This page is what I will link to anyone who asks me about what wiki I come from or when/why I joined Wikia. It's also for people who are extremely curious, have stalker tendencies or just too much time on their hands that they'd want to read this.
Contents
#2009 - #2010 - #2011 - #2012 - #2013 (1, 2, 3, 4), #2014 (1, 2, 3, 4), #2015
2009[]
I have been reading Wikipedia for many years, and possibly other wikis that I can't remember. However, I never realized I could or dared to edit until March 2009, when I made my first edit at the Dutch Wikipedia in order to correct a typo. See here to behold the edit.
2010[]
I corrected another typo at the Dutch Wikipedia in February and made my user profile in December. In the same year, my university required an assignment on my faculty's wiki for one of its courses, so there I created my first page. I wrote an article in Dutch and learnt basic wiki markup, but it was rather short and the research was not very well done. (Will not give link for my own privacy.)
2011[]
I learnt some basic HTML in January 2011 when I created a website about the Hvetshran, a demon species that I made up for the role-playing community I was active in. Because I found a website however quite plump and inconvenient, I decided to create a wiki instead. I joined Wikia on July 13, 2011 as Yatalu and instantly created Hvetshran Wiki. That month, I created 6 articles on Hvetshran Wiki (in English) before falling inactive again.
Slightly before that however, in June 2011, I also made my first edit at the English Wikipedia. Like on Dutch Wikipedia, this was only to correct a spelling mistake.
In December of 2011, I did not want anyone who knew "Yatalu" to find me, so I created another Wikia account under "Ethear" to found the Dutch Japanese For Dummies wiki. The intention of this wiki was to give Dutch speakers their own easy resource to learn Japanese. However, I fell inactive again before 2011 was even over.
2012[]
In the first half of 2012, I was again required to work on my uni's wiki, this time to do a group project. While Hvetshran Wiki got a full year break in 2012, I did edit a bit under the account Ethear on the Dutch wiki about Japanese. From December on, I also learnt more HTML and used CSS for the first time to actually build a full website.
2013[]
Q1[]
Due to a break from the role-playing community in late 2012, I returned back to Wikia in January 2013 to continue working on Hvetshran Wiki, because the RP it was used in would be on hold with my absence. I quickly made 5 extra articles, and soon started creating Hvetshrenu (the Hvetshran language) dictionary pages.
Since all Hvetshrenu dictionary pages had the same structure, I ended up with the idea that they could be templated, and went to Community Central chat for the first time on February 8. There, I got help from a user named "Elecbullet". I decided Community Central chat was a place where I could hang out more and ask for help with coding, so that's where I would start to chat alongside editing Hvetshran Wiki.
In the following months, I also started editing on the Dutch Wolfenstein wiki where Elecbullet was also admin, and founded the French Wolfenstein wiki to translate articles into French too, despite not knowing anything about Wolfenstein. I also hit 100 articles on Hvetshran Wiki and started founding Hvetshran Wiki (quite obsessively) in other languages, such as Dutch, French, German and Japanese.
Q2[]
In late March, Hvetshran Wiki had hit 200 articles and in early April 2013, I created an account Botalu as bot to help me out on the wiki as well as a Twitter account @Hvetshran. I remained very active on Community Central chat as well.
The non-English Hvetshran wikis however did not grow as quickly as I had expected, even though I tried to look for translators on various wikis. This set me with the question how other wikis managed to internationalize and the idea that there would also be wikis (like mine) that had problems expanding their non-English counterparts.
Aside from Wikia, my faculty's wiki required another article to be written, most of which I did in May. My wiki experience however made that I took it much more serious this time, and I created a full fledged and long article about the history of Japanese archery. Despite leaving a few sections unfinished, it became one of the longest and (in my opinion) well-written articles on the uni's wiki.
Q3[]
In the first week of July 2013, from my (vague) ideas about internationalization, I started the base of a translation project. I created Template:WLB, the foundation of the Wikia Language Brigade, a blog to introduce it, and two days later (thanks to unexpected success!) a wiki too.
While over the summer break, I pushed Hvetshran Wiki to over 300 pages too, most of my energy started shifting towards my newly founded Language Brigade Wiki and Hvetshran Wiki was being moved to the background. What contributed to that even more, was that in August 2013, I was invited to become a chat mod on Community Central where I was still active on a daily basis.
In September, I also found a new wiki that sparked my interest, RPWiki, which I adopted. I also noticed that Darwin, Wikia's change to a fluid width, lacked a Dutch translation, which I offered to Staff and was put up in late September. Around this time, I was invited in the International Volunteering Team as a Wikia Helper for Dutch community.
Q4[]
In late 2013, I was very active on both RPWiki and in the WLB, but because of my promotion to Wikia Helper in October, I also started editing Dutch wikis. As only Dutch Helper at the time, I was alone in managing them as well as the Dutch Central Community, which was renamed from "Gemeenschap Wiki" to "Centrale Wikia community" due to potential misinterpretations of the former.
I also worked on two of my faculty's wikis: one where I had to write an article to discuss a Japanese manga volume (author, content, characters, use of Japanese, and so on), and one dictionary where I had to make Japanese-Dutch lemmas of words that appeared in the former.
2014[]
Q1[]
In January, I launched a project "Wiki of the month" on Dutch community, with Dutch Star Wars wiki Yodapedia being the first ever featured wiki, exactly seven years after their English counterpart had been. I finally started getting to know some Dutch Wikians, since I had previously been blending in with the English-speaking community.
The Dutch community central got new blog and other translations and a new design as well, but in February and March I was lagging behind doing all the translations and other work on my own, so I started looking for someone who was fit to join the Dutch Helper team.
A new hobby that I had also found since late 2013 and that I actively did throughout all of 2014 and actually also 2015 was: redesigning wikis. The point of this was that new users who visited the wiki would not be bothered by its layout (since they can't change it when they're not yet admin) but were more inclined to contribute to its content.
Q2[]
Due to my work on my faculty's wiki about a manga volume in late 2013 (we had to read a manga volume in Japanese and discuss it), I had in the meantime also started occasionally editing the wiki of that manga too: Historie Wiki. In late March, I had decided I wanted to adopt it, which I did halfway April.
In early April, Flightmare, an admin of the English Elder Scrolls Wiki, was added as second Dutch Helper. This allowed me to pass some of my tasks as Helper to him and to discuss any translations or decisions I made for Dutch community.
Q3[]
In late June my sister, who also has an account on Wikia, started editing again too (I can probably plead guilty for this) and through the summer holidays ended up being active mainly on two wikis: the Elder Scrolls Mods Wiki and the Dutch Elder Scrolls Wiki. I helped editing and coding there a bit as well for a while.
In September, the Dutch team of the IVT got another member, Amnestyyy, so we had three Dutch community Helpers now. Since the other two are Dutch though, I am still the only Belgian on the team. But there was a big change in my life: I left Belgium and went to study abroad in Tokyo!
Q4[]
Newly settled in Tokyo, I was leading a very busy life and had a lot less time for Wikia.