HRWiki:A History

From Homestar Runner Wiki

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Revision as of 00:36, 30 November 2005

The history of the Homestar Runner Wiki.

Overview

The beginnings and early days

In November 2002, a mutual friend emailed Joey Day and Stu Wilde a link to Strong Bad email #51, website, knowing they would enjoy it since they are both web-design hobbyists. This was the first time they had experienced Homestar Runner, and both of them were immediately hooked.

Nearly a year later in September 2003, Joey stumbled across Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. He immediately fell in love with the concept and decided to start a wiki of his own. After researching the various wiki platforms available at the time, he settled on one called WikiTikkiTavi because it used a MySQL database and produced valid XHTML markup. He hadn't given much thought to scalability at the time, preferring something light and snappy over the larger and more stable platforms like Twiki, Moin Moin, or MediaWiki.

After installing the software on October 7, 2003, Joey decided he needed a topic. It didn't take him long to decide it should be a Homestar Runner knowledge base. After Googling to make sure no one had already set up such a thing, he promptly called his wiki the Homestar Runner Wiki.

The start of year two

The start of year three

Goals for the future

Important additions

STUFF

First attempt

Overhaul

Featured articles

Da Basement

Da Basement is a place for administrators and sysops to congregate and discuss important issues that involve the wiki. These discussions range from new page ideas to formating and template changes to the content of the wiki. Although Da Basement is intended for sysops, anyone is allowed to contribute. The name originated from Arcade Game.

The Stick

Recent changes patrol

Recent changes patrol is an HRWiki committee that search Recent Changes for red exlamation points (!). This crew patrols the wiki every time an edit has been made. This patrol is the Wiki's first line of defense. If anyone were to make an edit that is false, mispelled, or malicous, a user will revert the edit. Although anyone is allowed to patrol, it is encouraged to join the committee if you do.

Welcoming Committee

The Welcoming committee is a group of users who welcome new users to the Wiki. These messages are added to the new user's talk page. These messages are meant not only to help the new user out as they get started, but to also make them feel more at home. Generally, welcome messages tend to include links to several helpfull articles and pages, including the "Help" section and the MediaWiki user's guide. Anyone is allowed to join the committee.

Important upgrades

Wiki Tiki Tavi

MediaWiki 1.3

MediaWiki 1.4

MediaWiki 1.5

Administration and maintenance

Infamous vandals

Willy on Wheels

NSMC

NSMC is a vandalbot that has caused widespread damage to several wikis. Its method of operation exploits various access points available to anonymous users. As a result, these access points have been temporarily disabled. In its first attack, it anonymously and randomly vandalized vandalized by replacing their contents with "N— stole my bike" and later "N— stole my cow". To avoid being blocked, the bot uses a vast amount of Internet proxies so that it can appear to originate from hundreds of IP addresses. The number of pages affected was in such a small amount of time that it created a denial of service. Later, when anonymous editing had been disabled, the bot created hundreds of random usernames with "NSMC" plus a number, each with one edit, so new-user registration was taken offline. After the knowlegde base was hit, then it moved to the Fanstuff. The usernames eventually became just random numbers approximately 20 characters in length, and the content of the vandalism changed from something static that we could search for to various bits of actual content. In the latest attack, the "email new password" feature of the user login page was abused, sending thousands of emails to various users. The identity of the vandal is not currently known, nor is the motive.

Spinoffs

Forum

Fanstuff

IRC channel

This section is in progress.
Another user is currently adding or changing substantial content. As a courtesy, until this tag is removed please do not edit this section unless absolutely necessary. You are still welcome to edit other parts of the page.

To the person working: This tag is not a claim to the section that you can leave and come back to later. You are expected to be adding or changing content right now. You should save your progress periodically (about every 15 to 30 minutes) or indicate in some way that you are still working, or else the tag should be removed so that other users may edit the section.

This article is a stub. You can help the Homestar Runner Wiki by expanding it.

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 ===Welcoming Committee===
-:When new members came along, the welcoming commitee formed, all dedicated to welcoming new members. They patroll the recent changes, checking for anyone with a red link to their "talk" page. Then, they post a message on that persons talk page, welcoming them and giving them lots of tips, to make them feel more at home.
+The [[HRWiki:Welcoming committee|Welcoming committee]] is a group of users who welcome new users to the Wiki. These messages are added to the new user's talk page. These messages are meant not only to help the new user out as they get started, but to also make them feel more at home. Generally, welcome messages tend to include links to several helpfull articles and pages, including the "[[Help:Contents|Help]]" section and the [http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Index MediaWiki user's guide]. Anyone is allowed to join the committee.
 ==Important upgrades==