My name is David Roberts and I do a lot of different things in real life. I translate Japanese to English, specializing in computers, semiconductors, electronics, and such. Previously, I worked as a translator and technical instructor at Nikon Precision Inc., a division of Nikon that sells steppers and scanners for semiconductor production.

I am the director for the San Diego, California chapter of Service for Peace (see our local page), and I'm the education pastor for San Diego Family Church, which is part of the Unification Movement.

I used to read encyclopedias for fun when I was a kid. I could easily spend all day every day on Wikipedia, so I try to limit myself. I tend to mess around with Wikipedia mainly when I should be doing something else, like working on a difficult translation or putting off an unpleasant responsibility. Still I feel I have made some useful, if minor contributions. I'm most proud of Stepper, which I wrote. I also feel I have made a substantial improvement to Hate Crimes, which actually is not a very interesting subject to me. I ended up contributing to it because it so obviously needed help. Maybe a controversial article like that needs an essentially disinterested person to touch it up from time to time.

I've recently developed a habit of looking up random US Navy ships and improving their articles by adding pictures or researching the Internet for more information. It seems the more obscure the ship, the better. I'm not sure why I do this. I'm not sure if it's healthy. But I imagine someone who served on that ship (or that person's father or grandfather) long ago looking it up, and discovering a nicely made Wiki page about it.

Recently I've been patroling the recent changes list for vandalism and quickly reverting it using Twinkle. This can be quite addicting. It's a thrill to catch people who would deface Wikipedia within seconds after they save changes and revert them, but its also quite frustrating when you realize how much vandalism goes on, and how much work goes into protecting Wikipedia from it. There is also a dose of humility that comes when you quickly revert something that looks like vandalism, but then take a second look and realize it wasn't.