Border Regiment Wiki:About

About the Border Regiment Wiki

Simple. It is several things but first and foremost it is a passion, born out of a keen interest of the Regiment originally from researching just a single Border Regiment soldier. Over time the project has grown into what it is today, an easily editable document and media based website that anyone can join and participate in and all for FREE. This wiki is a long-term project and remain a fitting tribute to all those who served in The Border Regiment.

• This site is free to use and will remain free in the future, that's The Border Regiment Wiki guarantee!
• There will be no donations asked for here!
• There will never be any annoying ads either!

Project mission & guidelines

The Border Regiment Wiki Project's continuous mission is to actively provide informational-based text documents and media files relating to the Border Regiment in a positive and educational format, delivering a variety of different subject matters that are available for anyone to edit.

The Border Regiment Wiki allows any visitor to contribute their own knowledge to the site, however, this can only be done after signing up and creating an account by filling out a simple registration form with a unique username and password.

The nature of this multi-authored system is what The Border Regiment Wiki is based on, giving rise to the promotion of sharing knowledge in an environment specifically designed to deliver the recognition of participation, no matter how great or small. This is key to the mission, therefore, visitors and members should also recognise that any information added to the site needs to conform to the following by:

• Contributing clean, informational or educational material in an unbiased light;
• Not writing anything that is in any way obscene, abusive, racist or sexist or written in an aggressive tone;
• Not writing any suggestive remarks or statements that could be construed as offensive or derogatory of any individual or group relating to the boundaries of the subject matter (for example, nicknames for Germans such as Boche or Hun etc.) unless coming from a direct transcript and a note saying as such;
• Not writing anything irrelevant designed to be negative and disruptive;
• Respecting other members opinions, interpretations or expressions;

Moderation

It is important that the The Border Regiment Wiki mission remains an integral part of the overall project. With this in mind it should be noted that whilst the information added to the site by any member will not be moderated, the Administrator will actively monitor new articles and media files to ensure that the above are adhered to. This might mean some simple changes are required or a general re-phrasing of some texts to ensure that the content is safe for inclusion.

The Administrator also maintains the site on a regular basis to ensure that the program is running smoothly and that the general operation is unhindered. There may be times when the site is 'down for maintenance' or the database link is temporarily broken. These are not major issues and normal operation usually resumes shortly.

History & development of the site

The original idea was something completely different to what it is today. The project started in 2005 when searching the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website for a soldier who served in the 11th (Service) Battalion Border Regiment (Lonsdale). This soldier, L/Cpl. John Bardgett, was the sole inspiration to begin this small tributary project, which ultimately changed and expanded as time passed by. However, at that point it only existed on scraps of notepaper.

By 2006, and for the duration of several months, the project had moved from paper to an off-line browser-based database of varying formats, never really settling on one main theme or idea. It wasn't originally intended to be made available on-line but, due to further juggling of ideas, the project changed completely and started to become a tribute to the entire 11th Battalion instead. This meant the scope of research and how to deliver it sensibly had increased several-fold. The program of choice to deliver the information was dokuwiki.

By 2007, the tribute website had grown with information and media files, added only when they were made available or had been written. Progress was slow as the website was a one-man project. It wasn't long before further changes were made, however, these changes meant even more work would be needed on an already difficult task. The website grew to become The Border Regiment Wiki, encompassing all the Battalions of the Regiment, now a seemingly impossible task. The project had morphed into something much bigger and far greater in scope than ever imagined and the decision was made to keep the project focused on Great War period only. There was so much more to do.

For over two years, fragments of information were added when time and means allowed. It was decided to write war time histories of the Battalions and include Battalion War Diaries along with other work-in-progress projects such as the D.C.M.'s, Border Regiment Army Lists and Newspaper Articles. The sister site of this wiki, The Border Regiment Forum was set up in early 2008 and also went through various formats before deciding on the current one. During that time, work on the Wiki Project halted.

By the end of 2009, it was decided to bring a new lease of life to the project by dusting away the old and bringing in something new. The articles were transferred to the New Border Regiment Wiki Project, which took 3 months of painstaking work one page at a time. The program of choice to deliver the website to the world was Mediawiki, bringing new angles to the creativity of designing and producing a project such as this.

The option for anyone to participate in the project was made a reality.

The official start date of the New Wiki was the 1st February 2010.

As with any project like this time is the greatest of allies. The project will continue to grow and with your help will become a great resource for the future.

By January 2011 it was decided to move the Border Regiment Wiki to a new server that offered greater stability and speed. During this time the latest incarnation of the project was slowly rebuilt to prune older articles that were no longer needed and improve browsing and general navigation throughout the site. Both versions of the site were running at the same time on two different servers in two different countries.