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WiKirby:About: Difference between revisions

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Conceived in a blaze of creative collaboration, this site represents the passion and enthusiasm Josh showed for wiki communities in general, and which he applied in all aspects of WiKirby's development. He loved this place not for any reasons of personal gain, but because of what it represents for gaming fans interested in the Kirby series; the promise of becoming the very best online information source about the games, and the enjoyment we share in getting there!
Conceived in a blaze of creative collaboration, this site represents the passion and enthusiasm Josh showed for wiki communities in general, and which he applied in all aspects of WiKirby's development. He loved this place not for any reasons of personal gain, but because of what it represents for gaming fans interested in the Kirby series; the promise of becoming the very best online information source about the games, and the enjoyment we share in getting there!


Sadly, Josh is no longer with us to share in the fruition of his efforts, having passed away on March 18 2011. However, this project about which he cared so deeply continues to grow and flourish, standing as a tribute to his enthusiasm and dedication, and infused throughout with touches of Josh's wonderfully wry wit and humor.
Sadly, Josh is no longer with us to share in the fruition of his efforts, having passed away on March 18 2011. However, this project about which he cared so deeply continues to grow and flourish, standing as a tribute to his enthusiasm and dedication, and infused throughout with touches of Josh's wonderfully wry wit and humor. Join us in celebrating his memory by making WiKirby all he dreamed it could be, and more!


Rest in peace Josh, you will be greatly missed.
Rest in peace Josh, you will be greatly missed.

Revision as of 08:27, 17 March 2012

WiKirby intends to remain an Independent Wiki for Nintendo's Kirby game franchise. The ongoing goal is to document Kirby information in a quality first encyclopedic style. WiKirby as an idea began in talks between Bulbapedia's owner, Archaic, staff members of Zelda Wiki.org, and Super Mario Wiki. In an effort to tie in the Nintendo themed wikis, WiKirby will link to the NIWA member wikis instead of Wikia and Wikipedia as a policy. This provides the much appreciated support from those wikis.

Style

WiKirby will strive to match the aspects of the series. The site uses round borders to its templates (currently not visible while browsing in Internet Explorer), vibrant colors, and an amusing sense of humor where possible. As of October 2010, WiKirby has been striving to implement more personalization. Examples are including your name and building statements that would include your gender pronoun in instances in which an article must include out-of-universe documentation. WiKirby also intends to accommodate both versions of the English language spellings. We believe Web 2.0 will introduce Web 3.0. Web 2.0 allows you to create content, if we can help it, that content will know you and adjust itself to appeal to you where it can.

Milestones

  • 24 January 2010 - WiKirby online
  • 11 February 2010 - New skin uploaded
  • 4 March 2010 - Official public launch
  • 21 May 2010 - NIWA induction
  • November 2010 - WiKirby reaches 500 articles; many thanks to all of our contributors for their hard work!

Notable Events

New Game and WiKirby's first contest

Although WiKirby was created during a time in which no new Kirby game was expected, Kirby's Epic Yarn was announced and released in the same year (2010). A staff member caught news of Hoshi no Kirby being added to a .pdf document on upcoming Nintendo games and a mysterious teaser image in the back of a Nintendo Power issue. WiKirby speculated that the image may refer to a new Kirby title, but the image was later revealed to be a teaser for Sonic Colors. The E3 game show came along and introduced gamers to a world of fabric and a new Kirby style! The game was released in October for United States gamers. WiKirby held an article creation contest with Kirby's Epic Yarn as a prize. Entrants qualified for the drawing and a winner was chosen with a randomizing template. Static received his prize shortly after the drawing. Also during E3, HAL released screenshots for an unnamed upcoming Kirby DS game.

Kirby.Wikia Merge Proposal and Cancellation

The staff of Kirby Wikia proposed merging with WiKirby during what NIWA members are referring to as "OasisGate". Wikia flexed their muscles of total control by changing some terms of service, and all Wikia skins to a less popular, less customizable, and less wiki-like skin, Oasis. The Oasis skin change caused several wiki communities to migrate to other wiki farms or independent hosting. WiKirby seemed to be one of the few wikis with the potential to have a merger with the Wikia counterpart. However, before all of the finer details could be worked out, a Kirby Wikia staff member informed WiKirby that they were canceling the merge.

Server Crash

WiKirby's budget consists only of what Axiomist can finance; therefore, the wiki began on a very low-cost host provider's shared server plan. TMD hosting had its trade-offs, but had been mostly acceptable. Our first months were plagued by TMD banning people that had too many tabs of WiKirby open at one time. On the other hand, we were able to get them unblocked by informing TMD staff of the issue. We experienced site outages several times during the first year, and all were rather harmless. TMD informed us that our wiki had grown to the point where the traffic was exceeding 40% of the shared machine's CPU almost daily. The recommended solution was to upgrade to a Virtual Private Server (VPS). The VPS plan is significantly more expensive than a shared hosting plan, as it offered even more control and dedicated services. Axiomist gladly paid for this, and opined that it marks a significant accomplishment for WiKirby. On Thanksgiving Day 2010, WiKirby was successfully moved to the new server, only after 10 months of operation, and 7 months as a publicly open site. Things seemed to be going well enough, until just 3 days before Christmas. WiKirby crashed. The database was eventually restored, but a huge hole was blown into WiKirby's History. All changes made from November 26th to December 22nd were gone. Vellidragon managed to find some salvageable pages by searching Google's cached pages and TMD offered a free month of service (although to-date have not explained the issue).

Thanks

File:Salute.png
Kirby salutes!


Without these people WiKirby would be nowhere! (not necessarily in any significant order)

  • Adam, has diligently laid the groundwork, installed the software, the skin, and continues to iron out kinks.
  • Tappy of Hyrule.net for the creating the favicon image, skinning N.I.W.A.'s forum, and WiKirby's staff board.
  • Lysia of The Sacred Realm for nameserver and CSS help.
  • Nathan of ZeldaInformer for CSS help also.
  • Edofenrir for the header image, and ongoing contributions.
  • Neo for helping to get our help pages created and ongoing contributions.
  • Users of Bulbapedia, Super Mario Wiki, Zelda Wiki.org, and Metroid Wiki for all of their support.
  • Steve for this awesome skin!
  • Moydow for amazing technical innovations!
  • Dantman for resolving our URL rewrite's last remaining issue.
  • If I missed your name, say so!

Dedication

WiKirby exists today for once reason, because of one man; Joshua P. LeJeune

Conceived in a blaze of creative collaboration, this site represents the passion and enthusiasm Josh showed for wiki communities in general, and which he applied in all aspects of WiKirby's development. He loved this place not for any reasons of personal gain, but because of what it represents for gaming fans interested in the Kirby series; the promise of becoming the very best online information source about the games, and the enjoyment we share in getting there!

Sadly, Josh is no longer with us to share in the fruition of his efforts, having passed away on March 18 2011. However, this project about which he cared so deeply continues to grow and flourish, standing as a tribute to his enthusiasm and dedication, and infused throughout with touches of Josh's wonderfully wry wit and humor. Join us in celebrating his memory by making WiKirby all he dreamed it could be, and more!

Rest in peace Josh, you will be greatly missed.