Aaron Halfaker (; born December 27, 1983) is a principal applied scientist at

Microsoft Research Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...

. He previously served as a

research scientist A scientist is a person who researches to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosophical study of nature ...

at the

Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as foundation (United States law), a charitable foundation. It is the host of Wikipedia, th ...

until 2020.

Education

Halfaker earned a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

degree in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

from the College of St. Scholastica in 2006, where he started off as a

physical therapy Physical therapy (PT), also known as physiotherapy, is a healthcare profession, as well as the care provided by physical therapists who promote, maintain, or restore health through patient education, physical intervention, disease preventio ...

major but switched to computer science after taking a programming class with Diana Johnson. He subsequently earned a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in computer science from the GroupLens Research lab at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...

in 2013.

Career and research

Halfaker is known for his research about the decrease in the number of active editors on Wikipedia. He has said in autumn 2013 that Wikipedia began a "decline phase" around 2007 and has continued to decline since then. Halfaker has also studied

software agent In computer science, a software agent is a computer program that acts for a user or another program in a relationship of agency. The term ''agent'' is derived from the Latin ''agere'' (to do): an agreement to act on one's behalf. Such "action on ...

s (bots) on Wikipedia, and the way they affect new contributors to the site. While a graduate student he developed a tool for Wikipedia editing called Snuggle with Stuart Geiger. Snuggle tackles

vandalism on Wikipedia On Wikipedia, vandalism is editing the project in an intentionally disruptive or malicious manner. Vandalism includes any addition, removal, or modification that is intentionally Humour, humorous, Nonsense, nonsensical, a Reliability of Wiki ...

and highlights constructive contributions by new editors. He has also built an

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

(AI) service called Objective Revision Evaluation Service (ORES) in 2015, used to identify vandalism on Wikipedia and distinguish it from

good faith In human interactions, good faith () is a sincere intention to be fair, open, and honest, regardless of the outcome of the interaction. Some Latin phrases have lost their literal meaning over centuries, but that is not the case with , which i ...

edits.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Halfaker, Aaron University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering alumni Living people American computer scientists Wikipedia researchers Wikimedia Foundation staff members Human–computer interaction researchers College of St. Scholastica alumni People from Virginia, Minnesota 1983 births American Wikimedians

Education

Career and research

See also

References