User:Yunzhong Hou

User Statistics, AS OF Nov. 9, 2006

 * First edit: August 22, 2006
 * Promoted to Admin: September 8, 2006
 * Promoted to Bureaucrat: September 8, 2006
 * Number of Contributions: 1309
 * Number of Image Uploads: 78

Who I Am
I am devoted to futurology, particularly the scenario, spacecraft and biology aspects. This tendency leads me to write extensive, focused articles with little breadth, but much depth. I find my writing abilities essential to my contributions, and I stress the need for proper writing capacity in everyone contributing to my site. My other main emphasis is an organization, which is extremely necessary for the development of the Future Wikia into a reputable circle of writers/futurologists.

I also contribute to Wikipedia and Wikibooks.

My Predictions Page

 * See main article, Category:Yunzhong Hou (Futurologist).

New Main Page
Aside from Paranoid, I am the main driving force for the most radical changes and organizational actions taken on this project. One of my first organizational actions on this site was the introduction of New Main Page, which subsequently became adopted as the—well—new Main Page. It has since then evolved more as I gradually become familiarized with the variety and complexity of the WikiMedia interface.

Templates
I have wrought various templates, most of them for organizational purposes but some for connecting articles. Early on, I introduced Template:Main and Template:Battle of the Belt, both of which are now out of date (the former converted into a category and the latter renamed).

Later templates that I have introduced include:


 * Template:Concepts – Links all of the conceptual pages on this site
 * Template:Future – Now the “main articles” link on the sidebar, lists all articles on the Future Wikia in excess of 3000 bytes and bolds the articles in excess of 10000 bytes, and organizes them into four columns
 * Template:Feature – Combination of the feature article template on the main page and a Create Your Article box
 * Template:Vote – Articles requiring votes
 * Template:Complex – Articles requiring simplification
 * Template:Contribute – On the main page, lists ways to contribute
 * Template:Objectives – On the main page, lists team objectives
 * Template:Quality – On the main page, lists quality standards
 * Template:Welcome – On the main page, provides a colorful welcome box
 * Template:Featured article – Tag template to be inserted at the top of any article that has been a Featured Article
 * Many other templates that are later combined in Advanced Concepts

I strongly encourage everyone to introduce templates of their own to better improve the project’s organization.

Categories
I have also wrought the establishment of categories for tagging the main articles. My categories are:


 * Category:Main – Connects the main project pages, now out of date
 * Category:Concepts – Connects the concepts pages
 * Category:Featured Article – A list of all previous Featured Articles
 * Category:Future Biology – One of the Areas of the Future
 * Category:Future Electronics – One of the Areas of the Future
 * Category:Future Engineering – One of the Areas of the Future
 * Category:Future Sociopolitical – One of the Areas of the Future
 * Category:Future Space – One of the Areas of the Future
 * Category:Scenario – For all articles that are mostly speculative
 * Category:Vote – For all articles requiring a vote
 * Category:Improve – For all articles requiring improvement
 * Category:Complex – For all articles requiring simplification

I strongly encourage everyone to introduce categories as well to better organize this project by dividing it into topics and areas as I have.

Links, Moves, and Deletions
In the quest for good pages, I have deleted many, many pages that were either too short or had nothing but a basic link to a site outside of the Future Wikia. This tool can be found at Special:Shortpages. Some of these pages have later been recovered by User:Paranoid, but other pages remain deleted.

Out of the ruins of the deleted pages I constructed Links, which serves as a general repository of all those loose links. I would prefer that future users wanting to share such links to outside sites add them to the Links page and not create a new page for each one.

I have also moved plenty of pages to better named sites, generally following the rule of “Scenario:_” for pages that are mostly speculative.

Conceptual Pages
I originally wrought Concepts, and while it still remains it has been replaced by Basics which provides a very brief outline and Advanced Concepts which goes into detail concerning the most important concepts found anywhere on the site. In addition, I have written Guideline, which is a more in-depth article on how to contribute and write effectively than can be found at Basics.

Standard Timeline
I introduced the Standard Timeline as a means of getting all ideas concerning the nearby future into one page to foster collaborative thinking as well as provide a springboard for other articles and writers. Please contribute to it as you find necessary.

Main Page Navigation Bar
The Main Page now has a navigation bar with eight icons on it, linking to the most important sections of the Future Wikia. The graphics lightens up the main page and makes it more user-friendly.

Sidebar and Sitenotice
After becoming promoted to Administrator, I have worked on modifying the sidebar so that various pages of consequence are concentrated in this area and can be easily viewed. If you wish to alter the Sidebar, please contact an administrator.

I was first to use the Sitenotice messages on the Future Wikia. If you need me to say something on the sitenotice (at the top of each page), please add a comment at my user talk page.

Explore the Future Template
One template I have created deserves special recognition on my part. It is a compilation of the longest pages (those in excess of 3000 bytes).

Criteria for Awarding a Promotion
I follow a personal guideline for promotion of users to Administrator and Bureaucrat status, as follows:

Administrator Criteria
For Administrator, the user must first:


 * 1) Demonstrate ability to write effectively;
 * 2) Demonstrate willingness to devote a significant amount of time to the project continually;
 * 3) Demonstrate ability to work cooperatively and altruistically with others in the project;
 * 4) Follow the instructions set forth at Guideline; and
 * 5) Revise and create new articles following the team objectives.
 * 6) Catching and reverting edits of vandals, adding edit comments, and collaboratively working with others can help.

Bureaucrat Criteria
For Bureaucrat, the user must first:


 * 1) Continue to contribute as they have before promotion to Administrator for some time;
 * 2) Show ability to:
 * 3) Upload images
 * 4) Move pages
 * 5) Massively edit pages
 * 6) Create and add templates
 * 7) Nominate pages for feature article
 * 8) Attach categories;
 * 9) Become a veritable driving force for the community;
 * 10) Finds other users worthy of promotion to administrator.

A Formula for the Future
'''I endorse realism in futurology. After all, without it, one’s work is seldom applicable whatsoever. Some principles that I believe, and which I hope others will also support, are as follows:'''


 * 1) None of the laws of nature are to be disobeyed. This includes laws of causality, logic, physics, light speed as the limit, mathematical and scientific theorems and rules, etc. set forth at Certainties.
 * 2) If you are going to break any of these rules, you must first prove beyond a reasonable doubt that your theory is actually correct;
 * 3) Otherwise, label everything that follows from an assumption as a scenario.
 * 4) No one knows what the future holds exactly; that is why we need various timelines, time trees, scenarios, and so forth.
 * 5) Singularity cannot be achieved because of the Uncertainty Principle. Nothing involving post singularity is acceptable.
 * 6) All predictions must follow the rules set forth at Guideline.
 * 7) Good penmanship is essential.
 * 8) Avoid bias.
 * 9) Mark uncertainties or wild cards as such.
 * 10) Recognize the limitations.
 * 11) Fully justify each change that occurs.
 * 12) Unless you are writing an article about religion, philosophy, ethics, belief, or political system, do not endorse it in your writing.
 * 13) Recognize the points of divergence.
 * 14) The more radical a change, the more it needs to be explored before it may be used in futurology.
 * 15) Technologies currently being used or are mainstream are definite candidates for inclusion in any forecast.
 * 16) Technologies currently under investigation should have a link to an outside source specifying that a reasonable number of experts believe in its capability for success and application in the future.
 * 17) Technologies to be investigated in the near future (1-10 years) need at least some amount of rationalization behind them. Recognize that they may not bear fruition in the way that you expect them to. Depending on the quality and depth of the rationalization, these may or may not require labeling as scenarios.
 * 18) Technologies to be investigated in the far future need whole articles of significant length dedicated to explaining them though sound rationalization. Recognize that even so, they are very unlikely to bear fruition the way you expect them to. Articles involving these should be labeled scenarios.
 * 19) New theorems, scientific rules, and postulates should be fully presented on their own articles prior to being included elsewhere. It is better to accompany articles with proofs of them. Without proofs, such articles should be labeled scenarios.
 * 20) Certain events that can drastically alter the future are known as points of divergence and should be labeled as scenarios. Wild cards need only the most basic rationalization.
 * 21) Recognize that technology, society, politics, and environment influence each other.
 * 22) All articles on a subject matter should present what happens in the interim and rationalize their own possibility for occurring. This means that an article should not skip a few years, because much can happen in those years.
 * 23) All articles based even partially on scenarios are themselves scenarios and should be labeled so.

Books


The Books project is my brainchild. Basically it involves creating a table of contents for each Book--a set of related articles/scenarios--for better movement between topics. For a list of books go to Special:Categories and then click on Book. Books take the Category:Book tag only, though all articles/scenarios within it still retain their own tags. Current books are:


 * Book:Cataclysm - My Cataclysm arch-scenario
 * Book:Futurology - The complete tutorial. It can be said at this point that this project has now arrived at completion.
 * Book:Interview - Interviews by User:Jonano
 * Book:JC - User:JC's personal book
 * Book:StylusEpix - User:StylusEpix's personal book

Once a book becomes long enough, it can be nested. As of October 2006, no such super-book exists.

The Book system is now outdated; the text in each Book page has been shifted to the corresponding Category page, and I've begun nesting books in other books. This is because categorization is easier than bookkeeping, and we already have a plethora of articles categorized so far.

Articles
Aside from my organizational work, I have written only a few articles, but the ones I have worked on are particularly long. All of them are on the Long Pages list.


 * Scenario: Cataclysm – Point of Divergence: an asteroid hits the earth in the near future.
 * Scenario: The War in Space – Point of Divergence: rebellion in the space colonization administration.
 * Scenario: The War in Space Outline – Parallel to The War in Space; acts as a guide for my writing.
 * Scenario: Human Mind Project – Point of Divergence: scientific experts begin work on liberating thoughts from the mind.
 * Scenario: Nomenclature – Point of Divergence: someone introduces a new method of naming chemicals (that will be me—the ideas set forth in this article really work, and I could write a paper on this my thesis today if I wanted to, and have it published in a chemistry journal—copyleft © Yunzhong Hou 2006)

I encourage users to follow my example and introduce scenarios of considerable depth, wisdom, insight, knowledge, and complexity into this project.

The Nomenclature Project
Since my first Nomenclature entry, I have shifted my own attitude toward it all--now, I have introduced an even more flexible system (one which I think won't be getting any simpler--it's already at its peak of perfection) which I call Nomenclature 2. It can be found as its own category at Category:Scenario:Nomenclature, which lists the pages relating to it all. Yes, a whole category is needed, as such is the complexity and the depth to which I have analyzed this nomenclature system, tapping into my knowledge of biochemistry to create a system that may someday be accepted as superior to the current IUPAC system. The ideas set forth in these articles really work, and I coudl write a paper on this my thesis today if I wanted to, and have it published in a chemistry journal-copyleft © Yunzhong Hou 2006.

NIAC input
I noticed that there aren't any mentions of the NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts (NIAC) on this site. I haven't tried to sift through to find if there are any references to NIAC sponsored studies (see the NIAC site), but there are many concepts there that come out into other media. These studies seem pertinent, do you think there would be much interaction if I made sure NIAC was ok with their stuff being published here? Jwiley80 02:47, 9 March 2007 (UTC)


 * You could pull things from NIAC here, as long as they aren't copyrighted. You can rewrite their ideas here under the various entries if you wish. Yunzhong Hou 16:37, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Leave a Message!
Please leave any messages at my User Talk page. Thank you.

You can also reach me at my email account, star.brilliance

I like gmail.com because it has good spam-filtering technologies--it hasn't failed me yet. I have reason to believe that spam simply does not work on gmail accounts. By now you should have figured out what my email address is, and why I have not simply spelled it out... otherwise, too bad.