other roles across the project:

A data collector/analyst for wiki projects (primarily en.wp); producing reports on:
- Popular articles (~~weekly~~ inactive) -- basis for WP:TOP25 -- and year-end reports for 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014 and 2013
- Popular medical articles (~~weekly~~ inactive) -- and year-end reports for 2014-MED
- Popular redlinks (~~weekly~~ inactive) -- informing article/redirect/disambig creation
- One-off statistical reports I don't want to beautify often end up on my Pastebin profile
- See also my well-publicized Signpost article regarding traffic catalysts/trends
(inactive) A "flow funder" in the corresponding WMF pilot project, overseeing small grant disbursement (want funding?)

Miscellania

Userboxes

This user has an alternative account named West.andrew.g.norb.

This user fights vandalism using the STiki anti-vandalism tool.

Awards

The vast quantity of barnstars which I have been awarded are in the context of my WP:STiki tool and have been stored in the "awards" section there. However, I have also been individually recognized:

		*The Signpost* Barnstar**
		For your fantastic Signpost story on the most popular Wikipedia articles, which gathered a staggering 5877 views on the day it was published, please accept this token of my gratitude. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 08:33, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

	New Administrator Award
	Congrats on your recently successful RfA! Command and Conquer Expert! ^{speak to me...}_{review me...} 02:35, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

	The Admin's Barnstar
	Hey Andrew! A Big Congratulations on your recent successful adminship! I knew you will be an admin someday and now, here it is and you're an admin now. Congrats again Andrew! ;) Mediran (t • c) 11:35, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

The Barnstar of Diligence

I'd like to thank you for going to great lengths to secure funding for tutorials for the general public, carefully guiding the grant process, being willing to extend help non-stop to those who request it (particularly myself in my recent statistic request), and your recent work as a new administrator. Congratulations, and thank you, again! I hope that the dissertation is going well! Jackson Peebles (talk) 05:46, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

	The Brilliant Idea Barnstar
	We really need this (in reference to the popular redlinks page) for every Wikipedia ... all these items should have a Wikidata item (with statements) as well :) GerardM (talk) 16:32, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for doing the metrics work described in The Signpost this week. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:46, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

		The da Vinci Barnstar
		Some day, some way, in some far away place, Wikipedia will finally acknowledge the debt it owes to the countless tool creators it takes for granted. But it won't be today, so until then I offer this in thanks for all you have done, and hope that, in some glorious, fluffy future time, you will no longer have to do it. Serendi ^pod ous 19:33, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

	The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
	I realize that the vast majority of messages you get must be complaints about STiki; so here' something to let you know your mighty contributions to this project are much appreciated, no matter how much criticism you may see on a daily basis. Regards, Vanamonde93 (talk) 05:29, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

	The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
	Keep up the good work. I am a Wikipedia tester. ManojAMK (talk) 09:50, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

		The Teamwork Barnstar
		I just read the annual report (ed: referencing the Wikipedia:Annual_Top_50_Report and User:West.andrew.g/2017_Popular_pages from 2017), and I want to say thank you to everyone who has worked on these reports this year. It's amazing you guys do this all year round and then so particularly well at the end of the year to boot. The annual report is a particular example of proper teamwork. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:39, 4 January 2018 (UTC)