Last I checked, my photo of Jarome Iginla had been used on 17 Wikipedias and 36 articles across all languages. For all its warts, Wikimedia Commons carries considerable value to the project.
I'm an avid sports fan, born, raised and living in Calgary, Alberta, and my contributions to Wikipedia to date are mainly related to sports in Western Canada.
I tend to focus on two areas: ice hockey and Canadiana. Which, when you get down to it, is pretty much the same thing. My hockey edits focus overwhelmingly on Hockey Hall of Fame player bios and articles related to Calgary's history with the sport. One of my favourite articles is that of the 1920s Calgary Tigers, the city's first major professional team. For the longest time, nobody but myself and Google's webcrawlers cared about that article, until the Calgary Flames wore Tigers' inspired uniforms for the 2011 Heritage Classic. A few thousand people were suddenly interested in the team and came here to find a good article that I had no reason to ever think many would ever read. Just goes to show that even obscure topics are worth writing about. I've taken both the Flames and the junior Calgary Hitmen articles to featured status and was the primary writer of the History of the National Hockey League series (except, ironically, of the main article itself!)
I like to focus on other Canadian topics from time to time, both to challenge my writing ability and to learn about my country. My personal favourite contribution is the featured article on Terry Fox, one of our most important heroes. I've also tackled the poem "In Flanders Fields", which is one of Canada's best-known literary works and wrote about our unofficial national cocktail, the Caesar. I know it is a popular drink up here (damned if I know why; Clamato is terrible) but I'll never understand how that article gets 15,000 page views per month. I've improved several articles specific to Alberta, notably the featured Calgary Stampede, the GA Frank Slide and though it is stalled in progress, the blowing in of Leduc No. 1, which is perhaps the most significant moment in this province's history. As much as we love our hockey, as a sports fan, I think you just can't get more Canadian than football's Grey Cup. And while nobody really cares about the long defunct Calgary Cannons, I do. My passion for baseball died a little when they left. Fortunately, we received the Calgary Roughnecks lacrosse team at the same time and a new sporting interest was kindled.
Quite by accident, I seem to have achieved a tertiary focus on cancer-related topics. Terry Fox's name will never be forgotten given his efforts, while former hockey player John Cullen is a survivor. I also created the Hockey Fights Cancer article and re-created the Ride to Conquer Cancer article. I volunteer for the latter event and encourage anyone who is capable to donate towards this cause, because cancer sucks.
As of February 12, 2014, I was ranked 926 by number of edits on the English Wikipedia with 47,849 edits according to this list. I am one of the seven. I hateproseline. If you edit in that style, slap yourself upside the head, go back and do better. I am also an Administrator. Feel free to blame this guy for that. You may note that my adminship is the very last thing I mention here. I do so because, as a content admin, I really do believe in the ideal that it is no big deal. I would much rather write articles than deal with people's battles. With that said, I'm off to my next project...
Sometimes I like to challenge myself with an odd topic that you wouldn't expect a hockey obsessed writer to cover. Some of these might not get done for years, if at all. Sometimes it takes me a very long time to reach the end goal. Calgary Stampede took two years to reach FA!
Sometimes we fail to understand exactly what the words we write actually mean. The results can be interesting...
From Pat Burns: "Burns himself talked to both English and French media about the incident, denying that he had died and asked for the situation to be rectified immediately." (Sadly, the situation was rectified, as Burns died two months later)
From 2010 AAA 400: "...Allmendinger remained the leader, but Johnson lost three positions to fifth." (I don't know who fifth is, but he sure showed Johnson who's boss!)
From Craig Conroy: "...is a former American professional ice hockey player..." (He stopped being a hockey player. He didn't stop being American.)
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