User:Iliev
![Luchesar Iliev [ˌɫɤtʃɛzˈar ilˈiɛv]](/wiki/File:User-iliev.jpg)
—Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, 1793
About me
What is it that makes us human beings? Not just intelligent biological life forms—what do we think really defines us?
I studied economics. It wasn't truly what I had desired back then: I'd rather have become an astronaut—or a military pilot, at least. But even if my career ended in a completely different field—IT engineering—I'm grateful for that education.
As a kid I was fascinated by the natural sciences and technology. You know, Sagan, Star Wars, space shuttles. But something else has always intrigued me at least as much.
Yes, it's us. And our civilization.
I remember how at university we joked that economists were the people who knew more about money than the people who had it. It was funny, if a bit unsettling for a student—but it missed one important thing: economics isn't really about money.
It is still about us: what decisions we make, why we make them, how we cooperate—or choose not to. And, you know, there's actually a link with engineering here. We build bridges, but we also build societies. And civilizations. And encyclopedias.
I actually found my place on Wikipedia almost by accident. The community had an issue with a domain name, I worked as a network engineer at the time—so I offered help. I don't think I imagined back then that I'd stay here. Yet here I am.
There isn't a single answer to “why”. It's difficult to even rank the reasons: the mission, the belonging, the people, the feeling of being useful. But there may also be something easy to miss. And it may well be one of the things that define us as humans.
We need our actions to matter.
I rarely go to the movies nowadays. When I do, I hope that the person who exits the cinema will not be the same person who entered it. I don't want to be “influenced” by a movie or a book. I want to be changed. To suddenly find myself caring, maybe, whether androids really dream of electric sheep.
Our existence will inevitably be lost to time. Even the things we build will eventually decay. What may live on—and continue to matter—is something different: how we changed others.
These are some of the things you may find me thinking about as I watch the planes that fly by my home.
Planes were another fascination for me as a kid. If you live near an airport, of course, it's easy to start thinking about them as a nuisance. They are loud. And they smell of kerosene.
But to the kid I was, it wasn't kerosene. It was yearning. And I realize that it may, in fact, be a part of what makes me—me.
So what is it that makes us human?
Lack of time may very well be one such thing. You can still find me reading, running, talking with friends, playing video games, even trying to finally learn that guitar—just not as often as I'd like. I rarely even find the time to watch those planes.
But I still dream of them.
My work
Since 2012 I've served the Bulgarian Wikipedia community as one of its administrators.check I'm also a bureaucrat and sysop on the Bulgarian Wiktionarycheck and Wikiquote.check
My first edits were on the English Wikipedia in 2006, where I also spent quite some time reading community discussions and ArbCom decisions. This sparked my interest in how Wikimedia communities govern themselves, so when I became seriously involved in the Bulgarian Wikipedia in 2010, administrative, community, and technical work soon became my main contribution:
- Vandalism and abuse. Besides everyday administrative work, I established our sockpuppet investigations project and developed earlier anti-misinformation efforts into the source filter for non-patrolled editors, which would later be adopted by the community as official policy.
- Community health. This often involves navigating editorial conflicts, building workable consensus, and keeping procedures clear and fair—especially in difficult disputes and high-stakes processes such as editor bans.
- Policies and documentation. Much of my work has focused on community norms and procedures: documenting community decisions and consensus, maintaining policy and help pages, writing essays on editor interaction and AI use, and translating global policies on Meta-Wiki.
- Technical and outreach work. UX/UI fixes, tools and other software work through the Bulgarian Wikimedia GitHub organization and my personal repositories, serving as a tech ambassador, as well as occasional outreach including GLAM collaborations and community communication channels.
Over the years I've also helped set up and maintain parts of the Bulgarian Wikimedia community's technical and communication infrastructure. Today I'm most actively involved with its Discord server, which I founded, as well as the wikimedia.bg[1] and wik.pe[2] domains and related services.
I also maintain several automated or specialized accounts. Kerberizer handles routine maintenance; Eliza Beth assists with Draft namespace housekeeping; PSS 9 is an older anti-vandalism experiment currently running mostly in observation mode; JSS 9 synchronizes JavaScript, CSS, and Module pages with the GitHub organization; and Kerberiel is my human-guided AI alter ego for substantially AI-assisted work and an experiment in persistent AI identity and community interaction.
My day job is with a small R&D-oriented SME, where—as tends to happen in small companies—I wear several hats: operations, DevOps, security, development, QA, and whatever else needs doing. Our work supports research across areas such as cheminformatics, toxicology, spectroscopy, and advanced materials, with a strong emphasis on open-source software, open standards, and FAIR and open data.
Wikimedia isn't my only volunteer work. For many years I've also helped C.lab at the University of Plovdiv provide dependable IT infrastructure for researchers, teachers, and students. Better and more accessible education may not solve every problem in the world, but it's certainly one of the prerequisites. I also contribute systems and DevOps work to meter.ac, an open-source environmental monitoring network observing a broad range of natural processes and providing FAIR, CC0-licensed data.
Since I sign my posts on talk pages with my first name, there's a doppelgänger account Luchesar to prevent impersonation. It is practically never used for editing.
Contact me
luchesar.iliev
gmail.com
Discord kerberizer
PLEASE READ BEFORE CONTACTING ME
- I'm a volunteer, with a day job, family, and other responsibilities. For ordinary Wikimedia matters, please use my public talk page or the appropriate community discussion page. Use the private contacts above mainly for urgent or genuinely sensitive matters that need my personal attention.
- Private messages do not receive priority merely because they are private, and I cannot promise a reply. I fall behind on email particularly easily.
- Please don't ask me to circumvent Wikimedia rules or procedures. Private communication is not automatically confidential. Wikimedia-related correspondence may sometimes need to be shared where transparency, due process, or community safety requires it. Genuinely sensitive abuse, security, or administrative information is appropriate to send privately and will be handled with care, but I cannot promise absolute confidentiality.
- Credible threats will be treated seriously and, where appropriate, reported to the relevant authorities.
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Notes
[edit]- ↑ wikimedia.bg was originally intended for a Wikimedia chapter in Bulgaria, which never materialized. The domain is now governed by the local community.
- ↑ wik.pe provides short links to Wikimedia projects, users, and selected initiatives—for example, wik.pe/en for the English Wikipedia or wik.pe/u/your_user_name for a Meta user page. If you have a useful idea for another shortcut, let me know.