Doncram became a fan of wikipedia in mid-2005, and began editing actively in Fall, 2007. By the end of 2016 they had created over 9,400 non-redirect articles and almost 17,500 articles in total, according to Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by article count, and sometimes was listed in the top 20 of wikipedia editors by article count or in the top 200 by number of edits. These articles and edits span diverse areas, but a large concentration was in Wikipedia's one percent (during those times) that presents historic sites of the United States. In May, 2020, Doncram's mainspace articles numbered 13,534 (21st in rank) and edits numbered 180,658 (217th in rank).
Doncram says: I have focused my contributions in non-controversial areas, such as in developing lists of historic sites, articles about individual historic sites, and articles about architects and builders. I have enjoyed learning by reading and writing about these topics, and sharing my interest with others similarly engaged. However my overwhelming personal experience in Wikipedia has been learning firsthand about bullying and harassment, which goes on too often. The issue, which can be described in various ways, about "editor retention" and so on, is widely understood to be prevalent. It obviously hurts people, and it obviously decreases the numbers of new and old active Wikipedia editors. It was a leading topic of the 2014 Wikimania conference, and variations on the issue are discussed at User talk:Jimbo Wales and in RFCs sometimes. I identified with editor Fastily's comments about a horribly negative culture that can prevail within wikipedia, posted at User talk:Fastily, when that editor retired. And I pretty much also identified with SMcCandlish's letter of resignation. And GFHandel's resignation.
In my experience, it's a bullying culture, that attracts and rewards bullying. Good people are willing to come to the free-for-all forums of wp:ANI and other noticeboards a few times, but get burnt out. The forums self-select down to those who must find the negativity personally satisfying. At personal cost to many individuals who matter, and at cost of undermining the Wikipedia project and the crowd-sourced / freeware movement generally.
I have mostly thought that what was built in Wikipedia is here to stay, that even if a large number of editors are driven away, that the past work is good, clear, etc. At times I've seen assertions that Wikipedia could really fail, and I was at first quite skeptical. But gradually I have seen how non-mainspace areas of Wikipedia can be buried permanently by bad edits, by bot notices, by dead Talk pages, dead Wikiproject pages, and links to more and more dead-ends, with signs of unresolved litigations and disputes and so on. So that anyone considering whether they should contribute or not can see this as a wasteland, clearly not updated / current / really alive. And I also see vast dead areas in mainspace. It seems more and more possible, that Wikipedia really can fail, by driving away new and old editors. Of course Wikipedia has commercial value, so it won't disappear, but it could go dead as a volunteer project.
And I've started and developed a large number of articles on individual historic sites, with one of my special interests being to provide links for readers to the great NRHP nomination documents, increasingly available on-line. And I am proud to have made many other contributions within WikiProject National Register of Historic Places, including development of featured-list-worthy list-articles such as List of NHLs in NY.
And I'm proud to have founded the international WikiProject Historic sites, which quietly serves the needs of many disparate wikipedians trying to do good work. It's actually a service to provide one forum there, even if it is relatively inactive, so that historic sites-interested editors don't miss-spend energy trying to start up narrower Wikiprojects that are not likely to be successful.
And I'm proud to have helped energize a drive centered out of a wikiproject on Unreferenced BLPs to fix up unreferenced biographies-of-living-persons articles, which met an important, very public goal for Wikipedia a couple years ago now.
During 2013 to 2017, I was under arbitration restriction preventing editor SarekOfVulcan from interacting with me, and vice versa, and my editing in the NRHP area was limited. Since then I have returned to the area and done a lot more development. Interestingly, some of those who most contended with me previously have gone away when I was no longer available to contend with; maybe their interest was never in the writing about historic places after all, I have to wonder. Anyhow I have been able to revisit all articles in a longish list, to which I had once contributed before the good NRHP documents were available online, and to expand them all. And to go on to start short- and medium-length articles on many more NRHP topics.
In recent years I have tried directing some effort to writing essays, hoping to influence how some deletion discussions go, in a less-directly-confrontational way. This allows for more reflection and perhaps better communication; it seems productive. Some of my efforts in this area include my contributing to wp:TNTTNT and wp:ITSACASTLE. Which both were nominated for deletion, but "kept" by solid consensus, and I think references to them have been helpful in changing tenor of some discussions and in heading off unnecessary AFDs.
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