User:Borderman

I have been a member of Miraheze since July 2016 and joined mainly because it offered everything I needed to get my projects started. I have enjoyed being a part of this community ever since, although lately I have not been active on Meta due to working on my own projects. The idea behind Miraheze is an inspirational one. The founders, and later members of staff, have created something unique and those that help out in their spare time are a credit to this community. I would like to thank everyone who has helped with my previous requests and I hope that Miraheze will be the driving force behind everyone's projects for many years to come.

I was born in the 1970's and have lived in England all my life. I enjoy reading historical fiction, cycling, hiking, amateur photography and visiting one of my favourite places in the world, the Lake District in the northern county of Cumbria.

I am not a member of staff nor am I involved any administrative roles within Meta.

After a long break away, I am interested in continuing to work on Miraheze Commons, of which I am an administrator.

My current project

I started The Lonsdale Battalion many years earlier in 2005. In those days it was very different and only existed on paper. Since then it has gone through several different changes, and everything from that point is the result of originally discovering that my maternal great-grandfather, who enlisted in the 11th Service Battalion (Lonsdale) of the Border Regiment, died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. Wanting to learn more about this was the driving force behind the creation of the site today, which is still very much a work-in-progress. The rest is history and more about how it all started can be seen on my "About" page. It can feel a little overwhelming knowing that this project will never really be complete because there is just so much that can be written about and included to improve the content.

Main projects of this wiki include:

• Lonsdale Battalion Roll of Honour (ongoing / in progress of updating existing pages with an improved template)
• Lonsdale Battalion On This Day (ongoing / updating with new information / adding improved refs, note and acknowledgement templates)
• A History Of The Lonsdale Battalion (ongoing / nothing written for a while / about half way through writing)

There are several other smaller and lesser-used projects on the go and these are worked on when time allows.

Previous project

I started another wiki called The Great War, which I enjoyed working on immensely during its relatively short lifespan. I had big plans for it, which included the addition of a repository of contemporary-with-the-war and copyright-free publications, be it books, military documentation, maps and photographs. However, I simply did not have the time to work on both sites effectively, so decided to closed it and move some of the more interesting projects from that site to my main Lonsdale Battalion site under the Great War namespace. The main project in that namespace is the unfinished The Great War: On This Day. Since discovering two different websites already have this in completed form (with the same source information), I decided to put this on hold and continue with my other Lonsdale Battalion projects.

Things I like about Miraheze

Miraheze, and what it stands for, is probably one of the best things to have materialised in the wiki world in recent times. What makes it stand out is it's free to use, is secure and has no advertising! Advertising is one thing I really dislike on websites. This alone was a major deciding factor. The background operation of my site is also taken care of by staff, so I don't have to worry about that side of things. This is a real win for me. So, too, are that updates are done regularly and extensions can be implemented providing further functionality. Knowing that the entire wiki-farm is managed and run by volunteers who do this for zero monetary gain makes Miraheze stand out well above the crowd. There are some very knowledgeable people on Miraheze and it hosts a broad selection of interesting wikis.

Miraheze involves its community at every level and always provides opportunities for individuals to have their say regarding the community, and if new policies etc. are implemented. Members are actively encouraged to work on their wikis to continually improve their contents and, ultimately, improve the wiki-farm as a whole. It has a positive and open approach to how it is run, even under challenging circumstances such as the recent database issue. This has certainly provided a different learning experience: when mistakes happen how are they best addressed and fixed?

Things I don't like about Miraheze

What makes Miraheze is its community. Every community has its bad eggs and, unfortunately, Miraheze has had its fair share. This was one of the reasons why I took a step back from Meta. I was only involved with the community noticeboard and Requests for Comments. I had also started to work on the category structure as in those earlier days of development, it didn't really have one. Between 2016 and 2018 it seemed like a friendlier place. After a wave of new users from other wiki farms created accounts and imported their wikis, things started to go down hill for a while. A handful of problem-users created a negative environment and Miraheze suffered because of it. It didn't have all the policies in place that it does now to deal with a host of issues arising from disputes, some of which included vocal attacks towards staff and other members of the community. This resulted in a few bans and it has taken some time to weed out the bad eggs from this influx of already-established wikis that were used to doing things a certain way elsewhere. This is not to say all were bad eggs, many were legitimate and keen to work on their own projects by simply "get on with it." That said, the staff have worked tirelessly in their own time to deal with the situations that have arisen over the years. That I have a great deal of respect for.

Subpages

• User:Borderman/age
• User:Borderman/sig
• User:Borderman/user-infobox (no longer used)

Contact me

Please feel free to drop me a message on my talk page and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

Notes and stuff