Brent Laabs


 * Chief Financial Officer, Software Developer

I came into Miraheze as a person who just wanted to run a wiki that had suffered from the fall of another wiki farm. All The Tropes is a wiki about literary analysis of popular entertainment -- and who doesn't like that? But it's also a wiki with custom extensions and software, run by volunteers who want to make content not run servers. And given our past history with advertising leading to censorship, we can't afford to be on a wiki farm driven by profit.

Miraheze is an invaluable resource to people who run wikis, because you can be exactly as involved as you want to be. If you just want a simple site with VisualEditor so you can get to writing, we have that. If you want to be involved in writing software and customizing settings, you can do that too. And we of Miraheze will try our best to do the rest while staying out of your way.

As I found myself drawn into the Miraheze project, I've found it to be engaging and fun. As we're not driven by profit, we get a chance to make what we feel is the best for the community. And I'm heartened by the fact that the wiki community supports our efforts with their own time and money. It's not a secret that I'm the largest donor of money, but it's worth pointing out that even without my contributions Miraheze's users provide enough support every month to keep the site running. Even without asking all of our users for $3.

As we look to the future, I feel like we need to invest in expanding our outreach. This can take a lot of forms. We want to build tools and write documentation to make starting and configuring wikis easier. We need to make it easier to find our wikis, and advertise our service. And when we get large enough, we will incorporate as a real nonprofit.

Despite what people have been telling me, I don't think we need a grand plan to take over the wiki world. If we play to our strengths -- reliable, customizable, secure, open source service -- then success will come. For wikis like All The Tropes, Miraheze has already been a great success. If this is how far we've come in one year, I look forward to what Miraheze will do in the next. Hasta la victoria siempre