User:Theleekycauldron



Hi there, I'm theleekycauldron! I also go by leek, leeky, and claudia. I do some writing and editing around here – it's pretty fun, in addition to being an enormous privilege. I also try to make myself useful around the backrooms of the project, usually at Did you know, sometimes with some fancy-looking extra buttons I've been given access to. They're really not all that scary, and I hope I'm not either – in fact, I bet you're pretty cool! Come hang around and talk to me if you'd like, maybe there's something I can do for you :) if you want some dense information about what exactly I do around here and why, keep reading – if you find that terribly dull, maybe instead you can spend that time finishing up that project that's been sitting on your to-do list for eons. You know which one I'm talking about. Go do it! Or stay here! I'll probably never know either way! Happy editing :)

Bit about me
I started editing in the summer of 2020, as a minor who was bored out of her skull in the pandemic – I kind of flitted in and out, making fixing typos here and there, scoring my first GA in March 2021. By that summer, I could feel the habit slipping – I hadn't really made any connections with other people, I couldn't find much to write about, and I was getting discouraged. But then, in August, I discovered the project side of Did you know (DYK), which I'd only vaguely interacted with before. One of the admins running the project noted that they needed someone to build prep sets, and after trying it once, I immediately fell in love with it, going back to do it again the next day and the next. I got to read and fact-check a half-dozen fun facts from new articles a day – it was enjoyable, it was insightful, and I was helping do something positive and productive. And I started making friends! Having familiar faces to work alongside was a huge bonus; all at once, I went from a nerd trying to relieve pandemic boredom to a nerd in a community of other nerds just like me! (Who were also, presumably, trying to relieve pandemic boredom.) The rest is history – I've helping out at DYK ever since, and I've been hoping to find people who need the same jolt of inspiration and community I did, particularly minors who don't have much of a voice anywhere else.

Some people like to call me "leek" or "leeky" – fine by me, as long as you spell it in lowercase! As for the name itself, theleekycauldron is a rough portmanteau of leek, the root vegetable, and The Leaky Cauldron, a pub in the Harry Potter universe. Leeks have been my thing for about as long as I've had this account: my friend and I randomly chose vegetables to identify with, and I went with leeks on a lark. Couldn't tell ya why! I've been a Harry Potter fan for way, way longer than that, though – really, about as far back as I can remember. It's a rocky time to be a Harry Potter fan, I suppose, especially being a trans person who doesn't read a lot of fanfiction – but the books helped me find a passion for reading and learning, and I owe them my thanks for that, even if their author turned out to be not so nice.

In real life, I'm studying mathematics and political science – mostly because I'm indecisive. But I do also love to make music, write music, write code, write fiction, write opinion pieces, write in my diary; I'm a big writing fan, although I can't ever seem to actually get myself to do it. My modus operandi is that my sleep schedule is awful, my attention span is unpredictable, and my talent for procrastination is awe-inspiring, but I generally feel that being active is good for me, so I make an effort to find the people and things that make me want to engage with a productive and healthy life, and Wikipedia is one of those things. Thankfully, there are lots of things that keep me alive, healthy, and full of a joie de vivre that compels me to sing Simon & Garfunkel in public :)

As I'll cover in great detail below, I do a bunch of odd tasks to make this site a little better and prevent it from going off the rails. I do my best to avoid being wrong on the internet – unfortunately, I find myself to be human, and the thought of disengaging from anything and everything that might cause me to make a mistake is terribly boring! So instead, I have a talk page where you can go to complain about me, ask me questions, and otherwise challenge me to make better decisions on the project. I like being challenged! If no one ever did that, I'd be pretty bad at my job. Some of my favorite people, on and off of this website, achieved that distinction because they told me to my face that I was wrong and needed to do better, and brought a convincing argument to boot. Sometimes I make decisions using extra buttons, in which case, uh, everything I said above still applies (applies more, actually!).

As I mentioned above, I do a lot of work at DYK – and while a huge draw was finding a community there, the importance of the actual content work that DYK does can't be understated. As someone who grew up on the educational side of YouTube, who had the chance to pick my own interests and chase after them to my heart's content, I know firsthand of the power a resource like Wikipedia can have to shape minds and help people discover their own love of learning. DYK is one of Wikipedia's best ways of being more than a stack of reading material – of trying to give readers something they can be inspired by, something that leaves them wanting to know more. That's why I'll always push the project towards content that is engaging, insightful, edifying, or just plain fun, and try to encourage those submissions when we get them. That doesn't mean that I think we should be posting clickbait, though.

Lately, I've taken an interest in reforming the requests for adminship process. As it currently stands, the process is hostile to candidates, hostile to participants, and fairly inefficient in its use of participant time and energy. There are lots of things we can do about that – and there are many, many reforms that I find myself in favor of – but we do actually have to be willing to try new things and work together towards a solution.

Articles I've worked on
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Politics
United States congressional delegations from Hawaii

Sarah Ashton-Cirillo

Above Znoneofthe

Alabama's 3rd Senate district

Alabama's 4th Senate district

Beer question

Claudia Belk

Claudia Winterstein

Executive Order 13942

How Civil Wars Start

Larry Smyth

Measure VY

Out of the Blue (book)



Jon Stewart's 2004 appearance on Crossfire

"SLAPP Suits"



Dear White Staffers

@NJGov

Dumpster fire }} {{No col break|

Court cases

 * Heckler v. Chaney

Fedorenko v. United States

United States v. Rahimi }} {{No col break|

American state legislators
Claudia Riner

Arthur Hathaway Hewitt

Claudia Meier Volk

Claudia Powers

Denise Jones Ennett

Joni Albrecht

Julie Schmit-Albin

Lori Gramlich

Mario Mattera

Peter Oberacker

Shelley Hughes

Tracy Quint

Zach Fansler

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Television
Jon Stewart's 2004 appearance on Crossfire

Rosa Diaz

Misfits and Magic }} {{No col break|

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
"SLAPP Suits"

John Oliver Memorial Sewer Plant }} {{No col break|

The West Wing
Claudia Jean Cregg

Amy Gardner

Ainsley Hayes

Mrs. Landingham

"17 People"

"A Proportional Response"

"A West Wing Special to Benefit When We All Vote"

"Bartlet for America"

"Celestial Navigation"

Donna Moss

"Game On"

"Hartsfield's Landing"

"Main Title (The West Wing)"

"The Debate"

"The Long Goodbye"

"The Supremes" }}

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Music
List of variations on Pachelbel's Canon

"Beer Beer, Truck Truck"

Claudia Quintet

"Closer to Fine"

"Hayloft"

"The Election of 1800"

"We Didn't Start the Fire" (Fall Out Boy)



Hillel Tigay

19.99

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Judaism
19.99

Fuchs Mizrachi School

Hillel Tigay

Jews and Christmas }}

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Internet culture
Pronunciation of GIF

Dear White Staffers

@NJGov

Citizens Square

Dumpster fire

Erynn Chambers

Hurricane Shark

Melissa Ong

@NYT_first_said

Pizza Rat

Spiders Georg

That Vegan Teacher

Wikipedia Star Trek Into Darkness debate Deleted: CallMeCarson

Code Bullet }}

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Food and nature
Capri-Sun

The Bigg Chill

Claudia Fleming

Puccinia porri

Zoosphaerium darthvaderi }}

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Miscellaneous
Cwmhiraeth

Fuccboi Merged: "National Stupid Day" }} {{No col break|

Things I haven't done yet
Lady Bird Johnson

Claudia Kishi

Bucket list: Leek

The West Wing

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DYK
The vast majority of my energy is spent at Did you know, a section of the Main Page that airs fun and intruiging facts from new and improved articles. I nominate my articles to appear at DYK virtually every chance I get, but I spend much more time assembling and scheduling DYK sets (known in the biz as "prep building"), and as an administrator, I also stamp sets that others have built so that they can go on the Main Page (we need more of these!).

Scripts and bots
I run ; he does a bunch of tasks related to DYK and stuff. Does any of it work? ... not really, no. But I sure did put a bunch of time into 'em!
 * 1)  p rep s et's h alf- a ssed w orkbench (pshaw)
 * 2)  D YK a ddition and r emoval n otary (darn)
 * 3)  v iews a nalyzer for DYK  e xtraordinaire (vandyke)
 * 4)  pro motion c ounter, t o, o stensibly, r ank (proctor)

Essays
Mainly the half-baked thoughts I'm intending to finish.
 * 1) Assessing DYK hooks
 * 2) Don't tempt the wrath of the Whatever, from high atop the Thing
 * 3) DYK and attribution
 * 4) It's okay to be wrong
 * 5) Source your plot summaries (Signpost link)
 * 6) Shortcuts, screwballers, Simon & Garfunkel

Badges, WikiProjects, and other good shtick
--Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:12, 11 September 2021 (UTC)