Sometime in 2004 or 2005, I first head of Wikipedia. It was this online encyclopedia with a lot of interesting articles. And the links! Oh the links; they transport you quickly to topics you’ve never even heard about. I soon learned that this marvelous resource was editable by people just like you an I. I was already familiar with free software, so the crowd-sourcing aspect was a concept I was already familiar with.

Becoming more involved, I joined the ranks of the editors and then administrators seeking to organize, revert and discuss the ever-growing content that formed the encyclopedia. My use of e-mail skyrocketed, as I found myself participating in long-winded mailing-list discussions about the intricacies of fair-use media and whether or not joke articles should be preserved. I also tried poking at the software, since it too was open source and asking for contributions.

Somewhere around this time, I became disenchanted with Wikipedia. Perhaps the administrative processes had taken their toll, or maybe I was just tired of arguing. I had never been a good writer (on or offline) so I couldn’t “get back to writing articles” or something of that nature. Facing a void, I turned to Veropedia.

Veropedia was a now-defunt venture by Danny Wool, myself and a few others to showcase the very best of what Wikipedia had to offer. Scraping (yuck) static versions that had been proofread and then using those for display to the end user. Vero was looking for a new developer, so I stepped up. I spent about a year or so working on the project and actually made some decent milestones. I managed to get a Lucene-based search going as well as ported our entire article validation script to PHP from Perl. Our technology was a hodgepodge of scripts, mostly because the original developer thought MediaWiki had too much overhead for our needs. Planning out a MediaWiki-based phase 2 of our software became the new goal.

So I started getting more involved with MediaWiki development. I got commit access, and started working on various bugs that were hindering Veropedia development–sidebar: I originally discovered the libxml2 entity bug while working on some customizations for Special:Import. And so Veropedia kind of just stayed the same while I chugged away at MediaWiki. Somewhere along the line I stopped really caring about Veropedia. I was busy with work, school and now I’d taken up MediaWiki development in my spare time.

Veropedia is dead. At least Veropedia as I’ve known it is dead. Actually, the server I had it living on just got shut down today. I’ve still got the leftover backups lying around, but the site itself is down. Danny still has the domain names if he ever wants to use them again, but I’m done with it. It’s not a wiki.

And that’s really what it’s all about to me at this point. Some point while working on MediaWiki, I realized that that was what I really wanted to do. Work on wikis. Veropedia wasn’t a wiki. Arguments on mailing lists and talkpages aren’t wikis. Collaboratively editing text is what MediaWiki does and what I’m proud to help support. I’ve started working with the Foundation on a contract to support FlaggedRevs/Pending Changes and it’s exciting to make the move from being a volunteer.

I really think that workflow systems like the one I’m helping to support really improve the wiki model. They help pages be as open as possible to editing while still allowing editorial control. And producing free, high-quality content is really what MediaWiki is designed to do. I think it’s pretty cool that I can help make that happen.

I also got tired of my Android theme, so I picked this one with the fishy.

School got really busy, and then I ran off to Paris for the Multimedia Usability Project Meeting. It was massively productive, and I got to meet a lot of really cool people I’ve known for a long time online but never met in person. Also, major thanks to Delphine for putting the whole thing together and doing a generally fantastic job. A lot of really good work was accomplished while we were there. We spec’d out a new upload form, we discussed staging areas for new uploads while licensing stuff gets sorted out, the GLAM folks talked about their interests. We had a very good group dynamic of developers and non-developers, and I think it worked out very well in the end. We talked about getting similar small-ish focus groups together in the future; we seem to get a lot done. I’m not sure how these public links work, but here’s my pictures from Paris (if you’re my friend already, they should be viewable from my profile).

Flew back to Richmond, massively jet lagged. Then I got sick. Like, really sick. As in, I ended up in the hospital for several days kind of sick. In the end, they determined I had viral encephalitis caused by the herpes virus (read the scary article). They don’t know how I got it, but the best we can guess is that my immune system was shot from being low on sleep, stressed out, etc. And since the herpes virus is in a huge percentage of the population anyway–myself included–it took advantage of my poor brain. But I’m fine now, and just trying to catch up on life.

Maybe over winter break I can finally do something with MediaWiki again. Maybe we’ll actually get 1.16 soon too

On the way back, I slipped on a rock and dropped my shirt in the water and got pretty wet. Otherwise ok, I got up and proceeded on. Not ten feet away, I slipped again. This time much harder. I dropped everything in the water, including my phone. I fished it out about 30 seconds later, but it was already off. Now, some 15 hours later, it still wont turn on (but it makes a rather loud buzzing sound when you try to put the battery in). I have declared my G1 dead.

This morning, I remembered I still had my crappy Motorola KRZR lying around. Found it, popped in the SIM card (after some struggling, I couldn’t remember where the SIM card went) and plugged it up–thank god for universal mini-USB chargers these days. Can’t find the battery, so I’ll hop over to T-Mobile later today and buy a fresh one. Hopefully this will all hold together until I can afford a new G1. I don’t like the MyTouch, so I’d rather stick with the G1 for now–unless the Hero comes out soon.

Oh yeah, and I woke up kinda sick this morning. Figures.

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