User:Croat Canuck

Croat Canuck
Hockey Hall of Fame, Election pending
Born	(2005-08-17) August 17, 2005 Fergus, Ontario, CA
Height	1 ft 4 in (41 cm)
Weight	15 lb (7 kg; 1 st 1 lb)
Position	Sysop
Played for	Wikipedia All Stars
Playing career	August 2005–present

This is the user biography of Croat Canuck, to see Canuck's creations, see User:Croat Canuck/Creations. To see what he's working on these days, see, User:Croat Canuck/Sandbox.

Croat Canuck (born August 17, 2005) is a user account that was created on the advice of a friend who had recently created an account on Wikipedia, who went by the pseudonym Eduard Gherkin. A common occurence on Wikipedia was Canuck trying to sabatoge Gherkin's reputation or user page in some way shape or form [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]. Gherkin although usually a pacifist, did indeed go on the offensive as well [6]. As "Gherkin, you bum!" rang out through the cold, steely night both editors resolved that perhaps it was better to use Wikipedia to edit actual pages of importance.

Early Life

Canuck's first edit was on the page List of Toronto Maple Leafs players, reverting jumpy fancruft by people who could not wait until Jeff O'Neill and Alexander Khavanov played their first game with the Toronto Maple Leafs [7]. As time would tell, their jumpiness was unwarranted. This would be a constant theme in Canuck's usership, as it seemed that euphoric hockey fans always wanted to jump the gun, and Canuck responded with his usual dictorial ruthlessness. He stuck to editing to lists, until the next day when he made a vote to keep Eduard Gherkin's propaganda-spreading page, List of people who claim to be Jesus Christ[8]. It was soon after that Canuck created his first page, List of Toronto Blue Jays players, a topic very dear to the Toronto-biased editor. On August 23, Croat Canuck, who was very much still under the influence of Gherkin, started an ill-conceived talk page post [9] that was a weak attempt at humour, which was based on a conversation he and Gherkin had earlier. During this same time Canuck was involved in his first controversy, showing everyone the early sprouts of his superior multi-tasking abilities. It revolved around an edit he had made on List of Major League Baseball rivalries adding the Toronto Blue Jays-Montreal Expos cross-Canada rivalry to the list. The late CrazyTalk, God rest his Wiki-soul, a prominent baseball editor at the time, had a bit of a problem with this and stated Canuck's Toronto-bias as the cause. Croat Canuck managed to reply with an impassioned response well beyond his five days [10], and managed to persuade CrazyTalk on the validity of the rivalry [11]. This was a major confidence boost for Croat Canuck, and this started him on his path of becoming the smartest editor to ever edit anything on any site ever.

Growing Pains

Croat Canucks first creation was the ill-fated pitch, Home run leaders by letter of the alphabet. He spent much time on it in his first two months, updating daily, when really it was nothing more than a requiem for the stats nut. Canuck would later nominate the article he spent hours on for deletion, and all told he spent dozens of edits working on it. On October 1, he had his first troubling experience with the world of disambiguation. He created the Steve Thomas page about the hockey player, but Steve Thomas was also the name of some TV guy. As a result he caused himself great headaches creating a disambiguation page and separating the two.

During this the months of September, October and November, Canuck kept himself busy by creating numerous player stubs, so many so, that the list seemed endless. In a rare break in his attention, he created an article about a baseball heckler at home games of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays by the name of Robert Szasz. Known as the The Happy Heckler, he was familiar to many television viewers as the very loud fan who yelled at players until their ears had to sign an amnesty.

On October 14, 2005, Croat Canuck put up his first article for deletion [12], List of NHL Draft Steals, which caught Hossman, the creator of the page, by surprise and thrust Canuck into the attention of the hockey editors. Once again, Canuck delivered an impassioned response on Hossman's talk page [13] about his reasons for putting the page up for deletion. The result of the debate at that time was to keep the page, but it was eventually deleted some time later.

On October 17, 2005, the birthday of the keyboard operator for Croat Canuck, he joined an organization that would become his lifelong mission, The WikiProject Ice Hockey. As well, on that same date, Canuck pulled his first 100-edit day by doing 101 edits that day. Canuck's entrance to the WikiProject also coincided with some early friction with RGTraynor [14]. The two would get into a little multiple article mini edit-war over Canadian and American spelling [15] [16], however the two would eventually patch up their differences and become collegial co-contributors, with Canuck even supporting an adminship bid for Traynor. Still on Canuck's puppeteer's birthday, Canuck would come under the wing of a more experienced Wiki Hockey editor, Masterhatch, who guided him on how to edit like a civilized editor [17]. Over the next few days, Canuck would continue to create stubs of active players W-Z who where in his NHL Official Guide & Record Book.

In an interesting note, Croat Canuck was the first editor to put in the Chicago White Sox article after it happened that they had won the 2005 World Series [18]. He even stooped to reverting an edit a mere 27 minutes before the series was officially completed that had prematurely pronounced the White Sox 2005 World Champions [19]. That edit also held interesting, because Skudrafan1, now a fellow Ice Hockey WikiProjecteer but at the time was still very new to Wikipedia, also wanted to be the first to edit it but failed to match Canuck's quickness. He later mentioned Canuck's speed on a personal blog [20]. It was not until two years later that Skudrafan1 finally saw and pointed out the connection. In late October, Canuck undertook his most massive project to date. He created CHL alumni categories for every team in the history of the Canadian Hockey League (ie; Category:Kitchener Rangers alumni), and did exhaustive editing to ensure that every NHL player page that had been created to that date were properly categorized. It was a huge undertaking, and it took him over a month and a half of concentrated editing. The task routinely did bore him, and he resorted for unorthodox edit summaries to entertain him (see section below).

On November 16, 2005, a day that will live in infamy, Canuck made his first protest against anonymous editing and IP vandalism [21]. However the problem persisted as Canuck reverted IP edit after IP edit, and it pent up frustration and would later cause Canuck to take his first Wikibreak. The day after, Canuck found out the sad news that CrazyTalk had left Wikipedia, and broke the news to the rest of the Wiki public on Wikipedia:Missing Wikipedians [22], a page that really interested him, another contributor to his first WikiBreak. Another thing he created on November 30 was individual trophy categories for those who had won individual awards in the NHL, and continued in populating those categories as well.

The Road to Perdition (aka Adminship)

Having his heart set on becoming an administrator, and realizing how few edits he had in the Wikipedia namespace, Canuck started attending AFD votes and voting away, usually with some sarcasm or humour. One of the AFD votes he was involved in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alternative to Creation and Evolution, was treated rather lightly as a result of comments Canuck and another user had put. In fact the presiding administrator had to put 15 "interpreted as deletes" because very few of the voters who voted delete were actually using the word 'delete'. Even the closing administrator's remark were handled lightly, "The result of the debate was Delete and the closing administrator that there was a consensus to smite this article from the wiki :)". Also during this time, Canuck got really into the home-grown userboxes fad. Such monikers of his included "This user is not or never has been Napoleon" (which, sadly, is currently employed on dozens of user pages) and "This user does not wish to be female".

Croat Canuck convinced Gherkin to nominate him for Administrator, which he did on December 15, 2005, with a very light-hearted nomination (see Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Croat Canuck). Very few serious issues were raised, other than accusations of sock-puppetry and very few edits of the more sophisticated varieted. But all in all, he passed with a 21-5-3 record, and was granted administratorshippedness.

On December 21, 2005, Croat Canuck was once again the first to put a news event into articles, as the 2006 Canadian Olympic Hockey Team was announced and for each member he put into their article that they had been named a member. On Christmas Day, Croat Canuck started what was to become one of many barbs with Earl Andrew [23] [24], who regrettably was an Ottawa Senators fan, while Canuck cheered for the Toronto Maple Leafs. They would debate long into the night about how their team was better than the other's, and it prooved to be fruitless for Earl Andrew, as everyone knows that the Maple Leafs are the greatest team in the history of the NHL, bar none. Late in December, Canuck started manufacturing higher quality player articles for players such as Doug Smail [25], Brian Propp [26], Dan Quinn [27] and Kent Nilsson [28], to name a few. He also created 2004 World Cup of Hockey statistics, which involved more endless tedious work. But it was on New Year's Eve, 2005, when Canuck created perhaps his best page, NHL All-Rookie Team [29], which has barely needed to be adjusted to date, outside of updating it. It was long, informative and (cough) poorly sourced, but Canuck also went to great lengths to make sure that the page was extensively linked to. Another creation of his was the List of NHL players with 1000 points, which spawned many other cousin pages [30].

The Cruel Iron Fist of a Croatian-Canadian Administrator

Croat Canuck managed to get into his first colossal edit war, which really only involved a single word in the Wayne Gretzky and Bobby Orr articles, whether 'most' or 'many' was the best word to describe how many people thought that they were 'one of' or 'the' greatest player of all-time. It involved many users, and pages upon pages of madness were typed out over how to word that they were one of if not the greatest players of all time. Although Canuck took a side, he did his best to find common ground and do his role as an administrator to try to keep peace, which sounds he was doing a lot more of a glamourous job then he really was [31]. Not much later, he got into an even bigger argument about an even more trivial thing, which basically turned into a European vs. North American battle royale over whether the name in a player article should include 'á' or have the simpler 'a' [32]. This one brought even more people into the pot, and although Canuck argued hard at first, he eventually dropped out of the silliness.

Canuck also went to work expanding pages of Hockey Hall of Fame-caliber players that did not do those particular players justice. So in his next big contribution, he revamped the Bernie Federko [33], Rod Gilbert [34], Kirk Muller [35], Adam Oates, Mike Gartner and most of all, the Mario Lemieux [36] page. He also at this time in mid-January, 2006 ventured into the realm of political editing, creating an article for Canadian MP Harold Albrecht [37], who Canuck's patsy operator knew personally.

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In an interesting side note, Canuck received his first scathing personal attack which took him many weeks to recover from hurt feelings. He put the article Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Runecrypt up for deletion on January 29 and then got a scathing attack from some very intelligent person.

_{Comment Damn. It isn't an advertisement you idiot, If you could actually read by putting on your x1600 glasses on you would see it wasn't k? And I checked some of your profile.. f*cking Austria? I bet you thought it was pr0n until you discovered it was a city.. *Backs Away and looks at an english newspaper article about list 99 in suspicion*..At least these other guys have comments where you are like 'umm.. we should delete i cos... erm.. I SAID SO.' Personally its a great article and I think it should stay. It's well written and explainable about some of it's History. kthxbai. By the way I hear specsavers are good for vision problems.. Ah forget that laser eye surgery would be better. Bye you freaking idiot! :) By the way are you in a 'special class'?}

Canuck knew this was a pack of lies from the first sentence, because his slave typer only happens to wear x2 glasses. In early February, he created the top ten all-time franchise scoring leaders for each individual NHL team page, which only took him a day or so to finish. He then spent most of the rest of the month working on linking, and then at the end of the month he removed all the Olympic Team templates from player pages when the 2006 Winter Olympics were done, before heading off for a Wiki-break.

The First Crusade

Canuck was burnt out, he had just had his busiest month of his Wiki-career and wanted to leave. He said he was leaving permanently, but really it would turn out to only be for three weeks. Once he had been gone long enough to put himself on the Missing Wikipedians list [38]. He was still mad at all the vandalism he had to deal with and all those over-zealous anonymous stats editors that updated statistics incorrectly in mid-season. Now, he took more of a diplomatic role. In the month of April he nominated two familiar users for administratorship, first RGTraynor, who unfortunately wasn't rosy enough for the voters who didn't know him, then when that failed, he nominated the late user RasputinAXP, may his keyboard rest in peace beside Jimmy Hoffa down there in Jersey. Rasputin had been the one who almost single-handedly got the Wayne Gretzky article to featured article status, and he passed the administrator vote with flying colours.

Post-Second Crusade

Canuck toiled around in relative obscurity for a number of weeks during the summer, including taking a second Wikibreak around August-September of 2006, however he got back in the groove again for a little bit when winter started. In December he started and populated the morbid category Category:National Hockey League players who died during their careers, which unfortunately was later deleted without Croat Canuck knowing. Also, he awarded his first barnstar to prominent hockey editor Ccwaters. Then in January 2007, he created and populated yet another category, this one being for winners of the American Hockey League's championship trophy, the Calder Cup. However Canuck realized that he was spending too much time on Wikipedia, and really was depressed that the Community wasn't the same as he once was. This time he left, and he really thought he was done for good. He said farewell, and this time he even removed his administrator status, and then took his own life on February 3, 2007. However, after a couple months, new life was breathed into Canuck, and he announced on his user page exactly two months after he left that he would indeed be returning. On April 9, 2007, he did exactly that, and although he was no longer going to be editing 50 times a day, he was a lot happier for the freedom and came back with energy anew. Canuck's legacy was further cemented as he was awarded his first barnstar, from Mus Musculus on April 26, 2007. Mus Musculus took his duties as barnstar presenter to another level, nominating Canuck for administratorship. Canuck was passing by easily (Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Croat Canuck 2) when someone mentioned that it'd be easier just to ask a bureaucrat for re-instatement, which Canuck did, and he was promptly granted his administratorship again.

File:Ducks on the page.JPG

Canucks's main page edit

However he soon ran out of things to do, and offered up a plea on the talk page of the ice hockey WikiProject for ideas on things to do. This got him started on adding the post-season all-star teams to each NHL season page, and then adding all the notable debuts & last games for all those season pages, which spawned a long discussion in the WikiProject. Also, on June 6, Croat Canuck was part of a small contingent of Wikipedians trying to stop the flood of over-zealous fans wanting to pronounce the Anaheim Ducks as Stanley Cup champions with five minutes left in the second period of the final game, even taking on a brunt of hate himself, which he responded against with as little class as possible [39] [40], in a rare outburst against IP yokels. The next day, after there seemed to be little opposition, Canuck made his first edit for the main page, putting in the news that the Ducks had won the Cup in a sentence suggested by Radagast. He continued his editing at an increased pace, monitoring and improving general player articles from then on.

In early August, after a week of exhaustive research and preparation, Croat Canuck posted one of his most crowning creations to date, with the List of ice hockey players who died young article which replaced the category that had been deleted a month earlier. Along with it, he also created nine more corresponding player stubs from the article and did his first real work in doing citations in the articles he created. A few days later, he accepted an offer to watch the Hart Memorial Trophy article's featured list discussion and do changes as they were needed, as requested by Scorpion0422, who had been leading the charge to get the list featured.

What will be next for this hero of Superman-like proportions? Only time will tell.

Awards

		The Running Man Barnstar
		For your plethora of piñatas ice hockey articles, and your hard work on the WikiProject, I present you this barnstar. Mus Musculus (talk) 16:03, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

This editor is an Experienced and Established Editor, and is entitled to display this Service Badge

Inappropriate Edit Summary quotes

• Correcting a spelling mistake after creating the Brian White (ice hockey) article: "Spelling Massacheusetts correctly on the first try is like winning the lottery " October 22, 2005
• Self-Loathing after a screwup on the Eric Brewer article: "(My stupid, idiotic, super-unethical and pompous error that I need to rectify) " [41]
• Weak language in Marek Svatos article: "Don't beat around the bush, he is the ONLY rookie still with the Avs, and he is 3rd in rookie scoring, C'mon " [42]
• He was bored with the massive project of proper categorization as seen in Martin Skoula article: "((+cat), He goes to the net but he has no Finish! Of course he doesn't he's Czech! (I heard that one on Sportscentre)" [43]
• Transparent statement after editing Michal Sivek article: "Repetitive tasks demand you to maintain one of your sanity or sense of humour, but never both" [44]
• More bellyaching in Chris Simon article: "(+cats), I propose we start a category: People Traded for Eric Lindros" [45]
• Same day, Borje Salming article: "From Swede to Shining Swede" [46]
• Darius Kasparaitis article: "+cat, I'm sorry sir, you have Kasparaitis; the fear of hip-checking friendly ghosts" [47]
• Gordie Dwyer article, Canuck was a little upset with all the junior teams he needed cats for. "+cats, My, my enforcers get passed around in junior more than pot at a Phish concert " [48]
• Doing more tedious editing, on Sergei Samsonov article: " removed unsrced image... no sorcery here folks " [49]
• He was obviously doing a lot of linking, his comment on Tyler Arnason: " Out from the west! It's Mr. Link, and his loyal sidekick Four-Square Bracket-s)" [50]
• Like was already said, doing a lot of linking, this time on Henrik Zetterberg article: "I've got linking up the wamboozle" [51]

Visitors section

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1. I gotta fire my biographer. Croat Canuck Go Leafs Go
2. I wonder, how long until you'll realize how much you miss the mop? --Mus Musculus (talk) 18:03, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
3. Eduard Gherkin 18:34, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
4. It's a good night for hockey research and editing: Detroit lost, and my beloved Avs are getting into the signing game! Happy editing as always! Jmlk17 08:27, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
5. My beloved Pens are staying in Pittsburgh. Badger Bob would be proud. DarkAudit 19:52, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
6. yeah im visiting to find out who was the one trying to erase all of the edit work i was doing. thanks you messed up 2 hours of work a few days ago. Fireicefalcon (as an IP) 4:49 02 June 2007 (UTC)
7. Dude, this is either the best userpage on Wikipedia, or it is a cry for help. I haven't decided yet. Resolute 20:45, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
8. You don't know vandalism from real information you jerk!Corey Bryant 19:58, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
9. Now, now, Corey: the only thing about this guy that might make him a jerk is the fact that he's a Leafs fan. Skudrafan1 01:20, 15 August 2007 (UTC)