User talk:Brooke Vibber

Dear Brion,
Thanks for your very early contribution to this Wikipedia. Yours was the first signed edit and deserves recognition.

The first apparent edit, by User:200.21.107.xxx] (his or her only edit using that number), on 25 Noema 2003, was a very promising start. The HomePage began with "Kia ora" (one of the commonest Māori greetings), then after the fairly standard "This subdomain is reserved for the creation of a Wikipedia in the Mâori language..." there was a bold heading inviting readers to:

Make a Maori page on

• Te Tiriti o Waitangi
• Te reo maori
• maori
• tangata whenua

The subjects could hardly have been better for creating suitable articles for a Māori mātāpunenga (encyclopedia):

Te Tiriti o Waitangi: the founding document of the official relationship betwen the indigenous New Zealanders and the British Crown (Kuini Wikitoria at the time, 1840);

Te reo maori: the language that this is all about;

maori: adjective (and eventually noun) used by those people to describe themselves; and

tangata whenua: "the people of the land" - as above, though often applied locally to the area occupied by a single tribe or subtribe. (OK, nobody has written that article, but it's "early days yet", and that one deserves a fluent speaker of the language who can give it the right cultural gravitas!)

That contributor, if not a Māori speaker, must have known how to use an English-to-Māori dictionary, at least. It is possible you know who made that first unsigned edit. I have a hunch it was someone who later signed in but has not edited here in the last 12 months. If you don't, does anyone (eg "Node", Angela, Maximus Rex, Vardion, ...) know? Users with a feeling for history might like to know who it was and where they can read any relevant discussions that went on in other Wikipedias or mailing lists.

Not sure offhand. There was generally a welcome message put on each stub wiki waiting for a community, and sometimes somebody would come by and translate the message (sometimes poorly... :)

Six weeks later, on 2 Hanuere 2004, the table of other WPs and related wikis was added by another (or the same) anonymous person with a very lengthy "name", his or her sole contribution under that description.

About three weeks later, on 26 Hanuere 2004, you moved HomePage to Main_Page, no doubt in accordance with normal Wikipedia conventions. (Five days later, this "Kiwi" joined the English Wikipedia, little dreaming that there was an incipient Māori version too.)

Less than two weeks after you did your signed bit (no pun intended, programmers!), ie on 7 Pepuere, another apparently "sole contribution" was made: User:165.139.171.10 created the first page in the article namespace outside the HomePage, using the link "maori". Its content appears on my office computer as a row of rectangles with "IJ" near the middle; at home it's a row of squares with a few pipes interspersed. What could it be?

It looks like it's misencoded but I'm not quite sure what. --Brion VIBBER 12:37, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Not a problem any more, Brion! That disappeared soon after. When I write the history page envisaged below, the progress on that page will be outlined. Robin Patterson 22:46, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

One curious small step for man; but a giant leap for Wikipedia Māori. Time for a proper history page!

Robin Patterson 11:37, 2 May 2005 (UTC)