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JarrahTree
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JarrahTree, JohnClarknew and Yashthepunisher

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By JPxG, AlphaLemur, Graham87, Tamzin, DreamRimmer and Oltrepier


A jarrah tree, photographed by JarrahTree, who preferred to be known only by his username

JarrahTree (formerly known as TomH) was a dedicated, passionate and long-standing member of the Wikipedia and Wikimedia communities who will be sorely missed. He unexpectedly died peacefully in his sleep on Monday, 2 December 2024.

JarrahTree made his first edit to Wikipedia on 25 May 2005, and during the next 19.5 years, he reached 378,034 edits on the site, while creating 931 new articles, and uploaded 2,973 images to Wikimedia Commons; he was an administrator at the latter site, as well as the English Wikivoyage. His primary focus areas included Western Australia, Tasmania, railways, and Indonesia, reflecting his fieldwork conducted during his university studies. He was also an active member of WikiProject Australia, amongst many others, and regularly gave advice and encouragement to new and experienced editors. Finally, he took part in several editions of Wikimania and ESEAP community conferences.

His dedication was particularly evident in his involvement in WikiClubWest, where he tirelessly organised meetups, workshops, and outreach events to grow and energise the local editing community. On 23 November 2024, just over a week before his death, he had attended WikiCon Australia 2024 in Adelaide.

There is a tribute to him on the website of Wikimedia Australia, his national Wikimedia chapter, where he served as Vice-President and Secretary, amongst other roles on the board, for over a decade. Vale, JarrahTree. – AL, G, T, O

Clark in 2009

John Clark, an English actor, director, and producer who had moved to the United States during the 1960s, also edited Wikipedia under the username JohnClarknew from 2006 to 2022; he made the last of his 3,224 edits on 23 August 2022, at the age of 90. He died at his home in California on 6 July 2023, aged 91. – T

Yash first joined Wikipedia on 16 October 2014, and made over 22,000 edits during his 10-year journey. He was mostly interested in editing articles about Indian cinema and politics, and helped promote several articles to good and featured status. He also helped promote many lists to featured list status, while reviewing 19 different GANs. – DR


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RIP JarrahTree. I've had a few respectful conversions with him after various reverts. Always most courteous. The part of the bio that I don't understand, though, is where it says in the caption that he preferred to be known only by his username. On one of his userpages, he links to his ORCID account, which has his real name in full sight. Was he really that secretive, given the ORCID link? Schwede66 23:35, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Schwede66: Yes he was, especially later on. I had to dig quite a bit to find out what you were talking about; on his Meta user page, he did indeed add an ORCID link in September 2020. This seems out-of-character to me for him to link his username and real name like that; perhaps he didn't understand the implications of what he was doing? The ORCID link was last updated in 2016 (click "Show recoerd summary). Graham87 (talk) 04:46, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I deliberately didn't post the link here because ... Schwede66 05:15, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But the other thing that's odd about this is that he lists his user name in his ORCID profile as well. Schwede66 05:16, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I thought so too, but he changed his username to his current one in 2015, before making the ORCID profile (all the usernames he's used on here have been pseudonyms, so it's OK to link to them IMO). Yeah, a bit odd, because I distinctly remember him getting tetchy when his username and real name were linked, but more so as time went on ... Graham87 (talk) 07:11, 2 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]



       

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