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I use different email addresses for different purposes, so please read /Contact before sending me an email to ensure your message gets to the right place
I have been a Wikipedian since 26 December 2004 and an administrator since 2 June 2005.
I was an administrator at the Wikimedia Commons from 10 December 2005, and at Wiktionary from 6 August 2007 until 21 July 2021, although these have now lapsed due to inactivity policies on those projects.
From May to August 2014 I was employed by Wikimedia UK to help deliver Wikimania 2014 in London. See User:Chris McKenna (WMUK) for my contributions as a staff member.
Est omnino difficile iudicare inclusionis meritum cuiusdam rei in encyclopædia cum ratio sciendi quid populi referat incerta sit, sed nihilominus aliquid encyclopædiam dedecet
It is generally difficult to judge the worthiness of a particular topic for inclusion in an encyclopedia considering that there is no certain way to know what interests people, but some topics nevertheless are not fit for an encyclopedia.
This motto reflects the desire of these Wikipedians to be reluctant, but not entirely unwilling, to remove articles from Wikipedia.
Thank you so much for helping me with an article (I'm a beginner.) I have no idea what I'm doing but you helped to keep my article up after it was deleted. You also checked back up on it when the references were deleted, I just checked and saw you even helped me on listing them too, I wasn't sure how to do that either. Anyway, thank you. :] Ohthegunsofbrixton (talk) 18:33, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
For exhibiting rational judgement on a certain list which caused considerable overreaction and worse case scenario concerns. ♦ Dr. ☠ Blofeld 19:07, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
The Redirect Barnstar
I hereby award User:Thryduulf this shiny Redirect Barnstar for their excellent work at WP:RFD. Lenticel(talk) 08:57, 30 April 2013 (UTC)
The Technical Barnstar
For your unfailing patience and kindness dealing with VisualEditor related problems and the users struggling with them :). (also for the fantastic car analogy). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:00, 5 July 2013 (UTC)
The Original Barnstar
I appreciate I already gave you a barnstar for it, but I've just looked at the feedback page for the first time since stepping off my flight, and wow: you deserve another one :). Thanks for all you've done for the VE project thus far. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:59, 19 July 2013 (UTC)
The Working Wikipedian's Barnstar
For sterling work above and beyond the call of duty at WP:VE/F. You're always there, logging defects, updating replies and always with politeness and calm. NtheP (talk) 09:51, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
You put absolutely hours of work into [the WMUK Members' Survey] and I am so so grateful! Really looking forward to finding out what worked and what didn't and making the results useful to the chapter! Thank you so much! Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 12:14, 20 November 2013 (UTC)
The Brilliant Idea Barnstar
Arbitration Committee cases are inherently complicated matters. That your analysis of the case resulted in a suggestion widely accepted by participants and arbitrators alike, demonstrates it to be a brilliant idea. Congratulations! MarshalN20 | Talk 14:51, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
The Barnstar of Diplomacy
Y'know what... ...Here's a barnstar. Consider this a token of my appreciation, on behalf of the project as a whole, for your contributions to this RfC, and for summarising a horribly complicated discussion into something that people could understand (and which slightly lessened my headache in closing it!). HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 19:24, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
The Special Barnstar
Thanks for the MASSIVE amount of work and time you put into the 2013 Membership Survey. It's really excellent and I hope its something [WMUK] builds on :-) Katherine Bavage (WMUK) (talk) 15:38, 27 February 2014 (UTC)
The Real Life Barnstar
Thank you very much for all your hard work on Wikipedia Takes UCL last week. It was an event from which we've taken many lessons and I believe that a good number of people had a very positive experience from it thanks to you and the team you managed to coordinate. Here's to the next one! ToniSant (talk) 08:11, 28 February 2014 (UTC)
The Real Life Barnstar
Chris, I'm indebted to you for your help at the Marjon event. Gil asked me to pass on her thanks in particular for your "excellent and clear explanations of the technical aspects of copyright". Next time I'm looking for helpers for an event, you'll be top of my list. Thanks again, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:21, 8 April 2014 (UTC)
The Photographer's Barnstar
For your extra effort in providing photos for an article that another Wikipedian is working on. Exemplary teamwork! w.carter-Talk 17:12, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
'The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
I've got to say, I've seen your comments about the place and you seem one of the more "rational observers" (if you'll pardon the pun) on the site. I think you have a good head on your shoulders. I wish others were like you! ♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:22, 24 October 2015 (UTC)
For your hard work in the effort to get Robbie Coltrane to RD quality when it appeared doomed to not be included on quality grounds from the start; I award you this barnstar of citations! You recognized how important it was to get Hagrid onto RD owing to the emotional response of people to the beloved actor’s death (even the oppose votes were visibly upset and reluctant about their vote), so you worked hard to make it happen to the glee of the fellow Wikipedians. Well Done! :) DrewieStewie (talk) 11:50, 20 October 2022 (UTC)
The Minor Barnstar
Hello! While it may be small in the grand scheme of things, I wanted to thank you for drafting the disambiguation page at National and University Library. When I was looking into the title before the RfD, I saw a lot of different possibilities for targets and wasn't sure how to go about compiling them all into one place. It looked quite daunting to me, and to that end, thank you for initiating the first draft of it! (As well as the rest of your assistance at RfD, it is greatly appreciated.) Utopes(talk / cont) 20:11, 3 October 2023 (UTC)
The Redirect Barnstar
Thank you for all the work that you do at RfD. Your comments have changed my mind and helped to educate me on numerous occasions. Hey man im josh (talk) 17:11, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
I use different email addresses for different purposes. Please read /Contact before sending me an email.
About my username
My user name is Anglo-Saxon (rather than Scandinavian as has been suggested) and has the following story behind it: Ages (years) ago a new forum was set up for fans of history and archaeology, because some members of an existing forum were sick of all the off-topic postings (the new forum is now sadly defunct, the original one still remains). For some reason the regulars all chose historical names, principally Roman. The Romans have never been a particular interest of mine, and wanting to be a bit different I decided to go with an Anglo-Saxon name (I'm English, btw). I searched the net for Anglo-Saxon names, and found a site (I've not been able to find this online now) with a huge list of them, I browsed the list and decided I liked the look of the name Thryduulf, and so I chose that as my username. I've used it intermittently since. My other (more regular) username is Awkward42 (because I am awkward, and as Awkward was taken at hotmail, I chose Awkward42 (42 being The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything). User:Awkward42 on here is also me, see below and the Awkward42 user page.
Chiswick Chap kindly looked up the meaning of "Thryduulf" in Old English and it means "Wolf-strength" [1].
Typos & Spelling errors
I make typos and spelling errors frequently. Please feel free to correct any that you spot, including on my user page and in any comments I post. However, please note that I write in British English, normally using -ise spellings - colour and realise are not spelling errors! (Liscence on the other hand is a spelling error I make frequently, this should be corrected to licence). See American and British English differences.
Occasionally I might spell something intentionally wrong to make a point, but this should be obvious from the context.
Dual Licensing
Multi-licensed into the public domain
I agree to multi-license my eligible text contributions, unless otherwise stated, under Wikipedia's copyright terms and into the public domain. Please be aware that other contributors might not do the same, so if you want to use my contributions in the public domain, please check the multi-licensing guide.
Notes: This applies to my text contributions to all wikipedias, except as noted below. Any work in progress sub-pages in my userspace (e.g. /geonamesongs) are dual licenced in to the public domain as above unless it is detailed differently below.
Exceptions:
This page is not public domain.
My talk page is not public domain.
User:Awkward42's page and associated talk page are not public domain.
Images: All images that I upload will be individually licensed, check the image description page for details.
I have lots of photographs on my website. If you want to use one of these images here or elsewhere, please email me at cmckenna@sucs.org. By default I retain copyright on all my photos on that site, but in most cases I will dual licence (usually to a Creative Commons licence) if they can be of use here or elsewhere.
From May to August 2014 I was employed by Wikimedia UK to help deliver Wikimania 2014. I used user:Chris McKenna (WMUK) for edits made in my capacity as a staff member (mostly to Commons and the Wikimania 2014 wiki) while continuing to use Thryduulf for personal editing.
I registered this account to prevent it being registered by someone else and used to impersonate me for any reason. I do not intend to use it for editing. I do not control the similarly named user:Chris Mckenna (with a lowercase "k").
This account was created to test whether account names of this pattern are permitted by the similarity detection algorithm. It will not be used for editing.
Doppelgängers
Before new account names were subject to spoofing checks, it was possible for anyone to register an account with a deceptively similar username. To avoid this I created several Wikipedia:Doppelgänger accounts, e.g. user:ThryduuIf. I don't remember all of them now (they were created in 2005, it is now 2014), but they are all marked as doppelgängers, are never used and some (all?) are blocked from editing anyway.
Recommended places
These are a few highlights of Wikipedia that I recommend you pay a visit to
These are galleries of photographs that I have uploaded to Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons. More galleries are on my website [2], see above for copyright information regarding these.
Wikipedia is written by volunteer editors and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that also hosts a range of other volunteer projects: