Hi, I live in London, UK, and even here there are Fayenatics -- i.e. fans of Faye Wong, a singer from China with a remarkable voice.
Anyone who loves her scat singing album Fuzao (Restless) is a real Fayenatic.
It was in order to edit Faye's article here that I registered as a Wikipedian in early 2006, but I soon broadened out into a thoroughly generalist editor. I work on some subjects of personal and professional interest, many that are not my own area but where I can figure out what's what, and others of merely passing interest where I see a need that I can fill. As of January 2019 I am among the 200 most active editors on Wikipedia.
Signature
In February 2012 I became an administrator on English Wikipedia. At that point I added a red L to my signature, meaning to display a Learner plate for a time while I was going through New Admin School.
Later I decided to keep it, because in Wikipedia (as in real life) I am still learning all the time. In my signatures from June 2012 to February 2017, it was linked to my contributions; the following letters link to my talk page. The red letter also disguises my omitting to use a capital L for London when I registered as a user.
If you want to know what's most important to me, you could start here.
In real life, I do some Bible teaching, but while I'm editing Wikipedia I work hard to be objective from a neutral point of view. I hope that no-one could tell from my edits what particular denomination or theology I might identify with. If there has been notable criticism of a person or body, I will include/restore it in Wikipedia, regardless of whether the subject is "on the same side" as me.
Faye Wong is the page that I have edited most (apart from reversions on pages about given names). I also wikified the article on Wang Chieh, another superb singer.
I have a natural gift as a proofreader, and whatever I spot, I fix. That means in practice that I'm not very focussed!
Biblical Creation Society (I hope you find it neutral; I hadn't guessed what a fight I'd have on my hands from an undisclosed-POV deletionist, but in the end he helped to improve the article considerably)
Although I sometimes turned a deletionist tide, e.g. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Renee Williams (person), I used to find AfD annoying or depressing, so I generally steered clear of it.
Now I recognise that nominations are generally made in good faith to implement sensible policies which improve the quality of Wikipedia, and I occasionally nominate articles for deletion.
Most new inbound links for Nike are intended for Nike, Inc. I'm always looking for ways to reduce future maintenance, so I supported a proposal to rename that page, but it failed to gain consensus. So, it keeps needing to be re-done as more bad links get written.
Zechariah was a big project – over 250 edits – as Zechariah, Zachariah and Zacharias were articles about different people that used to be differentiated only by their KJV spellings, and a lot of inbound links were incorrect.
There were over 2,000 links to Catholicism when the separate article Catholicism (term) was at that name. Sometimes I used to work through another page of them and change the link where Roman Catholic Church (now at Catholic Church) was intended. For the record, I have no vested interest in the matter.
On 20 March 2007 I finished creating a hierarchy to organise the articles within Category:Christian martyrs by era and by major branches of the church. (This has since been further sub-divided by others.)
I've also enjoyed depopulating the once-bloated Category:Star Trek, creating new sub-categories or lists (see above).
I particularly enjoy participating at WP:CFD. It's very satisfying to find a creative way to balance different policies and precedents while making the encyclopedia easier to navigate and understand.
I added further parameters to that set of templates for a country's new name where that is used in parent categories (see Template talk:EstcatCountry).
I added a conditional line in ((Year nav topic5)) so that architecture-in-year pages have a link to buildings and structures completed in that year.
In October 2017 I did my most complex work yet on ((EstcatCountryCentury)), so that it no longer displays links to year and decade categories in older centuries for which such categories are now deprecated.
In 2019 I eventually figured out how to use a hyphen or space in e.g. "17th-century" depending on whether a parameter began with "in ", to build "17th century in music".[2]
In 2023 I figured out how to make ((Cfm-double)) generate a discussion starter including the second target, by tweaking ((Cfd all)) and ((Cfm2)).
On 14 December 2006 I passed the milestone of 500 edits. A month later I passed 1,000 in main (article) space, partly because I discovered categories! On 27 Jan 2007 I started using Auto Wiki Browser to help me do link/category corrections more quickly (although I've hardly used it since, as it doesn't run on the computers at work or at home). The same day I also passed the milestone of 1,000 unique articles edited, fixing new inbound links for Nike.
I just fell short of 1,000 total edits in the month of Jan 2007 alone. Then, after an unbroken 71 days of constructive edits, I forced myself to take my first Wikibreak on 4 Feb 2007, which was a good idea.
I passed 3,000 edits in mainspace on 21 April. After that I slowed down a bit, making fewer minor edits. I was still editing every day except when on holiday, and passed 4,000 on 17 August 2007, and 5,000 on 3 November 2007. On 15 October 2008 I was categorising lists of Indian politicians when I passed 10,000 edits to articles; at that date my total edits were over 14,000.
October 2008 was the first month in which I made over 1,000 edits, although that included a lot of similar edits to category pages.
I've been given seven barnstars (I left them on my talk page and its archives), picked up my first DYK in January 2009 and had my user page vandalised in February 2009 – I felt that I must have arrived!
I collected a few more DYKs in 2010, and passed 30,000 total edits including 20,000 to articles, but became rather more patchy in my editing habits for a while. I'm still highly active, but can have a gap of a few days without feeling funny.
On 19 January 2011 my new pages became autopatrolled (I hadn't realised I had made enough pages, but that credibility took account of the articles that I created as disambiguation pages or splits).
I had a moment of modest excitement in July 2011 when I realised that the person who had reverted one of my edits, which I admit was only indirectly and subtly cited at the time, was none other than Jimbo Wales.
On 10 August 2011 I joined the list of the 1,000 most prolific editors on Wikipedia (based on cumulative number of edits). It was on the day of the English Wikipedia blackout that I moved up into the top 900, although I spent that day helping out at Simple. I think Production babies was my first new article to make it into WP:DYKSTATS, that same week in 2012.
The next month I was finally talked into standing for adminship, after saying for years that I was having too much fun just editing. The process concluded on 18 February 2012 with a very encouraging result. I wasn't in a rush to use my new powers, but took my first admin action on 21 February before I'd even finished leaving my thank-you notes.
On 12 September 2012, WP:WBE counted my edits as over 50,000, by which time I was in the top 700. On 7 August 2013 I reached the top 500. As of September 2021 I'm in the top 150.
Since July 2014 I have been doing a lot of work at WP:CFD, as most other experienced closers seem to have moved on to other things, and in August 2015 I passed 100,000 edits in English wikipedia.
Before the advent of unified login I used "Fayenatic londres" on French, Portuguese and Spanish Wikipedias, and "Fayenatic londra" on Italian (these links are to my old contributions). Those accounts are no longer in use.
In 2022 I set up a "test" account in order to see how pages appear to logged-in non-admin users.
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