Weirdcyclopedia (ShoutWiki, 2022-2023)
Weirdcyclopedia (ShoutWiki, 2022-2023) | ||||||||||
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A wiki's downfall unlike any other.
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Weirdcyclopedia is a wiki founded on February 12, 2020 by a former user known as Salarvander originally located on ShoutWiki (a farm that also feeds this wiki) and aims to be a wiki where the user feels almost complete freedom. The wiki was closed on June 17, 2023, and was recreated from scratch on Miraheze on August 22 of that year.
Bad Qualities
- This wiki was so underdeveloped that even the main page looked unfinished because there were blank sections or the phrase "Under Construction" everywhere.
- The only template on this wiki was the delete template, which further justified the almost non-existent quality control. [1]
- Working on this wiki was very frustrating due to vandalism and feedback from other users, which usually resulted in edit wars.
- The worst case was the page about Qualitipedia which is filled to the brim with trifles, unprofessionalism, and criticism of important people of that wiki, making this page the biggest offender.[2]
- Editing on these pages became even more frustrating in December 2022 than before for the reasons stated above.
- A user named MazKepler4 made several Reception Wiki-style pages that personally attacked real-life people that were Tiktokers or YouTubers, despite Salarvander explicitly stating that Weirdcyclopedia was not a Reception Wiki.
- Starting in December 2022, this wiki started to decline thanks to a lack of administration, as its only administrator, Salarvander, is no longer on ShoutWiki or anywhere else on the internet. This led to massive vandalism on most pages and many speculate that -abigblueworld- was the cause of it all.[3]
- Since May, this wiki was struggling with spambots who created pages that are "off-topic" even for ridiculously low standards.[7]
- Leerdoman74 was the one responsible for all those edit wars and intimidation/harassment towards other people, and, like an unknown vandal and the spam bots, he was one of the users who tarnished the wiki's good image.
- Despite being one of the users who got this wiki shut down on ShoutWiki, he still takes to the revived version on Miraheze to harass and edit war with SuperStreetKombat the same way he did on the original every once in a while.
- Curiously, Leerdoman would regularly contribute to the wiki back when it was on ShoutWiki despite it being satire-based and Leerdo's apparent hatred for humor or satire.
- Despite the excessive amount of anarchy, neither Salarvander nor the ShoutWiki staff did almost anything to stop the issues that had been plaguing it for a while, and SSK almost never received support in helping the wiki recover. Additionally, all of the terrible users who ruined it got away with doing so mostly scot-free, which caused the wiki to close on June 17th, 2023.
- Oddly, a user on Miraheze called Yūki had a bad reputation among a few IP users on this wiki, despite being an otherwise good person, and demanded that he not be added to the Qualitipedia page's good user list at all.
- Zenko's anon friend said he was a "bad user" due to the fact that he was one of Zenko's haters.
- Another anon is an unknown user who would remove Yūki from the good user list, but when SuperStreetKombat added Yūki back, said anon removed him from the list again and started an edit war whilst stating vague reasons for doing so such as "Yūki is not good" or "Yūki is harsh".
Good Qualities
- The wiki used to be good prior to December 11th, 2022.
- Some of the pages were funny and entertaining to read.
- There were still some good users during the wiki's lifespan, even while it was decaying, such as Tali64, SuperStreetKombat, ZeusDeeGoose/Blad, Zenko's anonymous friend, and BrownieBrownAlien.
- While Salarvander was still active, he used to be pretty decent at administration.
- SuperStreetKombat at least tried to maintain the wiki's quality control during Salarvander's absence, even though the wiki was beyond salvation.
- The wiki was recreated on another wiki-hosting site called Miraheze, and so far, things are looking to be an improvement over its ShoutWiki counterpart.
- Salarvander at least deleted a few pages by vandals and blocked a few of Leerdoman74's IP accounts during his final visit on the wiki (and possibly the internet as a whole) when it was beginning to collapse.
- SuperStreetKombat was finally able to punish Leerdoman74 for all the horrible things the latter did on ShoutWiki by blocking several of his IP accounts on the Miraheze version of this wiki.
Reception and Controversy
Originally, in the early years of Weirdcyclopedia when Salarvander was still around, a good handful of users liked the wiki and enjoyed contributing there often. However, in early/mid December 2022 after Salarvander left, the reputation of this wiki severely declined due to excessive vandalism which drove away most users and there were some who thought the wiki was never even good to begin with, even before December 11th, 2022.
In early 2023, some of the staff members of Shoutwiki were disatisfied by Weirdcyclopedia's dire state and didn't even want to give anybody permission to adopt it due to how many edit wars it suffered from because of the dreaded Leerdoman74. Additionally, the wiki's Qualitipedia page contributed to its downfall because the network's former members felt slandered by the pointers that criticized said members, and some of them even claimed that Weirdcyclopedia was harmful to several users because of the page.
Thankfully, sometime after Weirdcyclopedia was closed on June of 2024, the wiki's reputation slowly recovered thanks to SuperStreetKombat's successful attempts at adding more staff members, redesigning its layout, and blocking troublesome users like Leerdoman74.
Trivia
- On February of 2024, -abigblueworld- debunked the claims that she was the one behind the vandalism of this wiki on December 2022 and March/May of 2023 as well as its closure on June of 2023, and even speculated that another former Miraheze called EijiZeBoi (also known as EijiDoesThings) was the true culprit of Weirdcyclopedia's descent. Whether or not everything blueworld said about Eiji is true remains to be seen.
- This was the first wiki from ShoutWiki to have an article here.
How It Could Have Been/Could Be Saved
- Have Salarvander return or have another administrator reopen or at least remake the wiki and add more administration (partially done as the latter had happened).
- Try to IP ban disruptive users like Leerdoman74 or the mysterious anon vandal, as well as any of the spam bots.
- Delete the Reception Wiki-style pages based on real-life people.
- Develop the wiki more by adding a more unique color scheme to the layout or even an icon.
- Add more templates than just the delete template.
- Lock more pages after they've been excessively vandalized or edit warred on.
References
- ↑ Creating Category:Maintenance templates - Weirdcyclopedia (archived)
- ↑ Qualitipedia and The Original Reception Wikis (2020-2022) - Weirdcyclopedia (archived)
- ↑ Revision history of "Qualitipedia and The Original Reception Wikis (2020-2022)" - Weirdcyclopedia (archived)
- ↑ Talk:Qualitipedia and The Original Reception Wikis (2020-2022) - Weirdcyclopedia (archived)
- ↑ Talk:Main Page - Weirdcyclopedia (archived)
- ↑ User contributions for Salarvander - Weirdcyclopedia (archived)
- ↑ User contributions for BernardoReeves1 - Weirdcyclopedia (archived)