User:Mgreason/AboutMe

Bio
I was born in Newark, Ohio in 1955, but my family moved to Midland, Michigan when I was 12. I was in the class of 1973 at Dow High School but moved to Florida to escape the long Michigan winters. I spent a year at Young Harris College but finished my associate degree in 1975 at Lake City Community College and earned a BSBA at the University of Florida in 1978. My minor was Computer science. I have lived and worked in North Florida since college, with yearly trips north to visit family. I love Michigan in the summer so much that I spend summers there since my retirement in 2020. I was raised an Episcopalian but became more Spiritual but not religious. My political ideology is moderate; I support some Republican and Democratic policies but I refuse to align with either. I have no patience for the extreme segments of each party, especially their refusal to engage in civil discourse and compromise. I detest Donald Trump and others who blindly support his lies, bullying and criminal conduct. There are a number of Republicans that I would support over Joe Biden; I hope that someone can rise above the fray and unite our country again. I am concerned for the future of our nation because of the attitude of many millennials, but history shows that most every prior generation shared those same fears.

Wiki
I started my first article, JM Family Enterprises, in September 2007 after exploring Wikipedia for a couple of weeks. I worked for the company from 1987 to 2000, so I was intimately familiar with the organization. I think the article survived because there were so few articles at the time. Due to my limited understanding of Wikipedia, I didn't know about watchlists or monitor my articles. Several years later, the article had been hijacked, possibly by someone working for JM Family. The article was deleted because it had become an advertisement promoting the company. Ditto for the article on Gate Petroleum. I learned the purpose of a Watchlist (wiki)

It took a while to learn the processes of Wikipedia, and I began creating articles of my own personal interest around 2009—particularly articles in the Jacksonville, Florida area, which seemed to lack many suitable articles of local importance. After a couple of years, I looked at my alma mater, the University of Florida (class of 1978), but their Wikiproject had more than a dozen members, and there really wasn't a lot that needed to be added.

After I retired in 2020, I left Jacksonville and settled in a small town near Tallahassee. Personally, I'm a Gator, but both of my wives graduated from Florida State University, and I'm not a rabid fan, so I like the Seminoles, too. Anyway, I was reading the Tallahassee Democrat, and an article talked about an event at the University Center. I looked up the topic on Wiki, and there was nothing there! WikiProject Florida State University was started in 2007 and was active for a year or so, then...nothing. In contrast to UF, FSU needed a ton of updating. I posted on the project's talk page a month ago, and there has been no response, so this Gator has taken over the FSU project. Ha!