User:CarlfishWikia

Hi! This is the staff account of Charles Miller, software architect at Wikia.

History
"…because the thing that Usenet did, the important thing that Usenet did that put everything else to shame, was that it provided a way for all of the cool people in the world to actually meet each other. — 'A Rant', Russ Allbery, news.admin.net-abuse.usenet, March 1998" Ever since I found (and was immediately hooked on) Usenet in the early 90s, I've been obsessed with software that gave people around the world a place they could communicate and collaborate with people they would never have met in their offline lives, and hopefully build something bigger than any of them.

Some time around 2000 I discovered this odd website called "The Wiki Wiki Web" that allowed anyone to edit it, but somehow was the home to intelligent and honest discussion, and became the first real home of "Agile" software development.

And now I've been writing Wiki software for almost fifteen years, first for companies that wanted to tap into the spirit of open collaboration inside their own businesses, and now as software architect for Wikia, helping us find new ways to put better tools into the hands of our community. "I've been through pain and joy with this network, I've seen communities form and wither and reform, I've met friends and lost friends here, I've learned things and discovered things and created things. I've seen people make a home here when they didn't have any other, not on a newsgroup, not with a bunch of electrons, but with people that they've met and communities that they've found and support that they've received from people who had just the words they needed to hear and would never have known they existed. — Ibid."