SEMI-RETIRED

Because I have had enough of pile-ons, timesink dramas, the relentless quote-mining in dispute-resolution, and the fundamentally broken "arbitration" process.
For a full explanation see this post
This user is no longer very active on Wikipedia as of August 2023.
BrownHairedGirl
admin
— Wikipedian  —
Not BHG. Just one of her heroes
Not BHG. Just one of her heroes
Name
BrownHairedGirl (aka BHG)
PronounsHer
NationalityIrish
CountryIreland
Current locationConnacht
LanguagesEnglish
Current timeCurrent UTC is 15:11
RaceMammal
WeightMy own
HairWhatever's in the bottle
Eyesboth working
SexualityMYOB
IQMensa-eligible
Family and friends
Marital statusMYOB
GirlfriendGráinne
BoyfriendFionn
Education and employment
EducationExpelled from the University of Life
Account statistics
JoinedJanuary 2006
First editJanuary 2006
Administratorno
Userboxes
2,500,000+This user has made more than 2,500,000 contributions to the English Wikipedia, over 1,400,000 of which were to articles.
16.4This user has 16.4 centijimbos.
This user has been on Wikipedia for 18 years, 10 months and 19 days.
This user has been editing Wikipedia for more than 15 years.
This user uses AutoWikiBrowser to quickly make repetitive edits.
This user tries to do the right thing. If she makes a mistake, please let her know.
saneThis user is relatively sane and will not usually stab you when you sleep
enThis user is a native speaker of the English language.
mankindThis user supports the use of gender-neutral language.
♀This user is female.
IrelandThis user is Irish and
lives in Ireland.
This user has written [1] good articles on Wikipedia.
This user has been editing Wikipedia for more than 15 years.
Admin statistics
Action Count
Edits 1594681
Edits+Deleted 1642938
Pages deleted 11957
Revisions deleted 10
Pages restored 1116
Pages protected 425
Pages unprotected 19
Protections modified 49
Users blocked 245
Users reblocked 14
Users unblocked 24
User rights modified 2
Users created 1

Some wikipedian user pages tell their life story or reveal all sorts of interesting details about themselves, whilst others define their interests and values. I want to do neither, so a few userboxes is all you get.

Wikipedia Admin

Many thanks to everyone who contributed to my request for adminship in May 2006. I am delighted that it was successful, and I now have administrator powers on Wikipedia. Administrators have access to a few technical features which help with maintenance.

I regard admin powers as a privilege to be used sparingly and judiciously, but if you require the assistance of an admin, please feel free to leave a message on my talk page.

If you want admin help, please do try to explain clearly what you want done, and why ... and I'll try to either help you myself or direct you to a more experienced person if appropriate. However, like any admin, I am not your private army in a content dispute. WP:Dispute resolution is thataway.

Sub-pages

See list at Special:PrefixIndex/User:BrownHairedGirl

My bot

BHGbot was approved on 18 November 2007 (see the request for approval at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/BHGbot).

The bot did a lot of work in its first two years, but after years of non-use it was de-listed in 2014.

BHGbot has been reactivated on November 2019, to clean up links to deleted portals per WP:Bots/Requests for approval/BHGbot 4.

Topic areas

When I'm working on articles, I mostly work on Irish topics, especially politics. I have also done a lot of Scottish politicians and judges, and on Westminster MPs from across the UK. Plus Irish and UK constituencies and by-elections. I created the page Families in the Oireachtas, built and developed a large chunk of the articles on UK constituencies, and built the navboxes which unify navigation between the constituencies in Ireland of 5 different parliaments and assemblies. Plus I built the Irish TD table set of templates to list the TDs on articles such as Sligo–Leitrim (Dáil constituency).

There is a long list of topics within that field where I'd like to do more, but my most useful source was the British Newspaper Archive (BNA), which included lots of Irish and Scottish 19th-century papers. That was what allowed me to write in some detail about topics such as the 1868 election in Sligo and the 1960s/70s drink-driving Scottish judge and whiskey heir Lord Grant. Sadly, the BNA no longer offers free access to Wikipedia contributors. Someday I will take out a subscription and start writing articles again.

However, I do have copies of the rare complete set of FWS Craig's "British Parliamentary Election Results" from 1832 to 1974, so if I may help with sourcing where needed.

Categories

XFD backlog
V Aug Sep Oct Nov Total
CfD 0 0 0 5 5
TfD 0 0 0 11 11
MfD 0 0 0 3 3
FfD 0 0 0 3 3
RfD 0 0 0 24 24
AfD 0 0 0 0 0

I have done a lot of work on categories since 2006. Without BNA sources to assist article-writing, most of my work these days is on categories.

At WP:Categories for discussion (aka CFD), I participate in many discussion and also take an admin role, e.g, in closing discussions. (Though not those discussions where I am WP:INVOLVED).

I routinely monitor and cleanup Special:WantedCategories. In the last year or so I have created and improved many category header templates, esp by-year/decade templates, trying to make as many as possible of them parameterless. I have a vendetta against by-year parameters, which are wholly un-needed; {{Title year}} can reliably extract the year in 99% of category sets. I have a particular loathing for those templates which chop up up the year in forms like {{SomeTemplate|1|9|6|7}}, or even worse {{SomeOtherTemplate|m=1|c=9|d=6|y=7}} — both are just time-wasting error-generators. See Category:Wikipedia YearParamUsageCheck for a system I have devised to track those errors and check whether the template can be made parameterless.

I use AutoWikiBrowser (AWB) a lot for category maintenance, esp since I discovered its support for custom modules. Some fairly simple modules have massively enhanced my productivity.

New articles

I used to try to list new articles that I had created, but since I created a lot of new articles, I soon found that the list was too much work to maintain.

I'm still quite proud of the first article I created, back in February 2006: Churchill Barriers. Not a bad start.

In 2018, I created my first featured list: List of women cabinet ministers of the Republic of Ireland.

In between, I created about 1000 fleshy stubs on politicians, and several hundred more start-class or C-class articles.

My edit summary usage

You can check my recent edit summary usage … and please leave me a reminder message if I fall below 99%.

Please WP:TROUT me if I ever start omitting edit summaries anywhere other than in my own userpages.

My barnstars