User:Crunchydillpickle/cool

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General links

First versions of articles, 2001 oddities, etc

"first version" = earliest version currently on record (not counting the early revisions on old servers that are lost)

  • Beauty starts with "Eventually, we'll have an article on beauty here. Apparently, flowers are beautiful."
  • fly "A fly is a small insect which lands on food and carries germs. Not as nasty as a cocroach, but more mobile."
  • America: "Continent located between the PacificOcean and the AtlanticOcean. It was connected to AsiA long ago..."
  • Ant: "STUB The poor little ant doesn't have an article? I know nothing about ants, but at least I didn't crack the "Wife of my uncle" joke."
  • Titanic film: "Quite possibly the worst film to ever receive an award of any kind. I know, I know, that's a very bad writeup. I'm just having fun and trying to get some attention. We can erase this when we get a good writeup.  :-) --JimboWales"
  • Archimedes simply says "mathematician and inventor" but includes a note to add the "eureka thing"
  • Al Gore was Albert Arnold Gore and Bill Clinton was William Jefferson Clinton
  • Alabama: "Homestate of JimboWales."
  • Country music: only lists Pete Seeger and Peter, Paul and Mary and Garth Brooks (twice)
  • Delaware: "A state made famous by the movie WaynesWorld."
  • Kansas State University talk page
  • Horror Film only listed two: Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream
  • TheIliad Jan 28: "Great Greek epic about the wrath of AchillEus.  Will say more later." – JoshuaGrosse
  • Old Iowa article links the entertainer Dick Clark instead of the much less famous Iowa senator by the same name
  • The first "List of comedians" only had Groucho Marx, Marx Brothers, and George Carlin
  • first Latvia article called it "small and nice country in EasternEurope"
  • first Gangsta rap article's writer clearly loved Ice T haha
  • Earth
  • Europe: "Contintent stretching from the NorthSea and the AtlanticOcean in the west to the UralMountains in the east. From the MediteraineanOcean in the south to the north pole. Contains all the following countries: SwedeN, DenmarK, FinlanD, EstoniA, some more" (spells continent wrong, only lists four countries, misclassifies Mediterranean Sea as ocean, spells Mediterranean wrong)
  • Germany: "Germany is a country in the middle of EuropE and it takes part in the EuroCurrency. Feel free to add more stuff you'd like to add."
  • Grunge Music: under "prominent bands," the only two listed are "Mudhoney" and "NirvanaBand"
  • Hobbies: "I would love someone to give us a good definition of ''hobby''. Hobbies include: Collecting, Coin collecting, Stamp collecting, Gardening, Antiquing (what's the word?), Cooking of course, MuSic Etc."
  • Ohio: March 7 by Andy Jewell, in its entirety: "Consists of Cincinnati, plus Cincinnati's north eastern suburbs.
  • Los Angeles: the only thing under "Places/Things of Interest" was "Hollywood"
  • Islands simply mentions five islands: "4 Islands located west of Chile and East of French Polynesia. Close to the shipping lane between New Zealand and Panama. One Island of the coast of Australia called Fraser Island."
  • MammaMia: "An exclamation, meaning "Oh my gosh!" or something of that sort. This may be an ItalianLanguage expression, or perhaps only English-speaking people's fantasy of an ItalianLanguage expression, I do not know. Not to be confused with MammaLia, the order of Mammals in our Science area.  ;-)" – Jimbo
  • MetallicA opened with "One of the greatest Metal bands ever."
  • Mullet describes both the fish and the haircut.
  • NicolasCage (forgot the h): "FrancisFordCoppola's nephew." By WojPob Feb 18
  • Yogurt article didn't exist til December 11 2002 which seems kinda late
  • Woman left a bit to be desired.
  • Back in 2001, Race (the human categorization) shared the same article as race (the competition of speed over distance).
  • Rosa Parks in its entirety, January 21: "Cool ole biddy (ment in a most respectful way, of course), who served as lightning rod for change merely because of her selft confidence in her right to sit where she pleased on the bus."
  • The first version of the "Hobby" article (that we have on the servers) includes "Adding stuff to Wikipedia"
  • The entirety of the first Jennifer Aniston: "Jennifer Aniston is a wonderful woman and very beautiful.She is a one of the best 'Friends'"
  • First Mariah Carey from 2001 started with: "Woman with a beautiful voice (capable of spanning seven octaves). Sings pop music. She is one of the most talented, beautiful women out there today." And contained "Whilst she can surely sing, most of her songs are quite remarkably banal." Very opinionated!
    • The first Mariah Carey article in the old Reagle archives says "Chick with big t*ts and a hell of a voice (capable of spanning seven octaves). Still wonder why she uses her music to do such boring pop-music."
  • Macaroni in October 2001 started with the line, "Maccaroni is a fancy kind of pasta."
  • The first N.W.A article in March 2001 (created by Jimbo, unless the server backup is incomplete) with the edit summary "Learning something new every day"
  • MuSic: "That which soothes the savage beast..."
  • North America March 9: "Continent consisting of the countries of: Belize, Canada, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Texas, United States"
  • Baywatch simply says "Pamela played CJ PARKER"
  • The second version of the BeeR article Jan 29 2001: said "after eight or nine pints, you may begin to a: fall asleep b: ThrowUp c: start a FiGht d: have CasualSex."
  • The first version of MTV had a section for "MTV shows of note" which only listed Beavis and Butthead.
  • Before talk pages existed, when there were comments in the article itself: London, William Jefferson Clinton ("statements like "the most controversial Presidential Pardon in US history" should probably be left till more than 4 weeks after the event"), Thomas Edison
  • PoLitics Jan 26: Politics comes from the root word poly meaning many and tics meaning bloodsucking insects.
  • Phillies: first article contained lines like "Imaginitively named for a verbal shorthand of their city of residence ( "'Philly' )," and "If they make it to the playoffs, I'll update this."
  • ReCreation Jan 21: "We spend so much time engaged in recreation, why, we all ought to know all about it. The WeekEnd is typically a time for recreation, perhaps (in Western and Muslim cultures) because the SabBath falls on the WeekEnd and the SabBath is "the day of rest." Recreation is different from LeiSure."
  • Siberian Husky in its entirety on 17 January 2001: "That which pulls one's sled or possibly you..."
  • SocceR Feb 8: "The name that the SporT called FootBall in the rest of the world has in the UnitedStates" –AstroNomer
  • SouthDakota: "A state in the high plains of the northern Middle West. It is often cold there."
  • SnowBOARDING not the first version, Jan 26: "This snowboarding page is dedicated to all the hot snowbunnies!"
  • SubLime Jan 17: "That which is below a lime.----To use as an adjective, do we say subliminal? And a verb would be sublimate?----Or subliminalize? Or subliminimalize? Or sublimaximize?"
  • TopOlogy Jan 19: "What is topology, and why do people study it?" –anon, maybe Larry? An answer came three days later :-)
  • USStandardOfLiving: "The nation with the highest living standard in human history" – anon, maybe Tim
  • UuU lists the United Kingdom, United States, and Uruguay. But not Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Ukraine, or Uzbekistan
  • The very colorfully-written Warsaw article says "It is a phoenix that has risen repeatedly from the ashes of war."
  • Wales Third sentence added March 6: "Not to be confused with JimboWales, or with whales, which are both considerably smaller than Wales." – Larry
  • Wikimedia (Foundation) 's article in March 2003 (before WMF existed): "Wikimedia is an offshoot of Wikipedia first proposed by Daniel Ehrenberg (LittleDan). Instead of writing encyclopedia articles, users write articles about current events. Instead of writing NPOV, users write every point of view."
  • Wine: started with the quote: "Good wine is a necessity of life for me." -- ThomasJefferson
  • WhyPhilosophize, Feb 2, is one of the articles Larry borrowed from old teaching materials from grad school: "I assume you're signed up for this class because you want to learn about philosophy" is how it starts.
  • WorldWarOne Jan 26: "World War I was the first war, that spanned nealry the whole world. It began 1914 and ended 1918. Nearly 20 mio. people died."
  • COVID-19 (initially titled "2019-nCoV Acute Respiratory Syndrome") February 5, 2020: "2019-nCoV Acute Respiratory Syndrome is a viral respiratory disease of zoonotic origin caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV)."
  • COVID-19 pandemic (initially "2019-2020 China pneumonia outbreak") January 5, 2020: "2019-2020 China pneumonia outbreak, or China pnumonia, commonly known as Wuhan pnumia (Chinese: 武漢肺炎; pinyin: wǔhàn fèiyán) or pneumonia of unknown origin (Chinese: 不明原因肺炎; pinyin: bùmíng yuányīn fèiyán), is the pneumonia outbreak firstly discovered in Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, China."
    • The creator,

Articles that have existed for a surprisingly long time or a surprisingly short time

  • The Balloon-Hoax article existed September 29, 2001, very early in the encyclopedia's history.
  • Biggest ball of twine has existed since 2005-04-28
  • I knew that early Wikipedia editors were (and kinda still are) academically-inclined hacker dudes, but it's crazy when you realize the article about mole day, created January 2002, is an entire year older than the article "hip hop music" and five years older than "fashion show"
  • there were months when wikipedia had an article about Mole Day (created January 2002), a fake holiday celebrated in chemistry class, but not Kolkata or hip hop music. Mole Day is five years older than fashion show!
  • Laid edges didn't exist until the end of 2023
  • Evil has been around a lot longer than Good
  • Wikipedia has had an article on beauty since 2001(well, sorta, the first version wasn't great...) but ugliness wasn't added until 2016.

Essays and stuff to read

  1. User:JPxG/All essays by size
  2. User:Tony1/How to improve your writing
  3. User:Antandrus/observations on Wikipedia behavior
  4. Wikipedia:Writing about women
  5. User:Giano/A fool's guide to writing a featured article
  6. User:Ihcoyc/The problem of anti-supernatural bias
  7. User:SandyGeorgia/Achieving excellence through featured content
  8. User:Tony1/How to improve your writing

Discussions to check out

Interesting Wikiprojects etc

  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Squatting, with the goal of "improv[ing] Wikipedia's coverage of squatting, the occupation without permission of abandoned or unoccupied buildings or land."
  • there was a Bacon WikiCup from 2010 to 2012 to improve bacon articles

If there were a podcast with 5 min episodes in which Wikipedia editors talked about one silly or interesting articles they'd written, here's who I would want to be on it

Interesting sentences

...that sound like total nonsense without context or make me chuckle or both

Images or graphics about TV or movies

Halloween (franchise)#/media/File:Halloween Film Franchise Continuity.svg

Wikipedia articles

Wikipedia editors who I think are cool and/or interesting

  • User:Anna Frodesiak's beautifully designed userpage
  • Simple but great user pages: User:Begoon, User:Harold the Sheep, User:Coffee, User:The wub (simple but sublime!), User:Download (techy word art vibe), Miniapolis, Dog The Teddy Bear (a 50 year old teddy bear who edits the 'pedia), User:Chaotic Enby's page is creative, User:Alanscottwalker has a satisfying section in which the lines are organized by length, The Rambling Man. Shirt58's user page includes a diagram of "the shapes I hear consonants as". Jimfbleak's has a list of "birds seen *in* roofed restaurants"
  • I like hearing the story of how articles got written, so I appreciate that Samwalton9 says "Think I have RSI from writing this in one go" about List of Honest Trailers episodes (though I hope his hands are okay)
  • User:Longhairadmirer's 17-year commitment to editing articles about long hair
  • User:Frankonno says he is Eva Braun's cousin
  • User:Claude A. R. Kagan's charming yet crochety userpage (he was foundational to the field of computing)
  • User:AaronSw/Things without names Aaron Schwartz will forever be one of the Wikipedia greats and his "things without names" user subpage makes my heart ache
  • https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciaal:Bijdragen/Diamant dutch editor who made 12,000 edits between the ages of 8 and 13, only stopping because he died of type 2 spinal muscular atrophy
  • User:Gmaxwell, who has given Wikipedia the adminship map, also developed the opus audio codec and the bitcoin protocol. his website lists some of his acomplishments ( "discovered a faster constant-time algorithm for computing a greatest common divisor" in 2021) and hobbies ("communicating by bouncing signals off the ionization trails left by meteors"). I think this is cool!
  • User:ToBeFree made a t-shirt with the css of their userpage
  • User:Lee Daniel Crocker, one of the MediaWiki programmers: "After the software had been running on my piclab.com server for a while and tested by the community, I installed the software on what was then Wikipedia's single server, named "pliny" after Pliny the elder. I later named Wikipedia's second server "larousse", following in the historical-encyclopedists line. Today, this software (now known as Mediawiki), has been expanded by dozens of other authors to the point where there's very little of my own code left. After my software enabled it, I was the first to add sound samples to Wikipedia, in the articles for The Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel."
  • User:Jmabel, one of the Wikiepdia, old timers. and his self portrait!
  • Chilscout's Commons userpage just says "in depth knowledge of door closers, especialiy Powermatic concealed door closers" and their enwiki contribs are all related to door closing. they uploaded this awesome picture of flames
  • I like that User:Jeanne boleyn lists her favorite things, and her family tree, and dozens of bad pickup lines she has received lol
  • Lucy Ozarin was born in 1914, became a psychiatrist, served in WWII, and spent her late 90s writing about psychiatrists for Wikipedia
  • User:Peaceray has a section on his userpage "Why I edit Wikipedia" which discusses some of his early research interests. History of coffeehouses! 19th century vegetarianism in the United States! I like when people share what got them started.
  • User:Jengod, a "SAHM of four who writes encyclopedia articles on her phone while waiting to pick up the kids, etc"
  • When User:Mitchazenia chooses arbitrarily long, unusually specific lengths of time to block people
  • User:LunaEatsTuna's userpage has different versions in the web design style of different years!
  • User:TonyTheTiger's userpage is full of tigers
  • User:Dicklyon
  • User:Mstyslav_Chernov/ is an Academy Award winning documentary director with tons of wikimedia commons uploads.
  • User:Guy M... Vegas guy "known primarily for once having a Dodge Ram 1500 extended cab for a taxicab."
  • ok i think it's interesting that Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign communications director has an account lol User:Joedesantis
  • User:CoronalMassAffection who writes almost exclusively about the sun
  • Special:Contributions/Freya Lorelei -- never interacts with anyone, edits about hamsters for like 4 hours at a time
  • User:Stone, German chemist who is slowly turning the periodic table green
  • User:Karen Johnson is an Australian woman who created TONS of Wikipedia's most important articles back in 2003ish
  • User:Apokryltaros makes art of sea creatures
  • I like that Premeditated chaos describe their editing as "A process of leapfrogging hyperfixations has led to an interest in the goddesses of Georgian mythology, Inuit clothing, and obscure fashion articles, however." relatable
  • User:Queen of Hearts userpage's photo caption joke
  • User:Dispenser cool userpage with ASCII art wikipedia globe!
  • I like Doctree's userpage (specifically the squirrel story and Microsoft-bashing)
  • Pbsouthwood, a guy surveying dive sites of Cape Town for WikiVoyage
  • First guy to reach 1 million edits, User:Koavf
  • amazing arthropod illustrator
  • MoviesandTelevisionFan who makes tons of articles about US politicians despite not speaking great English
  • person who only edits about cats :) SilverTiger12
  • User:Wilhelmina Will who has made a metric bazillion articles about beetles
  • User:Fylbecatulous's userpage is written in LOLCat language
  • photographers David Shankbone and gage skidmore and Evan Amos!
  • All the monochromatic editors, including Orange Mike (I think it's funny he was the one who blocked the username 2Dudes1Laptop
  • drop down menu of mental disorders (iconic) and lurid details of dog's death User:Shadow345110
  • Category:Wikipedians who are indefinitely blocked for a violation of the username policy
  • https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ListFiles/HerB104&ilshowall=1 person who uploads drawings of people for French Wikipedia when "fair use" doesn't cut it
  • User:Flagvisioner visualizes flags
  • people who make those timelines of band members. one is NebulaGRILLZ https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tetrarch_(band)&diff=prev&oldid=1022222756
  • Slgrandson writes most of the Care Bears-related articles!!
  • Kacper Surdy, a 20-year-old economics student at Durham University in England, who got a big Politico writeup for his social media corrections regarding the US congress. The article says that people thought he was AI and that he "frequently runs circles around veteran congressional experts". He also has a Wikipedia account where he has made more than 2600 edits, mostly about US Congress
  • special:contributions/217.168.172.202, a user with more than 5,000 contributions between June and October 2002 who only got one message addressed to them (this was spotted by Graham87 and I took it from his userpage)
  • Sethant, who has been editing since December 20, 2003 and by the end of the month completed his goal of getting all executed prisoners in the U.S. since 1976, by state
  • User:DavidWBrooks, a 21-year Wikipedia veteran whose userpage says "I am a newspaper reporter in New Hampshire. (I am not the NY Times' David Brooks.)"
  • User:Vladyreaper is extremely focused on the niche but surprisingly complex topic of slalom canoeing
  • cool that User:ParkerHiggins gave the talk "Vegetation Wants To Be Free" about the images from Pomological Watercolor Collection
  • User:Figureskatingfan and her very patient, thorough, and rather profound answer to the question "where is sesame street". She's the one to thank for Wikipedia's coverage of female saints, Sesame Street, Maya Angelou's work, and yes, figure skating!
  • User:~delta is a Virginia high schooler who writes about Korean roller coasters!
  • I love the old userpage of Jivesh Boodhun, the guy from Mauritious who wrote 34 GAs and two FAs about Beyonce-related topics
  • Chris huh uploaded all 168 of those "size compared to an average human" illustrations in the articles for marine mammals such as narwhal
  • Cinemacriterion has written almost a thousand articles about movies.
  • User:Daniel Quinlan's yearcard has a 20 year split! he took a break (mostly) between 2003 and 2023
  • User:Hitcher vs. Candyman/Articles created and User:The Film Creator this person, who has had two accounts, has created 1400 articles about films and counting! barely interacts with anyone. I'm curious what they are like IRL :-)
  • The Swedish-American doctor Mikael Häggström who uploads medical images from consenting patients. A volume-rendered CT scan gif of a woman 37 weeks pregnant (a featured picture!), computer tomography of the human brain (a featured picture!), a CT scan of a 73-year-old woman's accessory spleen, a wiggling 9-week-old embryo is in the fetal movement article, hip bone metastases in a 60-year-old woman with cancer, and so many more. He also created the article Everything which must be fun to brag about. And he gently explained to a concerned viewer of one of his brain pictures why it was so blue. (the anonymous person replied "This really does mean a lot to me, somehow it put my mind at ease :)) I appreciate it! <3". Wholesome!) Also, he uploaded a bunch of x-rays of his own bones. Not all doctor photo uploaders fare so well (Chicago plastic surgeon who uploaded before and after pics of things like breast augmentations and eventually got blocked for socking and other stuff)
  • One editor with very unconventional contribs is This lousy T-shirt whose edits are almost entirely adding welcome messages to new users with Hebrew usernames
  • I love when Wikipedia editors with great contributions in a particular niche get into programs/jobs in that niche. There are probably tons of examples, but the only one I can think of now is User:Katolophyromai AKA Spencer McDaniel, who has edited articles about ancient cultures as a high schooler in Kokomo (literally), college student studying Ancient Greek and Roman, and now grad student in the classics. Also Consumed Crustacean, who wrote about video games (and sort of pretended to be a shrimp) and now links his LinkedIn, which says he's a senior video game software engineer.
  • User:Wilfredor on commons, aka The Photographer, who vectorizes stuff for people! Great bio too
  • User from Nepal whose constant food uploads include A_Banana.jpg, Buffalo_Milk_.jpg, Green_tea_that_look_brown.jpg, the rather cursed-looking Banana_Syrup.jpg, and many more
  • User:Agne27, the woman who has written more than 800 articles about wine!
  • I learned, thanks to Jengod, about the California-area mycologist/Wikipedian Alan Rockefeller. More than his 2000 of his photos are used on Wikipedia to illustrate obscure fungi and small weird plants (and scorpions he finds under rocks and photographs under UV light)
  • There's something endearing about the editors, usually old-timers, who treat their userspace like a blog. User:Greg L is one example. Another is User:Tomwsulcer(archived link) who has sections like "The problem with Canada," "The Palin-Revere brouhaha," "Fixing the US Constitution".
  • User:David Merrill's userpage says he wrote the first version of the homosexuality and gay rights articles. And he's still somewhat active here!
  • Very early Wikipedian from California and former admin Zoe. She wrote on her userpage "I'm a movie nut. I've made it through all of the movies listed in Academy Award for Best Picture and all of the movies and actors listed in Academy Award for Best Actor, and I'm about to tackle Academy Award for Best Actress."... "I don't seem to be able to tear myself away." In November 2002 she wrote that she was considering leaving because of hostility "would anyone say that to a person with a male or neutral name?" and Renata's reply included "I sometimes get the feeling that there aren't many active women on 'pedia, and that we can't afford to lose a single one of them. I've also been "shot at" a few times, but I've developed a thicker skin now, and I stay because I enjoy working on the 'pedia and because I learn a lot about the things I write about." Kind of interesting to see such early talk of the gender gap we talk about so much now. Sadly Zoe left in 2007 after Jimbo criticized her emails to Tim Pierce and Northern Illinois University administration after Pierce, a Communications instructor, gave students mandatory assignment to vandalize
  • Got any thoughts on userboxe(s|n)? User:Sam Hocevar sure does
  • User:My very best wishes is a theoretical molecular biophysics researcher who often edits articles about global politics and wars and wars. They also write Russian poems on their user page and talk page!
  • North Shoreman's userpage is not shockingly unique but it gives a wonderful little glimpse at who he is. I wish more people included simple bios like this. They make me happy! "I am a medicare eligible grandfather and retiree. The name North Shoreman refers to my residence on the Ohio side of Lake Erie in the western suburbs of Cleveland. My primary interest is the American Civil War and the antebellum period."
  • User:ProveIt is a former admin who started as a content editor from 2005-2008ish and then mostly gave up his Wikipedia habit — except for one bizarre, rather mindless task that he performed from 2008 to 2023: creating fresh Categories for Discussion pages for each day of the year. He stopped after fifteen years when the task was automated by AnomieBOT.
  • Here on English Wikipedia where we speak English and write an encyclopedia it's pretty rare to see slangy creole-y writing anywhere so it's fun to spot editors conversing in a regional English that I don't hear every day. Here's a Nigerian Wikipedian dropping a couple Igbo phrases in a chatty post on one of his frequent collaborator's talk pages.
  • User:Bilorv/Challenges! these are so fun! I particularly like rock around the clock ("Make an edit in each of the 168 hours of the week"), and ambiguation ("Create two articles that have the same title except for parentheticals")
  • User:Brian Josephson has a Nobel Prize in physics (which you can read about on Brian Josephson, his article space page) and makes very careful copyedits to articles about things like Taylor Swift songs and brown bread.
  • I learned from Secret's 2013 Reddit AMA that he was a nightclub promoter in Miami for five years and thought of making a career out of nightclub management! I am always amazed when editors come from backgrounds I would not expect. He said he hasn't edited about Miami nightclubs but that "one time the nightclub I was working for was hosting some music video vixen and I decided to check [the] article out. I saw it was crap and she didn't meet our notability guidelines and I speedy deleted it the same day she was supposed to host." I do not typically imaging Wikipedians editing from nightclubs (or immediately before clubbing) and I love to be surprised. He also said Miami's nightlife scene was overrated, so I suppose now I don't have to have any FOMO. And he listed some particularly stupid AfDs (make sense since he does a lot of deletion): "List of groups of nine (an article that was about anything related to the number nine), Rugrats vocabulary (remember this show?) and List of songs featuring cowbells (obvious) among thousands of others. List of films that most frequently use the word fuck still exists though." Anyway, he's been blocked and desysopped but I still appreciate the good things he gave to Wikipedia and I wish only good things for his life with illness.
  • User:MER-C appears to do some of the most thankless administrative work, like contributor copyright investigations and conflict of interest enforcement.
  • Risker's userpage has a list of milestones. I like this one: "Orangemoody paid editing sockpuppetry investigation - a different kind of answer to "So what did you do last summer?""
  • User:The person who loves reading's user page starts with: "Hi, everybody! I am an editor who loves reading."
  • Grumpylawnchair's userpage has a photo of a lawn chair captioned "Me chilling on a nice lawn."
  • User:Shadow345110 grew, according to his userpage infobox, from 5'9 in 2023 to 5'10 in 2024
  • I'm sad I never got to meet Possibly but I like the section of his userpage called "New name: Possibly" that says: "Formerly ThatMontrealIP. Out of curiosity I looked up the account Possibly. It turned out that the account had only made two edits, fourteen years ago. That made it possible to usurp the account. Is this new name better than the old one? Possibly."
  • Shearonink's userpage stars with "Sometimes...sometimes I find little articles and I feel sorry for them. So I try to fix them up and hope they stay around." Has 9 GAs, 2 FAs, and tons of barnstars, many of which are for patiently helping newbies on IRC. My fav thing is that the barnstars they give out say "Congrats, it's a...." and then in a smaller font "Wikipedia Good Article!!"
  • I like the old userpage of User:Miranda, where her list of interests include scrapbooking, university Greek life, America's Next Top Model, law, and fashion. I like when Wikipedians proclaim interest in stereotypically feminine topics, mostly just because it doesn't seem to happen as much as it should. Her top-edited articles were Alpha Kappa Alpha, Seth MacFarlane, and list of Alpha Kappa Alpha members and she made 34k edits overall, mostly in 2007. Her last edit was in 2012 :(
  • MelanieN got a COI notice (automated, I hope) for changing a comma in the Donald Trump article because her name is close to Melania Trump. She is, however, not Melania Trump!
  • I like Guy Vandegrift not only for his contributions to science articles but also because his name sounds like a parody of a person who doesn't know what they're talking about (yet he seems to know what he's talking about).
  • Wikipedia:Featured pictures/Plants/Fruits is amazing. So many of the featured fruits were photographed by User:Iifar AKA Ivar Leidus, an Estonian railway engineer who was the subject of a Diff article in 2013. He joined Wikipedia in September 2011 after seeing banners on Estonian Wikipedia for the Wiki Loves Monuments contest.
  • User:Basket of Puppies is retired and their user page says "Don't get excited; I am only here to edit Spontaneous cerebrospinal fluid leak."
  • wholesome away message from Llywrch in 2006: I'll be away from Wikipedia until the end of May: it's not a Wikivacation, but a real tourist-style vacation involving travel, sun, sand & amusement parks. (I may stop by once or twice before then, but I'm not promising to respond to queries or even edit an article or talk page if I do.)"
  • the person who created an alt account on valentines day "in memory of one of his girlfriend" lol
  • At ScottishFinnishRadish's RfA, after answering some questions, he wrote "every time I grab my wife's chromebook to answer these questions, rather than trying to do it on my phone, my wife says, 'Why don't you answer for your crimes, you Scottish Finnish Bitch!" She doesn't really understand what an RFA is, or what this discussion entails, but that line is absolutely hilarious and everyone needs a good chuckle in a discussion like this"
  • None of User:Aboutmovies' 32 good articles are about movies, and neither is his career (attorney in Oregon). In contract, all of User:Rusted AutoParts' 32 GAs are movies
  • User:Xwomanizerx wrote 32 GAs, almost all about Britney Spears.
  • User:Sims2aholic8 wrote 29 GAs between 2008 and 2024, literally all of them about Eurovision.
  • The userpage of User:NoD'ohnuts says "My real name is Ryan and I am a high schooler in Kansas, the state. And I know what your thinking a high schooler with a wikipedia account. NEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRDDDDDDDDDD! Well...your partly right." What's amazing is that he has 33 Good Articles, mostly about episodes of The Simpsons and The Office.
  • Many Wikipedians run their own websites. The admin Nick Moyes runs a livestream of peregrine falcons in a Derby Cathedral. Unrelatedly, he also made the first Flora of Derbyshire book since 1969. Stamp-focused editor Stan Shebs maintains StampData.com, a resource he says has 744,000 stamps so far and hosts many of his stamp-related WP articles, even the deleted ones (like "List of people on the postage stamps of Zambia", "List of people on the postage stamps of Eswatini" etc). Dan Koehl, a Swedish elephant trainer in Cambodia, joined Wikipedia in 2002 and created the elephant encyclopedia in 2005, User:Kbdank71 ran a site called "The Opinionated Beer Page" Editor Nigelj maintains a sailing site. User:IagoQnsi documents sports history on sportsarchive.net
  • VictorianMutant "Dated a girl about 5 years ago who was an administrator, so I know a little about wikiculture."
  • Kingoflettuce, who I met at a conference, has had a "Potato production in x" habit, like Potato production in Cambodia, Potato production in China, Potato production in Nigeria, Potato production in Zimbabwe. He also wrote the MrBeast article in 2018 which gets crazy traffic these days!
  • User:Wizardman did a 2013 Reddit AMA, and wrote that saw and enjoyed the Colbert bit that made fun of his username (it was June 4 2009 and the joke was like "good thing the arbitration committee is full of people that sound trustworthy like wizardman" or something). Colbert also mentioned Carcharoth, Newyorkbard, and Wizardman."Spat my drink out first time I watched it," he wrote.
  • Jpgordon apparently was the lead trumpet in the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo for a couple of years in the '70s and is the cousin of Eddie Carmel (a "Jewish giant" with an interesting Wikipedia article!)
  • Mike Godwin, Wikimedia Foundation's former lawyer who is the namesake of Godwin's law and the guy that popularized the term "internet meme"!

Cool username info

  • User:Voice of Clam's username was inspired by a typo in a church sheet ("Speak through the earthquake, wind and fire, oh still small voice of clam)
  • User:Bobman123: "Hi! My name is NOT Bob, I took it from SpongeBob SquarePants."
  • Ice Welder's username was inspired by Wikihow's "How to Make a Unique Username" article ("Try using two favorites from different categories. For instance, if you love ice hockey and creating art out of scrap metal, you might become "IceWelder.")
  • Another username explanation that tickled me: Dora the Axe-plorer, who has written dozens and dozens of earthquake articles as well as Seoul Halloween crowd crush, wrote that he chose his username because he used to like Dora The Explorer but then started watching slasher films.
  • User:78.26 wrote "From whence does this humorless numerical handle originate? It is the precise speed of most high-speed phonograph records (commonly called "78s") in North America." Oh, of course!
  • Infrogmation, a part-time trombone player (and radio host, and jazz writer, etc) has had an account since 2002 and says he chose his username because "after I wore a frog costume for Mardi Gras, some people called me 'Froggy'"
  • "Hello, I'm Relativity (the Wikipedian, not the concept.)" said the user Relativity.
  • "Hello! I'm Roundish. It's pronounced like 'Potato'". -Roundish's user page.
  • "My username's kind of stupid (I was 13 or so when I made it), but I can't really think of anything to change it to." -ThePlatypusofDoom
  • Joke by FourViolas about the username FourViolas: "So, this violist is coming home from a gig (that's not the joke). He stops to get some groceries, and as he's standing in the checkout line he realizes, to his horror, that he parked under a streetlight and left his viola on the back seat in plain view! He drops his bags and sprints outside, but it's too late: somebody has already smashed the back window and thrown in three more violas."
  • "When I signed up to be an editor here at Wikipedia, the username I wanted was taken. So was my second choice. So was my third choice. It wasn't until about the fifth or sixth try I gave up, and then thought to myself, there "is no way" that all of these username's have been taken. So, I bravely typed Isaidnoway into the box and 'lo and behold it was accepted. So now I am stuck with it and I'm OK with it."
  • A user called "power" failed a request for adminship.
  • User:Supercool Dude. Joined in 2004 and has an interesting and unusual userpage with lots of info. "Everyone keeps asking Supercool Dude, how he got his screenname. One day in 1963, his father bought their family their very first Air Conditioner. That Summer it was very hot outside and he walked up to the huge A/C and turned the machine on super cool and he stood there cooling off and said out loud, "I am one super cool dude!".
  • "Hi, I'm Peter aka Shirt58. My username comes from the field hockey shirt I was allocated some while ago. Yes, men do play field hockey. And Tasmania is not a fictional place."
  • Kind Tennis Fan: "... there was already another user registered as "Tennis Fan". I'm kind to cats, gentle dogs, horses and to most humans" (they add that "Nobody is perfect and I wouldn't claim to be.")
  • Chief disambiguator: "My username used to be Oogglywoogly however I recently changed it to Chief disambiguator. I chose the old username shortly after I was subbing at a pre-school and it was one of the little kids nicknames for me. It was a spontaneous, thoughtless choice and over the years I found it sort of stupid and immature. I changed it to Chief disambiguator as I find more clever and more in line with Wikipedia."

Wikipedian signatures I think are cool

Real sentences that were written

  • "The seeds of compromise need to be watered and nurtured, not fried in hot oil for an afternoon snack!" - the Foreskin talk page
  • "it brings a whole new meaning to the term 'jerkin' the gherkin'" - the "Pickle fetish" AfD
  • ...I say bring on the bird turd! Sounds like a good example to me. --AndyKali on talk page of Pareidolia.
  • "Walls are often seen in popular culture" - the "Walls in popular culture" section of the Wall article

Cool redirects

Diagrams that kinda look like they were made in MS Paint

Wikipetan

Wikipede books
The real me by Achraf Baznani

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