User:Elf

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

All New: 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 Orphaned: 500 1001 1501

Elf is taking a long wikibreak and will be back on Wikipedia probably at random long intervals for minor edits and sometimes to check for messages, but 2 years of one's life is a long time to devote to something for which one doesn't get paid, no matter how interesting it has been.

• Elf started working on her Wikipedia addiction in January, 2004.
• She is a Wikipedia administrator
• Mostly she hangs out in Wikipedia:WikiProject Dog breeds and all the articles branching from List of dog breeds and Category:Dogs, but you never know where she'll end up when she starts pulling on that little loose wikithread—
• Taj MuttHall - blog about my life with agility dogs

Userboxes This user is an administrator on the English Wikipedia. Wikipedia:Babel en This user is a native speaker of English. fr-1 Cet utilisateur peut contribuer avec un niveau élémentaire de français. This user is a contributor to the Wikipedia dog breed project. Search user languages 17 000 This user has over 17 000 edits on the English Wikipedia. This user believes it is every citizen's duty to vote. SCU This user is a student at or graduate of Santa Clara University.

Wikipedia:Instruments

flute-3 This user is an advanced flautist.

Search user instruments This user lives in a user box under the freeway overpass. Bring chocolate.

[edit] My contributions so I don't lose track

• User:Elf/Contributions (not kept up to date)
• My photo contribs as thumbnails (trying to keep current)
• List of my photos by name (not kept quite as up to date)

[edit] What do I know, anyway, huh?

Taj MuttHall Residents
Boost (Border Collie) b. Jan '05
Tika (Aussie) b. Feb '01
Jake (mixed-breed) b. Nov '91
Remington (Lab mix) 1993-2003
Image:Havenophotouploaded.jpg Sheba (Siberian Husky) 1981-1998
Amber (GSD/Golden mix) 1978-1991

• I've been competing in dog agility for 8 years in three different agility organizations. So have my dogs[1].
• I've been a master composter for about the same amount of time and have allegedly taught hundreds of people how to compost yard waste.
• One of my dogs died in 2003 of hemangiosarcoma.
• I maintain various web sites [2] off and on, by hacking HTML or whatever other devious means are available to me.
• I read and sometimes write and even less sometimes sell speculative fiction stuff (this makes me a fiction writer) and technical stuff (this makes me a technical writer).
• I've been involved with computers, mostly software, since almost back when they used steam-powered CPUs. Incidentally, my first Mac was a 512K.
• Used to collect rocks. And stamps. And postcards.
• Topics I own many books on or in (Yes! This makes me an authority! Dagnabbit!):
  • Bridge (card game)
  • Dog breeds, Dog training, general dog info (see User:Elf/dog book database)
  • Writing fiction
  • Style, grammer; spelling, its a specailty (I'm a professional; don't try these misteaks at home)
  • Science fiction/fantasy
  • Gardening
  • Home repair and remodeling
  • Travel
• I'm a pretty good editor; have done it professionally for mumble years. I write badly in email and in my own user pages.

[edit] The horrible addiction

Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits

• May 7, 2004: Am now 320. This is not necessarily a good thing.
• July 1: #295. And that's while I'm "trying to cut back".
• Aug. 8: #288. My ascent is slowing--excellent.
• Aug 17:#292. Better. Doesn't FEEL like less, but OK.
• Aug 22: #286; up again! Crud. I blame it on mixed-breed dog getting nominated for featured article.)
• Sept 21: #271; bad, bad Elf.
• Sept 22: #265. How is that possible? Give it up--I'm doomed.
• Oct 10: #252. I've since been self-blocking for long periods. Perhaps this will help.
• Nov 8: Still #252. Promising. Plus I was gone from 9-14. We shall see...
• 12/16: #259. This is good. But last couple of days have been bad. Back to wrapping gifts.
• Mea culpa--Jan 3, #243.
• March 24, 2005: Good lord, 224.
• April 27: The slide continues to #219.
• July 24: Back down to #240 somehow; took a couple of weeks break (but mostly AFTER this date) and have been TRYING not to spend that much time here. (13 higher are bots on this list, though, so actually that's 227?)

June 25, 2005: I just cleaned out my watchlist and it's down to 1479! I feel so--so-- large--

• Oct 15: After more than 2 weeks of doing almost nothing here, I'm at--huh--#235. Go figure. I'm outa here again.
• Nov 29: Have made only 4 edits in the last month. I'm still sticking in there at #280! But that's a good drop. Bye again-- back to my real life.
• Mar 11, 2006: 223 again. Sigh.
• Sept 29, 2006: After at least 4 months of almost no activity, I have dropped to 373! Hooray! Keep going, you maniacal editors, make me eat your dust! Woohooooo!

[edit] Useful pages

• welcome to Wikipedia. (Also {{User:Meelar/wel}} is a good std welcome.)
• Wikipedian
• how to edit page
• naming conventions
• style guide
• help pages
• village pump
• votes for deletion / votes for undeletion
• How to write a great article
• Tip: you can sign your name with ~~~~
• Image use policy
• Special:Upload to upload images
• Wikipedia:Image copyright tags
• Lists of messages usable with {{msg}}: Wikipedia:MediaWiki namespace - Wikipedia:MediaWiki custom messages or Wikipedia:MediaWiki custom elements being the most relevant

[edit] My tips on creating new entries

• Include the bolded term as part of the first sentence, not as a separate preceding line.
• If the text is shorter than a couple of long paragraphs, that usually means there's a lot more info that *could* go there if someone had the info and the time. This is called a "stub"; you can include the text {{stub}} to draw attention to the page and make it easier for searches for stubs to find (usually people with time to work on content).
• Try to identify terms that already exist in Wikipedia and add links. I've found that it doesn't take much time if I remember:
  • Most noun articles are stored as singular rather than plural, hence e.g. [[shaman]]s finds the correct link to shaman but still leaves the plural in the text.
  • Capitalization is (usually) important, but you can link to something that's a different form in your sentence by "piping"--looks like this: [[Religious conversion|converts]] links to the existing page Religious conversion but leaves the word converts in the text
  • You can use the Show preview button at the bottom of the edit page to get a preview, including your guesses at links, click on the links to see whether they link anywhere, then use your browser Back button to get back to the edit page and adjust them, etc. until you're ready to Save page.

[edit] My laughs for the day

• Almost anything from m:Wikipedian#Wikipedia_humor

[edit] Links with an attitude (humor taken from a history page)

23 Apr 2004

17:45 Haydn and Croatian folk music (cur; hist) (removed the telephone directory link which is largely impertinent)

[edit] axiom-thrust particle disproportionators

...that says We are reconfiguring the axiom-thrust particle disproportionators in order to improve flange density followed by 19 pages of argument about why this is right, wrong, or would be better with m-dashes! :) Thanks, --Nevilley 09:17, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Using m-dashes to reconfigure the axiom-thrust particle disproportionators would be the height of stupidity... Duh! Tuf-Kat 14:15, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Things to do

[edit] Dog project

• Most moved to Wikipedia:WikiProject Dog breeds/To do

• All links to conformation were chgd to link to conformation point, which I don't think is correct, but I'm not sure what to call the main article (which could also apply to horses, I've found...)--conformation (animal)? Elf | Talk 19:09, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Other stuff

• Go through plate what links here and dab them all. Sigh.
• playground project
• Scan in basic fingering for flute article?
• Tokugawa Yoshinobu copyedit
• Faust_Vrancic
• January_1922_in_the_United_Kingdom and related
• Create wikipedia proofreading/copyediting markup page
• Create manuscript format sample format
• Edit FrameMaker, Interleaf, etc. pages
• Copyedit and NPOV FileMaker
• Pom-pom/pompon
• Need separate articles on perambulator/baby carriage and/or stroller/pushcarriage (and remove or disambig from cart and/or carriage

[edit] The anonymous Croatian editor

Track down & copyedit pages for:

• User:65.43.185.35 thru Mar 13
• User:66.72.160.129
• User:66.213.15.80 thru Apr 3 pm
• User:66.213.16.200 thru apr 8
• User:67.39.194.0
• User:67.39.198.184 thru mar 15
• User:67.39.198.217 thru mar 20
• User:67.39.200.44 thru mar 15
• User:67.39.201.119 thru mar 15
• User:67.39.202.103 thru mar 15
• User:68.73.172.25 thru mar 15
• User:68.76.84.171 ( Franz von Suppé and maybe more)
• User:68.76.86.3
• User:68.76.97.146 thru mar 15
• User:68.76.99.208
• User:68.76.107.67
• User:68.76.110.121
• User:68.76.117.39
• User:68.76.118.114 thru mar 15
• User:68.76.119.158
• User:68.252.172.227, [[Vlaho Bukovac}}
• User:68.252.172.1
• User:81.214.3.95
• User:193.198.144.160
• User:67.38.247.187
• (Articles to check if I ever want to start backtracking again: Cakovec - Dragutin Lerman - Ferdinand Konscak - List of Croatians - Medjimurje county) - Mura - Nikola Zrinski )

[edit] Things taken off watchlist

Some things I've done something (mostly minor but not always) but don't feel the need to track at the moment: Acrostic - Albert R. Broccoli - American Paint Horse - Anemone - Angus - Apple Macintosh II - Babe (movie) - Baker Street tube station - Beanie - Black - Black (disambiguation) - Bleeding heart - Blind - Bobbin lace - Bobcat - Bobcat (disambiguation) - Bolo - Bond Street tube station - Braid - Bucket - Buckingham Palace - Candy - Cape Meares Lighthouse - Capitola, California - Carmel-by-the-Sea, California - Carriage - Cart - Cattle - Cloverleaf interchange - Coca-Cola - Color - Copy editing - Crayon - Crossword - Cupcake - Currant - Cursor - Day - Devon - Diablo, California - Diana, Princess of Wales - Dicentra - District of Columbia (geography) - Domotics - Dried Currant - Dutch Belted - Eggs Benedict - English muffin - Euphonium - Eye (disambiguation) - FileMaker - Fowl - Fresnel lens - Green Park tube station - Guernsey cattle - Harrow - Hazel - Hidalgo (movie) - Hippeastrum - Horse - Hunting (disambiguation) - Hyacinth (flower) - Mogollon Rim - National park - Playing card - Poison oak -Recessive gene - Romany language - Russell Square tube station - Sauce - Semi-trailer - Volleyball -Westminster

Too much fun but occupy too much of my reading time on my watchlist or are too distracting when I go there: American and British English differences - List of British English words not used in American English - List of words having different meanings in British and American English - User:Tim Starling/Feature poll - User:Topbanana/Reports/Duplicate article title - User:Topbanana/Reports/This article may contain a mis-spelled word - User:Topbanana/Reports/This may be missing a space after a comma - User:Topbanana/Reports/This page contains a link that might be misspelled - Wikipedia:Copyright problems - Wikipedia:Clinic for Wikipediholics - Wikipedia:Categorization - Wikipedia:Checked edits brainstorming - Wikipedia:Images for deletion - Wikipedia:Manual of Style - Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies) - Wikipedia:Most wanted stubs - Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images - Wikipedia:Requests for page expansion - Wikipedia:Possibly unfree images - Wikipedia:Unusual articles

[edit] Mysterious Wiki Logout/ Anon users that are really me

• I made some edits as User:64.173.10.20 on Sept 7 thinking that I was logged in (because I had *just* logged in!); Wiki logged me out sometime between 17:51 and 17:54.
• Same problem again Oct 13; User:67.118.10.177.
• Oct 14, More edits as User: 64.173.9.99 but I think it was my fault for not doing anything on the site for maybe an hour or so.
  • Requested that these be changed at Wikipedia:Changing attribution for an edit.