User blog:Jeb CC/The History of the Wiki

Author's Note: For simplicity...

The current FANDOM wiki (https://lgbtqia.fandom.com/wiki/LGBTQIA%2B_Wiki) will be referred to as the FANDOM Wiki.

The Miraheze wiki (https://www.lgbtqia.wiki/wiki/LGBTA_Wiki) will be referred to as the Miraheze Wiki.

The MOGAI wiki (formerly EZGender https://mogai.miraheze.org/wiki/MOGAI_Wiki) will be referred to as the MOGAI Wiki.

And the legacy wiki originally hosted on FANDOM (no link) will be referred to as Legacy Wiki.

My name is Jeb, the current owner of the Miraheze Wiki. To start with, the Legacy Wiki community was hosted on FANDOM. I myself was not there to moderate it at the time, and was only a bystander for the time being. ChaoticCylinder owned the wiki initially, then Cryptocrew, then Contie, then me as of 2022.

The Legacy Wiki History
2019 to 2022

This entry is paraphrased from https://www.lgbtqia.wiki/wiki/User:VoxelDraqon, as I myself was not there to witness this part of the history. This however is still written from my perspective.

At the time, the Legacy Wiki wasn't just a wiki. It was a community, with threads, comments, blogs, and a large variety of discussions. The associated Discord was quite large though did split off from the wiki at one point. Though I'm unsure why, it may be due to the fact it was more of the Wiki's community than a relation to the Wiki content itself. I believe this split off Discord still exists to this day. But it was taken over by the official LGBTA+ Wiki Central Discord.

The community itself was.. perhaps a bit of a mess. Understandably minors ruled the scene, those who were questioning, trying to figure out their identities, but then also help one another at the time. Many were traumatised individuals, others were plural. The space must have been inviting enough to include these minorities. This is more of an extra detail but it did impact the wiki contents and others' impressions of the wiki. The wiki took microlabels to the next step, with minors coining various identities with no resources or proof of creation. This has pros and cons but at the time the main con was having terms being redefined and edited, which was technically okay to do since the pages had no resources to reference its original definition.

After various ownership changes, Contie enforced a new policy where wiki pages required resources. Other owners left, most likely due to stress. The redefining of terms was a prominent controversy with the wiki, with the addition of being overly inclusive. There were and still are to this day many complains about pages such as bi lesbianism being present. Though I'd like to stress that regardless of whether one supports an article or not, it's a wiki. It is for educational purposes, and not all pages are immediately regarded as 'supported'.

The 'Merge'
January 2022

For some background information, it's important to note the management hierarchy of wikis. Each wiki has its own set of 'local' admins and moderators. But the wiki, site, and content falls under its host. The hosts (such as FANDOM, or Miraheze) generally do not collaborate or moderate wikis unless something is reported. Knowing this, it was a very sudden shock when FANDOM admins suddenly announced that they would be merging the Legacy wiki.

At the time, it wasn't just the LGBTQIA wiki present on FANDOM. A few other smaller wikis based on queer subjects existed as well, and all managed by separate communities. FANDOM's idea was to combine them to create a centralised location for all LGBT related terminology and history. This in theory is fine, but the execution was extremely poor. Below are a few quotes from their official statement, titled: "A new combined wiki".

1. "We worked closely with a number of LGBTQIA+ individuals and allies as we developed this wiki..."

2. "Only official terms that are recognised by people working on LGBTQIA+ issues will be approved."

Sources:

https://lgbtqia.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:Sannse/A_new_combined_wiki

https://twitter.com/ez_gender/status/1483938454446747650?

This immediately sparked several issues. To refute each point...

1. We are unsure of who exactly these 'individuals and allies' are. But it is a fact that nobody from the wikis at the time were contacted. Not from the Legacy Wiki, not from the MOGAI (EZGender) wiki, or any other smaller queer wikis.

2. FANDOM claiming that identities have to be "official" was especially troubling for many, especially minorities that did not fit into the larger labels like gay or lesbian.

But beyond the article itself, the biggest issues...

Firstly, it was done without consent of the Legacy Wiki and other smaller wikis. Yes, the FANDOM legally have the right to do whatever they want with the content they host. But ultimately it was immoral, rude, and inconsiderate to the thousands of individuals that helped contribute to the wikis. Secondly, it was not a merge at all. A merge implies two entities combining into a single form. The actual result was the complete deletion of the Legacy Wiki, and a new wiki domain taking its place. This is not a merge. The Legacy Wiki was deleted, and any links to said wiki now redirect to the FANDOM's own version.

The FANDOM Wiki had completely submerged the Legacy Wiki, with its own set of local admins and moderators, completely wiping away a massive amount of information that had helped thousands of queer members across the internet. The content that took its place was rough, inaccurate, or harmful. One of its more controversial rules was the exclusion of "Articles outside the scope of LGBTQIA+ Wiki (i.e. fictional gender identities). Whilst in theory this appears to be terms from actual fictional sources, it actually encapsulated mostly any coined term on sites such as Tumblr or Twitter. A document was also written critiquing the FANDOM wiki's article on Intersex. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Nbv62d_AxOMaRwj_0ndHJSpQN24BsgjjkTnaGjZeCxI/edit

Sources:

https://twitter.com/IntersexGoose/status/1484537809482358786

https://ezgender-wiki.tumblr.com/

https://64.media.tumblr.com/52656de83340bed4f6839b0567c4c0b3/0955494c31958c7a-41/s500x750/fcbc4b0655e3aa0e725a60ab8f5cac7f29f3c508.png

The only wiki they did not 'merge' (delete) was the MOGAI (EZGender) wiki. Thinking it was a favour to allow at least one wiki on FANDOM to host obscure micro-labels, it would cause a massive influx of attention towards a very small wiki with very limited staff members. This created a surge of stress for the MOGAI wiki and its staff. Understandably... MOGAI swiftly announced they would be disbanding from FANDOM, and moving to Miraheze instead. It is believed that a request for the deletion of the MOGAI wiki on FANDOM was made by the wiki owner. However after this request, FANDOM staff only gave the wiki a single day before deletion, which goes against their 2 week window (citation needed). Thankfully a lot of terms were already archived once the merger announcement was made by FANDOM, so the 1 day window (whilst being informal) wasn't detrimental. MOGAI Wiki's official stance is to boycott FANDOM.

Sources:

https://ezgender-wiki.tumblr.com/

https://ezgender-wiki.tumblr.com/post/676801806082441216/the-ezgendermicrolabel-wiki-on-fandom-will-be

https://mogai.miraheze.org/wiki/MOGAI_Wiki

Going back to the Legacy Wiki though, the Legacy wiki staff only had less than a month to archive every single page and resource on the wiki. During the whole event, this caused a great deal of stress for the Legacy staff. There were threats of suicide and emotional distress prevalent for staff and members. https://www.lgbtqia.wiki/wiki/User:VoxelDraqon had suggested the use of Miraheze as a new platform, and helped greatly in the process of archiving. Other smaller organisations helped including an archival team, and the dating app Taimi. Taimi was offered as a potential alternative to Miraheze but it never came to action. Though many pages were successfully archived and imported to Miraheze, many were lost, including discussions that hosted a large portion of coining resources.

The Staff Change
2022

This was about the time I hopped into the equation. Witnessing the hellfire that was the FANDOM takeover fiasco, the Legacy Wiki officially moved to Miraheze. Whilst the wiki formats are relatively similar, the editors and structure was unfamiliar to many staff members. It was a harsh change, and staff were put under a lot of stress due to the drama that was taking place. I offered a hand in moderation, fixing little errors here and there.

I had quickly found out that nearly every staff member from the Legacy Wiki were actually minors. This surprised me greatly, how they had been managing something like this, and dealing with the FANDOM giant, I was impressed but also concerned. The stress on the staff was very apparent, most moderators were unable to be contacted due to school pressures, home life, and more. They simply didn't have the availability to manage the wiki's sudden move and influx of attention. One by one, moderators seemed to leave swiftly. Each stress induced moderator walked out, passing their position to someone else. The ownership of the wiki itself was tossed to two other members (one for just a mere day), before it suddenly landed with me.

Now it wasn't just a host change, but an almost completely new set of staff. This is when it more officially became the Miraheze Wiki. Since then, I have done my best to kickstart various housekeeping projects, but also retain various wiki standards such as resourcing requirements. Since then, any traces of the Legacy Wiki has been wiped from social media, including Tumblr and Twitter accounts. I have not planned to recreate this, instead wishing to use the wiki itself as a one true source of information.

Source:

https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/official-lgbta-wiki

I hope this helps shed some light on the history of this wiki and its community. And a reminder to everyone, I want to hear any feedback you have - good or bad. I've noticed some blog posts on social media commenting about the wiki, indirect thoughts and complaints. I can hear you better if you talk to me. :)

Special thanks to the following individuals for helping me summarise these thoughts:

The various bloggers from https://mogaiwiki.tumblr.com/

Juwan J. Holmes's article https://www.intomore.com/the-internet/whats-happening-lgbtqia-wiki/

VoxelDraqon, moderator of this wiki

Paul, owner of the MOGAI wiki.

Regards,

Jeb_CC (Ellis)