Committed identity: 549383060aac0b729644315a58e3caa32b67c69fe8d34f55c7b6046639d7e12d6116729b1df6632b3bb17d9c896d66458f70b3ea2d4146e141c955d6fbf49af9 is an SHA-512 commitment to this user's real-life identity.  | In the early hours of February 17th 2009, I was rushed to hospital suffering from gastric bleeding, vomiting, and severe abdominal pain. It appears that I had a large stomach ulcer. I have been advised to reduce the stress in my daily life. One of the biggest stress factors in my daily life is my work on Wikipedia, and as such, regrettably, I have reduced the time I spend here. I am still fairly regularly, extending articles, checking my watchlist and the like, but the major part of my work here - that connected to the stub-sorting project - has seen a big reduction in my work. I enjoy working on Wikipedia, and 99% of the people I have come in contact with have been wonderful, co-operative editors. Unfortunately, in stub-sorting I tend to come into contact with the other 1% far too often. Not the members of WP:WSS, who are are diligent, hardworking wikignomes, but rather those who fail to understand that even something as egalitarian as Wikipedia still requires rules if it is to work to its optimum. Frequently running into people like this has soured my general demeanour towards other wikipedians who have not always deserved some of the comments I have made about them. I have been worn down by this work; it has in the past affected my attitude to other editors, and it is now affecting my health. | To leave me a message, click here.
The lingo | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | cat-1 | This user is owned by one cat. | | |
(Actually, below basic for Maori and Russian, but I do what I can).
The places Special bonus pages! So, who is Grutness?  Self-portrait, April 2002 - My name is James Dignan.
- I was born in Barnet, England, 1963, to English and New Zealand parents. (The building I was born in was about 100 metres from the imposing looking three-storey brick building at the top of the photo on the Barnet page).
- I lived in Croughton, Northamptonshire and Milton, New Zealand before moving to Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1981. I studied psychology at the University of Otago, gaining a B.A. and an M.Sc. (my M.Sc. supervisor is also apparently a Wikipedian, and the postgrad I shared an office with is one of Wikipedia's finer photographers)
- I currently work as a part-time freelance writer (mainly for the Otago Daily Times) and artist (with three solo exhibitions since 2002, including one in March 2006).
- My interests are wide-ranging, and include art, music (I was songwriter, singer and guitarist for various bands at the periphery of the Dunedin Sound during the 1980s and 1990s), geography, and flags. The latter interest has led to me being heavily involved with the Flags of the world web resource.
- Family legend has it that my ancestors were ollamhs of the Clan O Duibhgeannain, mediaeval Irish historiographers - the Annals of the Four Masters had a Peregrine O'Duignan as one of its writers. So I suppose I'm following in family footsteps.
- Bizarrely, while voting on WP:AFD I've realised that I pass far more of the criteria for notability than many of the people in articles voted "keep". Of course, I'm not allowed to write a Wikipedia article about myself, but - as a little exercise - I've added one here. Unnervingly, on Nov. 2nd 2006, User:Bill Clark decided to turn it into a full-fledged article. It was later deleted (I nominated it for deletion myself), but I was somewhat heartened by the AfD discussion, which was fairly close.
Grutness? It is: More information about me can be found at my website's Pagina Domestronica. -
- Grutness n. The resolve with which the Queen sits through five days of Polynesian folk dancing.
And the signature?  I used to use the Uffington White Horse as part of my signature, as I do with my painting (as seen at my gallery on my website). Sadly, with all the server overload problems, I've been asked to drop it, so (as of 07:05, 9 May 2005) I have. Feels strange - almost like it's not me doing the typing any more.
So, who does the work? It looks like I do a lot of editing on Wikipedia. A lot of the time, though, I just type what is dictated to me. The rest of the edits are done while I'm out making coffee. Most of the editing and admin work listed to Grutness, and all of that dictation, is actually done by Nut. Even those edits I do do myself are usually corrected by him before it gets saved. Well, would you argue with him? Sadly, Nut used to be one of two cats, but Bolt hasn't been seen since July 3rd 2008. I'd like to hope he's still out there and OK, but deep down I realise otherwise.
Barnstars (and similar honours)! -
I've moved these to a separate page. I never thought I'd ever reach the stage where they would be bulking up my userpage, but...well... :) Current Wiki-work The daily grind... These are the tasks that I do daily (or as near possible): - Check my watchlist
- Check AfD, CfD, MfD, TfD and SfD for new items and for updates on items I have previously commented on
- Sort any stubs in the following categories into the necessary subcategories:
- Cat:Geography stubs, Cat:Africa geography stubs, Cat:Australia geography stubs, Cat:New Zealand geography stubs, Cat:Canada geography stubs, Cat:United States geography stubs, Cat:United Kingdom geography stubs, Cat:England geography stubs
- Check the previous day's newly-created templates at Special:Newpages, taking any unproposed stub templates to either WP:WSS/D or WP:SFD, depending on how sensible they seem as stub types.
Writing - Until recently, I was writing small articles (and occasionally big articles) on New Zealand geography. I've done a once-over of the entire country now, so I'll leave it to others for a while.
- I'm occasionally tapping away at some New Zealand music and/or art biographies.
Categorising/stub-sorting - I spent some time rationalising the categories under which New Zealand geography articles are filed. Hopefully it now looks more like a tree, rather than the web of a drunken spider.
- I spend much of my time at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stub sorting, trying to keep the hierarchy in some form of order (this includes chasing up the creators of any stray stub templates that haven't been through the WP:WSS debating process. I tend to regard the geography stubs as "my baby", since I'm pretty proud of the way that has been organised, although I do realise that this is a dangerous thing to do in an egalitarian editing milieu like Wikipedia. I do keep track of the numbers of geography stubs in those countries which have not yet got their own stub category (this work can be found at User:Grutness/Geo-stub tallying).
Administration - Since February 15, 2005, I have officially been a Wikipedia Administrator.
- I prowl the deletion/discussion process pages, giving roughly equal numbers of thumbs ups and thumbs down. I tend to be an inclusionist for many things, and have saved quite a number of articles heading for the plughole (see below), but many of the things that turn up on these pages are there for a reason.
- I keep an eye on quite a few user pages, ready to revert any sign of vandalism, and try to be as helpful as possible on the Village Pump and Reference Desks (Miscellaneous, Humanities, and Science).
- Most administration seems to be just dealing with whatever turns up...
Best so far? - Four articles that I've been involved with the writing of have now made it to Featured Article status:
- I've uploaded a few of my favourite photos to enliven some articles, some of which I'm quite pleased with. The two shown here have both made it to the front page of the New Zealand wikiportal, as has Image:Purakaunui.jpg.
- Many of the location maps on New Zealand geographical articles showing where towns, rivers, lakes, and things are are my work.
- An image which I created for the Korea geography stub template was nominated for Featured Image as a nice piece of graphic design. I must admit to being quite proud of it myself. Sadly, not only was it deemed ineligible (as it was on a template rather than part of an article), but at some stage Korea's go-stubs will be split into North and South, and it won't be in use :(
Saves from AFD quite a few... I didn't keep track at first, but some I know of are: (* - still under debate) Statistics | Admin statistics | | Action | Count | | Edits | 116946 | | Edits+Deleted | 119465 | | Pages deleted | 2463 | | Pages restored | 103 | | Pages protected | 87 | | Pages unprotected | 8 | | Protections modified | 3 | | Users blocked | 24 | | Users reblocked | 0 | | User rights modified | 0 | | Users created | 0 | As of 02:12, 11 March 2008 (UTC), I have: - added over 1500 new articles and untold categories, templates, disambigs and redirects
- Article 500 was List of New Zealand cricketers at 01:22, 26 Dec 2004
- Article 1000 was Anapaike at 06:59, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
- made over 85,000 edits (including this one)
- Edit 10,000 was adding a {{Norway-geo-stub}} template to Romsdal at 00:55, 27 Jan 2005
- Edit 20,000 was an addition to MacGuffin at 11:50, 22 Mar 2005
- Edit 50,000 was leaving a comment on User:Martyman's talk page at 06:39, 11 October 2005
- uploaded over 150 photographs
- uploaded over 400 illustrations (drawings and maps). Several of these drawings are found on stub messages, including the annoying kiwi on the NZ stub articles, a larger version of which is to the right.
- added 4 new articles and made 22 edits on the Maori Wikipedia.
- added 2 new articles and made 8 edits on Wikinews.
- made about a dozen edits on Wikicommons.
Last update by Grutness at 02:12, 11 March 2008 (UTC) Legalese I agree to multi-license all my text contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below: | Multi-licensed with the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License versions 1.0 and 2.0 | | | I agree to multi-license my text contributions, unless otherwise stated, under Wikipedia's copyright terms and the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license version 1.0 and version 2.0. Please be aware that other contributors might not do the same, so if you want to use my contributions under the Creative Commons terms, please check the CC dual-license and Multi-licensing guides. | |
