User:Kevin Myers

This page in a nutshell: This user writes articles few people read.

Greetings.

I've been hanging around here since September 2004. These days I generally limit my Wikiwork to a relatively narrow topic: the history of warfare in the Ohio country and Old Northwest. Yes, it's all corn fields and shopping malls now, but unknown to even many who live there, this was once the scene of much bloodshed, from the 1752 raid on Pickawillany to the Battle of Lake Erie in 1813, a conflict sometimes known as the Sixty Years' War. These days I'm mostly concentrating on articles relating to the Western theater of the American Revolutionary War. When I started, there were few Wikipedians doing serious work on American Revolutionary War articles, but interest has been steadily increasing.

This user is a member of the American Revolutionary War task force. This user thinks that registration should be required to edit articles.

Having grown weary of fixing vandalism, I've stepped off of the quality control treadmill by greatly reducing the number of articles on my watchlist—particularly high-profile articles, which attract endless bad edits. Hopefully, some sort of "stable version" system, which could reduce the time wasted on repairing damage, will be implemented in the future, though this does not seem to be on the immediate horizon. Until then, I'll mostly stay away from high-profile topics, and concentrate on a few articles off of the beaten path. Here are some of my best efforts since adopting this approach:

Daniel Boone 

Featured status 25 September 2006, made it to the Main Page on 26 January 2008. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first featured article about a participant in the American Revolutionary War. Genealogy cruft is the major problem when trying to maintain quality. People love to add alleged family connections, such as: Britney Spears is descended from one of his brothers, or Boone's cousin married a distant relative of Abraham Lincoln, etc. An early version of the article traced his ancestry to before the Norman Conquest! This one gets too much vandalism for me to keep on my watchlist, but I check it every few months to repair the damage.

Fort Randolph 

New article which appeared in the Did you know? column on 26 October 2006. This was the first time a photograph by me appeared on the main page. (Sure, it was the size of a postage stamp.) Mom always said that I'd make it big someday.

Crawford expedition 

Winner of Danny's third contest on 9 November 2006 (a wonderfully unexpected honor), featured status 26 November 2006. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first featured article about an event in the American Revolutionary War. Apparently, no other Revolutionary War article has even been rated "A class". Crawford's Defeat was once fairly well known, but I don't think it gets mentioned in history classes anymore.

Lochry's Defeat 

"Did you know?" entry for 7 December 2006, promoted to featured on 21 April 2007. A battle so little known your history professor has probably never heard of it. There are some Revolutionary War battles even more obscure, but I'm not sure if there's enough secondary material to raise them to featured status. Might be interesting sometime to see just how obscure a battle could be and still become featured.

Pontiac's Rebellion 

Featured on 7 May 2007 after 2.5 years in the making. This appears to be the first featured article about an American Indian war. A few more reviews like this, and Mom might invite me to family reunions again.

Illinois campaign 

Appeared in "Did you know?" on 4 July 2007. I'll probably bring it up to featured someday, but right now I'm working on other things.