Elonka Dunin

Biography

Photo of Elonka Dunin

Elonka Dunin is a professional writer, game developer, cryptologist, and webmistress. She has been editing Wikipedia since mid-2005, having made over 57,000 edits, and written or expanded over 365 articles, some of which have been featured on the Wikipedia main page. Elonka was one of a dozen people chosen by the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee in 2008 to participate in the groundbreaking “Working Group on Ethnic and Cultural Edit Wars”. The Working Group’s task was to analyze the chronic problems from nationalistic editing on Wikipedia, and suggest new methods for addressing the disputes. Based on Working Group research, Elonka has experimented with different dispute resolution techniques on Wikipedia, and written several guides for other administrators who are attempting to wade into cases of complex dispute resolution.

Since 1990, Elonka has worked at Simutronics in St. Louis, Missouri, in game development. In 1993, their game CyberStrike won the first ever “Online Game of the Year” award from Computer Gaming World magazine. In 1997, Simutronics launched its own website, play.net. Dunin was the product manager for GemStone III, executive producer for the Hercules and Xena-based multiplayer game Alliance of Heroes, and worked on most of Simutronics’ other products. Elonka is also chairperson and co-founder of the International Game Developers Association’s Online Games SIG, and senior editor of annual white papers on the online game industry. Also an award-winning cryptologist, in 2006 Elonka published The Mammoth Book of Secret Codes and Cryptograms, which as of 2009, is in its sixth printing.

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