User:Elf - Wikipedia

My contributions

• My photo contribs as thumbnails (trying to keep current)
• List of my photos by name (not kept quite as up to date)
• User:Elf/Contributions (my own list, not kept up to date)
• All 19,000+ of my edits

A little about me

• I spent over two intense editing years (Jan 2004-April 2006) here as a Wikipediholic, primarily focusing on dog-related articles. I remanifest at random intervals whenever I see something that needs improving ("whenever..." hahahahahhaha gasp... that is, whenever I look at a page...) and sometimes to check for messages. I retain my administrator titleage. I remained as an admin through late 2024, by when I had basically stopped editing.
• I am a retired professional technical writer and editor and have written some speculative fiction.
• I've competed in dog agility since 1996 with 4 dogs, earning championships with each, and study dog breeds and dog training (see User:Elf/dog book database) because, well: Dogs.
• I am a Master Composter.
• I can haz hack HTML and most wiki markups.
• I've been involved with computers, mostly software, since almost back when they used steam-powered CPUs. I am a Mac user; PC only when necessary.

Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits (see also count_edits utility and other Wikipedia:WikiProject edit counters, whose count doesn't seem to match what's on the number of edits page)

FYI: I also have about 1000 edits on Wikimedia. FWIW.

Mar 12, 2004	#427	After a mere month and a half of editing, I make the top-500 list with a mere 820 edits. (Compare to today's list (Mar 1 '08), where #3950 has made almost 5,600 edits. It was a smaller place then...)
May 7, 2004	#320	This is not necessarily A Good Thing.
July 1	#295	2,007 edits so far. And that's while I'm "trying to cut back".
Aug. 8	#288	3,987 edits. My placement ascent is slowing--excellent.
Aug 17	#292	4,173. Placement is better. Doesn't FEEL like less, but OK.
Aug 22	#286	4,393. Placement up again! Crud. (I blame it on mixed-breed dog getting nominated for featured article.)
Sept 21	#271	5,317. Bad, bad Elf.
Sept 22	#265	5,496. How is it possible that my placement is up? 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...
12/16/2004	#259	6,638. Placement is good. But last couple of days have been bad. Back to wrapping gifts.
Jan 3, 2005	#243	Mea culpa--
March 24, 2005	224	Good lord.
April 27	#219	9,278!? The slide continues.
June 25		I just cleaned out my watchlist and it's down to 1479! I feel so--so-- large--
July 24	#240	Back down 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?)
Oct 15	#235	After more than 2 weeks of doing almost nothing here, I'm at--huh--#235. Go figure. I'm outa here again.
Nov 29, 2005	#280	12,716. Still, Have made only 4 edits in the last month. But I'm still sticking in there! But that's a good drop. Bye again-- back to my real life.
Mar 11, 2006	223	16,912 edits. Placement Up again. Sigh.
Sept 29, 2006	373	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!
Feb, 2007	#496	After 9 or 10 months of very little activity, I'm down to #496. The List referenced above lists down to #2474. So i have a long way to fall yet.
May, 2007	646	Still successfully staying away. Down to 646! Proof that wikipediholism can be defeated! (Although it now lists my edits as only 16,832, so my 17,000 userbox lies. :-) )
Sept. 2007	743	Go baby! (Now it claims my edits are 17709. Up and down and all around...) Do you realize that there are 1,745 users with 10,000 or more edits?? Are they all crazy? What's not getting done now that they're all doing *this*?
Nov. 1 2007	793	Ahh, my days of glory are fading rapidly away. Thank goodness! But it says I'm at 17957... might as well make another 43 edits and get it over with...
Dec 22 2007	#853	Did I really make only 27 edits in 2 months?? That's pretty darned good, for a pathetic ex-Wikiholic. (As of Jan 8 '08, my personal preferences page confirms that I have passed the 18,000 edits mark. w00t.)
Jan 20 2008	#883	Well, someday, maybe even within a couple of months, if I keep restraining myself, I'll drop past #1000. This would be A Good Thing.
March 11 2008	#975	I'm doing good...only another 50 edits since then...but I can't begin to tell you how many hours those edits consumed...
July 23	#1160	With "only" 17636 edits, I continue to slide! I am holding on to my recovery and who knows, someday I might fall off the bottom of the list! I just need to drop another 3000 places... (And I know that the edit counts are approximate...but how funny that 600 edits later, I'm now listed on the "frequent editors" page with having 300 fewer edits than on Nov 1! Could be: different algorithm. Could be: Photos I've contributed that have been moved to mediawiki and deleted from here. Could be: Other pages here that have been deleted for some reason or another. However, my personal preferences page still shows me with 18,532. So there ya go.)
Sept 16 '08	#1221	18533 according to the users by edits page.
Nov 20 '08	#1293	Really, someday I'll slide off the end of the list.
July 1, '09	#1593	With 18716 edits. I am being SO good! I didn't even think to update this for 8 whole months! Recovery is possible!
Feb 24, '10	#1871	With 18,814. Out of 4000 listed editors. Yeah, well, someday I might drop off the bottom of the list.
June 30, '10	#1988	With a mere 18,907 edits--less than a hundred in 4 months. Pretty good, actually! And if it hadn't been for the danged List of museums in California, which I came across accidentally and couldn't leave alone and which STILL needs more work--it would be a lot fewer.
Oct 27, '10	#2115	At 18,921. Managed to restrain myself for months--I haven't topped 19,000 yet. Should I try to push for another 80 edits to put myself over the top? Nooooooo...
Jan 5, '11	#2171	At 18,935. I've been a Wikipedia editor for seven--7!!--years, and it's now celebrating its 10th anniversary. Hooah!
June 29, '11	#2336	18,957 --really, only 22 edits in 6 months? We'll have to do something about that... soon...
Nov 30, '11	#2480	18,976 --really, only 21 edits in 5 months? Huh. Proof, though that a wikipediholic can recover.
Jan 11, '12	#2505	19,033 --edged past 19,000. Time to update the userbox. That's an average of fewer than 2400 edits/year, which is OK, right? We won't mention that the first 16,000 were in the first 2 years--
July 24, '12	#2663	19,090 --pretty good, only 50+ edits in 6 months. I'd say that I'm pretty recovered.
Sept 26, '12	#2744	19,113 -- I'll never get to 20,000 this way.
May 22, '13	#2970	19,174 -- I'm OK with that.
May 27, '14	#3272	19,2xx--whatever
Sept 8, '15	#3579	19,291 edits. Fewer than 100 in a year and a half!? I'll never be in the top 300 again, thank goodness. I just do random edits when I'm using WP as a reference (which I do a lot, often several times a day) and see something that needs fixing.
Dec 11, '15	#3662	19,320 -- Just checking. ... Ha ha ha ha! And 770 on Wikimedia Commons, plus some on the French wikipedia wayyy back, don't know whether I can find my account there. Anyway-- between those 2, that makes 20,090! That makes me a Veteran EditorIV aka Tutnum of the Encyclopedia, which I had no idea existed until now. Yay. I think.
July 2, '16	#3806	19,392 -- yeah, apparently I'm still doing stuff from time to time, still dropping in the rankings, still easily addicted (checked one thing today and, two and a half hours later...)
Sept 23, '16	#3853	19,500 -- Yeh, no, really not editing that much.
June 4, 2017	#4053	19,533 -- astonishing; if I don't start some yuge editings, I'll fall off the top 5000 editors list! Hmmm...
Jan 12, 2019	#4471	19,589 -- Have done only 56 edits in a year and a half? Huh. Go, me.
July 29, 2019	#4604	19,620 -- ya know, I should just sit down some day and work on some of the things I've found that need work and see whether I can get past 20,000. Just because.

De rigueur user boxes

This user is proud to have been a Wikipedian since January 27, 2004.

A very cool Wikipedia tool that
everyone might find useful

• Wikidashboard from PARC

My laughs for the day

• Almost anything from m:Category:Humor
• Quote from wikipedia chat room:

...[complaining about nitpicky responses to simple statements about page editing such as] 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)

My Research Assistants