User:Donner60

User:Donner60. This is a Wikipedia user page. This is not an encyclopedia article. If you find this page on any site other than Wikipedia, you are viewing a mirror site. Be aware that the page may be outdated and that the user to whom this page belongs may have no personal affiliation with any other site than Wikipedia itself.

If you have a message for me, please leave it at the bottom of my talk page, not on this page. Thank you.

I expect to be offline until January 15 or 16, except for a few possible brief log-ins on some days. This is due to real life commitments, not much if anything in the way of fun, however. Donner60 (talk) 02:34, 6 January 2026 (UTC)

Icon This user has been on Wikipedia for 15 years, 5 months and 23 days.
This user has autopatrolled rights on the English Wikipedia. (verify)
This user has created 134 articles on Wikipedia.
This user has extended confirmed rights on the English Wikipedia. (verify)
This user has rollback rights on the English Wikipedia. (verify)
This user has pending changes reviewer rights on the English Wikipedia. (verify)
This user has written or expanded 22 articles featured in the Did You Know section on the Main Page.
This user has reviewed 35 DYK nominations.
This user has made over
239,800 edits to Wikipedia.
232 As of 20:30, 1 January 2026 (UTC), this editor was number 232 on the List of Wikipedians by number of edits.
This editor has been ranked as high as number 168 on the List of Wikipedians by number of edits.
This user has been editing Wikipedia for more than 15 years.
This user has rescued 1 article by improving it in the face of pending deletion.
This editor has reanimated 1 article by improving it for reinstatement.
This editor is interested in History.
This user is a member of
WikiProject Military history.
This user has overhauled many articles on Wikipedia. Some are listed below.
vn-895This editor's user page, talk page, or subpages have been vandalized 895 times.
1720+
Quality, not quantity.This user believes that a user's edit count does not necessarily reflect on the value of their contributions to Wikipedia.
This user has been awarded
38 Barnstars on Wikipedia.
This user tries to do the right thing. If he makes a mistake, please let him know.
Except for a 49-second mistaken block, this user is block free - (see my block log here!).
This editor has discovered 3 extant hoax articles, which have been deleted
This editor has created more than 245 redirect pages on Wikipedia.
Redirect->
Article
This editor has changed 4 redirects to substantive articles.
This user has been the victim
of an unintentional block.
This user has new page reviewer rights on the English Wikipedia. (verify)
This user has been identified as an awesome Wikipedian.
This user has been awarded with the 100000 Edits award.


Facts from articles by this editor were in the On this day section of the Main Page on June 17, 2012, March 29, 2015, April 1, 2015, April 1, 2019 and June 1, 2022.
26+
Because (1) real life may intervene and (2) research may be required for new content, this user's editing may be on and off.
As of December 2, 2025, this user was ranked 6102 on the List of Wikipedians by article count.
This editor is a
Grandmaster Editor First-Class
and is entitled to display this Mithril Editor Star with the Neutronium Superstar hologram.
AfDThis editor has commented/!voted on 56 Articles for Deletion. 51 !votes matched consensus. 2 !vote results had no consensus but !votes had same result, 3 non-matches !votes, w/ 2 !votes keep, 3rd !vote delete, then agreed nc, keep.
UAAThis user has reported 14 user names to Wikipedia:Usernames for administrator attention; the user pages were deleted or users blocked indefinitely.
This user provides information using user boxes for statistical reasons.
Editing Wikipedia is something this user does as a hobby.
RfA
RfB
This editor has !voted or commented on 178 Requests for Administratorship;
10 Requests for Bureaucratship
This user was awarded a Silver Wiki by the Military History WikiProject for runner-up 2024 Military historian of the year.
This user has nominated 612 pages for speedy deletion: 596 deleted, 16 kept, (6 expanded/rewritten, 1 redirected, 3 mistaken tags; 5 removed by a user); at least 6 pages later re-added. ACTRIAL implemented; few more expected.
This user survived a
COVID-19 infection twice.
This user has saved or helped save one or more good articles on Wikipedia.
This user was awarded a Silver Wiki by the Military History WikiProject for runner-up 2025 Military historian of the year.

This user prefers the Legacy version of the Vector skin to the 2022 version.

This user is not an administrator on the English Wikipedia. (verify)
This user has page mover rights on the English Wikipedia. (verify)


Further details or comments about the information in the user boxes are in the collapsible sections below or in sub-pages linked in those sections. I created sub-pages to store information which had become too long for a user page or which might have been making the page hard to save or load. Some of the sub-pages may be getting stale due to lack of updates. I may delete them entirely or reduce them in size. If reduced in size enough or deleted, I may add some information from such sub-pages back onto this page.

No off-Wikipedia posts. I have no comments or other posts on a site other than Wikipedia, whether under Donner60 or Donner or any variation of Donner. If you see any such comments or posts on other sites, they are not mine. I have added this note after my more than 15 years as a Wikipedia user because I saw a comment posted under a signature which was a variation of Donner on another website. I have seen posts on other user pages here which have such disclaimers about off-Wikipedia posts. I never before thought I ought to add such a disclaimer for clarification about off-Wikipedia posts by someone else. Since I have seen such an off-Wiki comment with a similar Donner signature (rather innocuous though the post appeared to be), I thought I should also make this disclaimer on my Wikipedia user page as well.

Mistaken Block. I show this explanation of being blocked for 49 seconds in 2013 in the user boxes and in the collapsible section below. Recently, the block was casually mentioned on another page. So I have thought I should emphasize that this was a mistake by adding this explanation here. In fact, my block log should be clean as of December 2, 2025 and is clean except for that 49-second mistaken block. I had reported a vandal who had reached the fifth instance of vandalism. The administrator blocked me by mistake, immediately recognized the mistake and lifted the block. I have the message about this in the collapsible section. It was a long time ago and is explainable. But I still want to be able to claim a clean record as of the day of this post, as long as it lasts, which I certainly plan for it to do. Because of the unfortunate circumstances of the block and its lingering presence if casually and incompletely viewed or expressed, I am adding this explanation. Apparently, the block is not removable from the log, or remains available without any of the explanation of the helpful comment that is now shown. So to some extent it remains on one's record forever and requires explanation if brought up despite being a brief and explainable mistake.

Ratings of my articles; GAs; GA reassessment work. Some of my earlier articles were rated start or C by the rogue editor Wild Wolf, since indefinitely blocked. Wild Wolf was rating several of my articles and other users articles per minute at times. He obviously wasn't reviewing or assessing the articles, merely checking off at least one B class criterion as deficient. I wrote these articles many years ago. I have not gone over them recently to see if they are still actually B class or possibly even GA class. I think I should ask for reassessment only after I have time to review my articles to see if they have deteriorated and now need work for a higher class assessment.
I never have ask for a GA assessment of one of my articles. The effect of Wild Wolf's bogus rating sprees may continue to be largely responsible for that. During and after those bogus ratings, I decided just to write good, at least B class articles, rather than to spend more time concentrating on the assessments for fewer of them. In fact, I had not even been requesting B class assessments.
In recent times, there have been far more GA requests than the number of regular assessors have time to assess. Adding to the difficulty in getting a GA assessment and the time spent on GAs, is the need for quid pro quo assessments, even with initial requests. Perhaps that is fair enough and also somewhat reduces the high volume of GA assessment requests.
I have had extra tasks as a coordinator for the military history project since October 2023. So I am unlikely to spend time to put articles up for GA assessments soon. I do have one or two that I think would qualify so I may make some time for those requests and quid pro quos sooner.
Nonetheless, I have saved or helped save nine good article assessments since October 2023. So I do have some experience with how to meet the requirements for good articles. I will continue to try to save other GA assessments, time permitting, on topics of particular interest to me and for which I have sources, such as books in my personal library, which are readily available.

My main content creation and improvement topics. My content creation and improvement/addition work is usually in military history articles, including biographies of military leaders. Most of these articles are about the American Civil War. However, in late July and August 2020, I created seven new articles on members of the earliest sessions of the Virginia House of Burgesses. I had created some articles on other Burgesses several years ago. I intend to start at least brief articles on all the members of the first session in 1619 and later on other later burgesses whom I think are of interest. Many prominent burgesses of the late 18th century are already the subject of articles but many such articles still need to be written. I also have added a few articles on early railroads, the American Revolutionary War and some random biographies, including a World War II/Korean War general, which I consider one of my best.

My library; book lists. The lists of my books in various sub-pages are especially useful for research and for having citations in at least one of the proper forms available for use in writing or editing articles. See the collapsible section about these lists below.

Fewer edits due to change in focus to content creation, improvement and other tasks, not less time on Wikipedia. Posted in late 2022 or early 2023: I have decided to work more on content creation and improvement for the foreseeable future with little if any use of Huggle. My place in the list of editors by edit has been falling even as I become more active again after a time of limited activity due mainly due to covid and health issues, strains on Wikipedia due to overload of additional users during covid times, other real life business and computer problems, including Huggle not working for me. I have given up regular vandalism patrolling and returned to regular writing and editing as well as military history project coordinator work since October 2023. So the declining edit count now is not a result of low activity as it was just before and in peak covid times. There are a smaller number of military history coordinators now than in most years past. So additional time for coordinator tasks is needed to take care of the requests and other tasks for the project than may have true in the past.

New Vector Skin. I am using the old skin for viewing and editing. That skin better suits my viewing of pages with its larger margins and size. If you view this page with the new vector skin, you will see the user boxes scattered about instead of in tidy lines of four and you will see more lines of text. I may change the layout to fit the new skin while continuing to use the old for reading and writing generally, if I can accomplish that split viewing or use. I can't make it a priority, however. To the extent I can be online, as noted in the next paragraph, I have several articles that I am editing or revising and have limited time to work on such thing. Since October 2023, I also have military history project coordinator work. I suspect that my using of the old skin will only affect this page not other pages that I work on and that it will only be of minor effect for a limited number of readers. I hope and assume readers won't mind the appearance of the page in the new skin if I don't edit the page to accommodate it or don't succeed in making the split use, since I have no practice in using or adding the new skin. Also, since there is an option to switch between the skins that may clear up viewing some pages, including this one, which may help readers without a need for me to work on this. I'll check that at some time if I can find time and think about it. Then I may be able to shorten considerably or eliminate this paragraph. The new skin is not without some merit. I do like the new simultaneous side-by-side preview pane which makes it faster and easier to find errors in an edit. It especially seems to help get those pesky ISBNs in correct form.

This page has become rather long, especially if the sub-pages are included. I like to keep an accessible record of what I have done over the years. I have been writing and editing and doing gnome type work for more than 15 years as I write this so it has become lengthy and, I must admit, a few items (noted where relevant) may no longer be complete. I also like to keep some Wikipedia templates, guidelines and other information available for ready reference. I have noticed that other editors often do the same.