Wikipedia is one of my hobbies. While I think it might be good to have some offline hobbies, winter is long and I’m really a pathological sharer, so this works for me. Recently, someone replied to a FindAGrave query I’d sent them over two years ago asking for permission to use an image, saying “Yes, please feel free to use that family photograph we shared of George Heron Milne on his Wikipedia page!” and it was as satisfying as finishing a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle. Hmmm, maybe jigsaws are a good offline hobby? Here’s a loose summary of the Wikipedia work I did this year.
– Uploaded 109 images to Wikimedia Commons, mainly things from Flickr Commons but also a whole set of Vermont state Senators from 1900 which we had in a book at the historical society. (see them)
– Uploaded 8 images to Wikipedia, these are fair use images where an image can’t be added to Wikimedia Commons. (see them)
– Wrote 25 articles, entirely biographies except for one disambiguation page which isn’t really an article. Four of them were for people who live or lived in my small town. (see them)
– Made 682-ish edits.
I did a bit more noodgey editing this year, meaning that I sometimes edited because someone was wrong on Wikipedia (usually because they were editing a page that they had a conflict of interest with, it’s a whole thing). I learned to use a few more tools and continue to do my mostly “lone wolf” thing where I’m not really aligned with a project or work group, I just mainly do my own thing. That thing includes, among other things, adding images of librarians to Wikipedia. I’ve got a list.
