User:DrThneed
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Brit, living in New Zealand, I have a scientific editing background. I have interests in all sorts of things, but especially women in science, women in New Zealand, science in New Zealand, and history.
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My projects
- the Wikifying a Conference project (handbook for Wikimedians)
- NZThesisProject
- Wikimedian in Residence at the University of Otago (2025–2026)
- Demo account at "DemoThneed"
- Wiki-themed Advent Calendar on BlueSky, for fun
- Report from Wikimania 2026 in Paris
Conflict of interest statement – Wikimedian in Residence
From 26 May 2025 I am the Wikimedian in Residence at the University of Otago, in Dunedin, funded by a grant from Wikimedia Aotearoa NZ. I help students understand how to read Wikipedia critically, encourage staff to contribute on topics they teach or research, and help the university to release images to Wikimedia Commons. University of Otago Wikimedian in Residence project pages here.
When I am editing Wikipedia, Wikidata or contributing to Wikimedia Commons I always strive to abide by the accepted practices on conflicts of interest, neutrality, and notability of that particular project. I will not make edits that I do not believe are in accordance with that Wikimedia Foundation projects practices and procedures. If you believe I have made an error or violated Wikipedia’s norms, please do not hesitate to contact me through my talk page.
What do I do?
- 2025: article improvement, mainly women's bios and destubbing keeping track of my work here
- 2024: 1 new start class biography for a woman every day, see 1woman1day2024 list
- I've written >692 new Wikipedia pages - listed here.
- Accumulated monthly reports to Aotearoa Online meeting for 2023–2026.
- Completed project: Royal Society Te Apārangi's 150 women in 150 words.
Community participation
- Opened the second day of WikiCite 2025, presenting on the New Zealand Thesis Project (slides are on Commons)
- Listful Thinking, about the tools Petscan, Listeria and the Wiki List, at the Wikidata and Sister Projects 2025.
- I run weekly local editing events (Lunchipedia) and meetups
- I was runner-up in the 2025 Great European Destubathon, and participated in the Memory of the World challenge. I've attended all the NZ WikiCon, beginning with Hokitika in March 2021, and attended my first in-person Wikimania in Singapore in 2023. I was at Wikimania in Poland in 2024 too (lucky me), where I was part of the Cool Tool Academy. Here is my report from Poland!
- Member of Women in Red, the Wikimedian in Residence Network, the GLAM global monthly call, the Australian and New Zealand Libraries and Wikidata group, and because I am a Wikimedian in Residence in an academic library, interact with Wiki communities for libraries, GLAMs and higher education.
Media coverage
- LIANZA Library Life article June 2026, free to read online
- 7 March 2025: I was interviewed on Jesse Mulligan's Radio New Zealand Afternoons programme, in relation to the International Women's Day event: "Correcting history, one edit at a time."
- March 2025: Facebook post in University of Otago Sciences newsletter
- 27 June 2025: Otago Daily Times article "Obsession leads to Wikipedian placement" (paywalled)
- 27 June 2025: Otago gains new expert press release by Wikimedia Aotearoa New Zealand
- 10 September 2025 "Wikipedia, lemon pigs and the hobby that grew", University Bulletin article about Tamsin by Koren Allpress
Tools and training
I occasionally make training videos to show how to do things on Wikidata or Wikipedia or OpenRefine. These are collected in the "Tamsin's Tool Tips" category on Wikimedia Commons, and uploaded to YouTube channel @drthneed6733 Training videos I've made:
- Installing the Commons extension for OpenRefine on a Mac
- Introduction to Wikidata use in library catalogues (November 2025)
- Listful Thinking:How to use Wikidata to help with editing workflows, May 2025 (an overview video of Petscan, Listeria and the WikiList tool talking about the workflows they can help with)
- How to use Petscan, May 2025 (Petscan can query Wikipedia and Wikidata at the same time, see the video description for some example uses)
- How to use Listeria, May 2025 (Listeria creates dynamic lists on Wikipedia, based off Wikidata)
- How to use the Wiki List tool, May 2025 (Wiki List Tool uses Google Sheets to combine info from Wikidata and Wikipedia)
- How to use Mix'n'match, May 2025 (Mix'n'match matches external datasets to Wikidata)
- How to link a new Wikipedia article to a Wikidata item, (includes moving the article from user space to main space first)
- How to make edits using OpenRefine and QuickStatements
Templates and workflows
Academic/prizewinner listeria lists
Architecture-related lists
Suffrage medal
- I am not actively writing pages for the recipients of this medal, but I am interested in seeing how they get covered over time, as I added all the recipients to Wikidata in 2021. 544 people (men and women) were given a New Zealand Suffrage Centennial Medal.
- As of 27 July 2021, 93 of the Suffrage Centennial Medal awardees have an English Wikipedia page, 451 do not. https://w.wiki/3gk$ 7 of those have an image.
- As of 1 Dec 2021, 101 have a page, 443 do not.
- As of 5 Dec 2022, 108 have a page, 436 do not.
- As of 6 May 2023, 115 people have pages (429 do not).
- As of 24 July 2024, 117 people have pages (427 do not, of which 11 have an image)
- As of 10 Sep 2025, 127 people have pages (417 do not, of which 10 have an image)
Useful tools I use:
- Tool: Page views of user created pages
- FindLink tool https://edwardbetts.com/find_link/
- Worklist for Web2Cit
Did You Know nominations
- All my Did you know nominations: Did you know nominations for easy counting
