User:BadCatMan/Forgotten Realms Wiki history

Hatching
The Forgotten Realms Wiki was born on October 1st, 2005, whilst Wikia was still named "Wikicities". It was created by its first user, admin, and bureaucrat, Drizzt, who said on his user page, "Hello! I am the founder/admin of this wikicity. I do not treat it like my own, this is everyone's wikicity, I merely suggested an idea." He kicked off the Main Page and other wiki architecture, designed the first logo, welcomed other users, and started articles about Drizzt Do'Urden, drow, and Drow Sign. However, he became inactive within the month, later leaving the wiki in the hands of Hashimashadoo in December.

For the next year, as the statistics show, the wiki ticked along at a relatively slow but steady pace under a few dedicated editors. Building from the ground up is a difficult task for any wiki Activity slowed to an almost complete halt in the last quarter of 2006, with little more than 400 articles, before suddenly shooting up to new heights by the end of the year. This may have been the product of a recruitment campaign by Hashimashadoo, bringing in many more editors. But it seemed the FRW had also hit the kind of critical mass needed to attract a lot more interest; despite seasonal fluctuations and external events, activity would never get so slow again. At the end of 2006, long-standing contributors Zerak-Tul and Fw190a8 were added to the administration team. The next year and a half saw a period of consistent growth.

The Forgotten Realms ' advancing timeline proved to be a headache for editors, as articles once written in present tense, reflecting the present state of the setting, had to be rewritten to past tense as events moved on and sources were no longer new. Two users, Heaven's Agent and Johnnyriot999 wondered at this at Talk:Aznar Thrul in October 2007. Concerned by the changes expected in the coming 4th edition in January, 2008, Fw190a8 also called for greater care with dates given to lore. Heaven's Agent had proposed a policy in October 2007, suggesting that editors write with the perspective of being a long time in future—that is, past tense. This sat without comment and unopposed for several months, and Fw190a8 put it in place in June 2008, becoming the Remove Wiki from Timeline policy.

Edition Wars
The arrival of 4th-edition D&D (in June 2008) and the new 4th-edition Forgotten Realms sourcebooks (August/September 2008) contributed to another significant increase in activity, with a marked rise in the number of casual editors, the number of edits made, and the number of new articles in the latter half of 2008. It seems that new fans coming to the Forgotten Realms with the new edition and altered setting wanted to see 4th-edition content and post-Spellplague lore. However, the changes to the setting had been widely controversial, even unpopular among the existing fandom, and these "Edition Wars" were reflected upon the FRW. Some fans would perceive a 4th-edition bias and turn away from the wiki. Behind the scenes, it seems existing editors could not keep on top of the number of new editors and the influx of new lore, and could hardly enforce policies. Categories and infoboxes designed for 3rd-edition rules struggled to accommodate 4th-edition rules, and became much-patched or meaningless.

This post-4e activity peaked in January 2009, with the FRW's greatest number of casual editors and numbers of edits and new articles per month. At that time, Hashimashadoo raised SkyeNiTessine to admin status. Activity and number of editors gradually settled back down to normal over the course of the year, perhaps as the new edition smell wore off. Nevertheless, the damage had been done. Eli the Tanner, who joined at the end of 2009, tells us, "many of us editors plodded along mostly by trial-and-error in the early days. The community before 2011 was very fractured and had a wild west, DIY feel. There were broad waves of 4e editors rewriting entire 'core' articles, often deleting entire tracts of previous lore in the name of 'updating' the wikia to the new edition. The mods like Fw190a8, Hashimashadoo, and Cronje were the sheriffs of the day that worked to push for citations and did their best to kerb the trolls and unreferenced work. However, most editors had to fight for their own articles, and it was often a case of 'out-referencing' another editor to stop them deleting your work. Many of the battlegrounds drove the editors away as little could meaningfully get done."

The period around September/October 2010 saw the introduction of the Roll of Years pages, seeing the mass-production of over a thousand new pages, followed by over 4000 edits for formatting, as shown by dramatic peaks in the statistics. Many were placeholders, containing no more than the names of the years, but many others contained historical lore. Unfortunately, much of this had been copied by one particular user from The Grand History of the Realms. This plagiarized content, much of it sneaking in unnoticed, was another significant problem for the FRW.

Rejuvenation
Nevertheless, the community and the wiki survived. Eli continues, "However, Fw190a8's golden rule of 'reference everything' endured and was picked up by editors like myself and became well-established when the 2011/12 crop of BadCatMan, Darkwynters, Moviesign, TerrorBlades & Thomaslove92 arrived". From 2011, Hashimashadoo began raising up long-lasting and quality editors to admin status, with Quinsareth (who'd started in March 2007) in March 2011 and Cronje (started May 2010) in June 2012, while future admins Darkwynters and Moviesign joined respectively in August and November of 2011. Moviesign recalls, "I guess it says something that my first edits (on any wiki anywhere, I think) were to create and use a Cite book template. After I got acclimated to wiki work and began some pet projects, I got interested in the more technical side of things and adding new features. My first real template was the Currency table and I was hooked."

However, the wiki had not seen the last of the Edition Wars. At the very end of 2011, a few users were calling for 4th-edition lore to be placed in separate sections or articles, and even for the wiki to be split in two, one for the classic Forgotten Realms setting, and a new one for the post-Spellplague setting. These arguments may have arisen more from personal opinion than what was best for the wiki. Moviesign explains, "The 4th edition controversy was still echoing through the wiki (mostly on Talk pages and Forum:Split the wiki, which was a big deal at the time) and I had quite a few 2nd edition sources that I wanted to use in my contributions, so I spoke out in favor of treating all editions equally..." Many editors argued eloquently, others with vehemence. Fw190a8 argued at the time "the best way to improve the wiki... is to just improve the wiki." Explaining that such a split would harm the wiki more than help it, admins and regular editors called for more dedicated editors, obedience to and enforcement of existing policies, with no bias toward any edition. Moviesign finishes, "Thankfully, the wiki did not split and I got to have fun reconstructing templates to handle everything from 1e to the as-yet-mythical 5e." Eli the Tanner describes the later atmosphere: "Post-2011, the community began building new policies that have shaped what we have today. The new climate allowed specialists like Daranios and Coswig to flourish unimpeded."

In January 2012, Niirfa-sa proposed a revised canon policy, designed to focus on Forgotten Realms lore over core D&D lore, and to acknowledge the changes of 4th edition while preserving older lore. In practice, this would mean no bias toward any edition. The Edition Wars were briefly resurrected, but the editing community were almost all in favor. The proposal nevertheless lingered until it was bumped in June, and finally implemented by Fw190a8 in October. This edition-neutral view would remain the dominant philosophy.

February 2012 saw the arrival of BadCatMan, who says, "I left another wiki with a very hostile admin and non-cooperative community; I wish I'd never gotten involved. Though the quality of the FRW had put me off for years, I found things on the up-and-up and a much more friendly community, and soon became very involved." He would regret not getting involved back in 2006 when Hashimashadoo first advertised in their play-by-post community. The new crop all quickly became very involved in the running and maintenance of the wiki. In September, after seeing Cronje given admin status, and mostly wanting to be able to delete articles in order to clean up the wiki, BadCatMan simply asked in the forums how to become an admin, and he and Darkwynters won admin posts by acclaim in October. Unable to regularly weigh in on policy issues, Hashimashadoo bestowed bureaucrat powers on BadCatMan in May 2013. In June 2013, Darkwynters nominated Moviesign, and he was duly upgraded to administrator by BadCatMan. As old admins faded away or lost regular access to the offline world, BadCatMan, Darkwynters, and Moviesign became a triumvirate managing the wiki on a day-to-day basis, enforcing policies and creating new ones, welcoming and assisting new users, and implementing many new features.

From August of 2012, the number of articles on the wiki actually decreased. Thankfully, this was the result of a clean-up campaign to remove old plagiarized, copyright-infringing, non–Forgotten Realms, and homebrew articles, with them being deleted, tagged, or rehabilitated. This would be an ongoing effort, expected to take years to complete, but would lead ultimately to a cleaner, more original wiki. It was not without its troubles, however. An anonymous user turned troll, apparently annoyed at wholly copied articles being removed, then falsely labeled every dragon article as being copied and demanding their deletion, in a confused protest against copyright law. BadCatMan spent a great deal of time undoing these, and he and Darkwynters calmly argued the wiki's position on copied material, before the troll stormed off. Other serial copiers reacted with incoherent anger, but it was now clear that wiki policies were being enforced, and that the wiki was policed.

Despite the advances in the background, the Main Page had remained almost unchanged since 2008, with featured articles and images changed less than once a year, and a still fairly plain, basic appearance. Thus, in October 2012, Fw190a8 put forward a new design with a slideshow-based format. Fw190a8, Cronje, and BadCatMan put their heads together, sharing ideas about fresh content, preferably in automatic rotation, but the project languished until Wanderscribe bumped it with fresh ideas. BadCatMan then began a complete overhaul of the Main Page, restoring the old wood-and-sepia color scheme and organizing the design to put lore and features front-and-center. He created a weekly "Did You Know?" trivia section, first rolled out in mid-January 2013, then instituted the new Main Page on February 5th. With coding help from Moviesign, new Featured Article and Featured Source sections were implemented and put in automatic rotation, though a regular Latest Releases section was soon abandoned. Featured Articles would now be decided by community vote, according to stringent guidelines on quality. The following year, Moviesign created the "On This Day" feature, appearing in March 2014, and BadCatMan followed up with a Featured Image section in April 2014, if only to get rid of a long-running picture of Elminster. All this combined led to an engaging and dynamic main page designed to interest readers.

Early in 2012, Cronje and Moviesign had begun work on revising and standardizing the infoboxes. Such work would be ongoing, with regular additions and revisions. Periodically, throughout 2013 and 2014, Moviesign and others proposed changes to the infoboxes to support all editions with edition-specific sections as well as edition-specific categories. Spell and Person received major overhauls in July 2013, and updating pages became a community-wide effort.

High levels
The FRW enjoyed its 12,000th article in May 2013. After this achievement, feeling the redesigned and dynamic Main Page had put a new face on the wiki, and the active community had given it a new heart, BadCatMan reached out to the Forgotten Realms fandom, posting at the Wizards of the Coast and Candlekeep forums. Here, he and other editors explained the new philosophies and policies, introduced new features and current work, called for new editors, and fielded questions and concerns. The Edition Wars remained a problem, but the philosophy of edition-neutrality remained firm and became well supported. These communications with the fandom became a semi-regular exercise, alongside BadCatMan's reports to the editing community on how well the wiki was doing in ratings and statistics. The Wikia Activity Monitor demonstrated increasing traffic to the wiki, indicating a larger, more interested readership and a raised profile among fans. In fact, with Wikia contacting admins with new features and changes, the Forgotten Realms Wiki had become one of the larger and more visited wikis on the Internet.

It was perhaps because of this that the FRW was targeted by trolls. Trolls and vandals have long been a problem for the FRW and all wikis, but two major incidents stand out. On May 9, 2013, one vandalized several pages, which were quickly undone by User:Boo Too, and the troll soon after blocked by Darkwynters. On June 6, 2013, an arch-troll from a horde of trolls assaulted the wiki. It defaced the new Main Page and moved it around the wiki to make it harder to undo, while also vandalizing user pages. Fortunately, Darkwynters was on hand, restoring the Main Page after only six minutes, while BadCatMan later spent a half-hour before breakfast thoroughly undoing the page moves. Regrettably, the Main Page had been left unprotected after the redesign, following misguided advice from Wikia. The troll and its hoard, who had attacked several other wikis, were permanently banned from Wikia.

The FRW had survived one edition change, and now faced another. But this time, it was ready. Policies, infoboxes, and categories designed to accommodate four previous editions had also been designed expecting the next. Fortunately, with 5th-edition sourcebooks and 5th-edition Forgotten Realms lore released on a staggered basis from August 2013 through 2014, with no whole campaign setting for the Forgotten Realms yet released, the expected deluge became a manageable stream.

Lhynard arrived in November 2014 and quickly impressed, being invited by BadCatMan to become an admin in April 2015. Fortunately, he accepted and stayed.

In August 2015, Wikia staff announced that a large percentage of readers are accessing the site via mobile devices, but the old wiki markup infoboxes consistently broke when viewed on a mobile device. Moviesign began the long process of converting all the FRW's infoboxes to the new "portable" style, while hoping to retain the functionality of the old style. "I think all of wikidom can be summed up in three little words: work in progress." says Moviesign.

In September 2015, Moviesign reminded everyone of the upcoming 10th anniversary, prompting a community-wide celebration of the wiki's own accomplishments and long life. New anniversary-edition logos were designed by Jandor and Thomaslove92, and many more ideas proposed for future implementation. BadCatMan gave a lengthy report on the wiki's statistics to date, its successes, and its growing status, as well as its needs for the future. He also pieced together this very history from statistics and user recollections.

Moviesign reminisces
I guess it says something that my first edits (on any wiki anywhere, I think) were to create and use a Cite book template. After I got acclimated to wiki work and began some pet projects, I got interested in the more technical side of things and adding new features. My first real template was the Currency table and I was hooked. The 4th edition controversy was still echoing through the wiki (mostly on Talk pages and Forum:Split the wiki, which was a big deal at the time) and I had quite a few 2nd edition sources that I wanted to use in my contributions, so I spoke out in favor of treating all editions equally (I'm particularly proud of my 16:48, January 9, 2012 post), and then later proposed changes to our infoboxes to support edition-specific sections. Thankfully, the wiki did not split and I got to have fun reconstructing templates to handle everything from 1e to the as-yet-mythical 5e.

After BadCatMan joined, there was a push by User:Fw190a8 to spruce up the Main Page and get some fresh content, preferably in automatic rotation, so BCM and User:Cronje (I believe) put their heads together and after a couple months we got a new Main Page in January 2013 with weekly "Did you know?" trivia and a rotating Featured Article. I got in the spirit of things with the "On this day" feature and helped out with code for Featured Article, Featured Source, and Featured Image. Now our main page is quite dynamic and I hope viewers actually pause and look at it before they search for something they are interested in.

Wikia recently announced that a large percentage of viewers are accessing the wiki via mobile devices and the old wikimarkup infoboxes consistently break when viewed on a mobile device. I am currently in the process of converting all our infoboxes to the new "portable" style and I'm hoping that we can keep all the functionality that the old style gave us. I think all of wikidom can be summed up in three little words: work in progress. &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 17:05, September 28, 2015 (UTC)