HRWiki:A History

From Homestar Runner Wiki

The history of the Homestar Runner Wiki.

Contents 1 Overview 1.1 The beginnings and early days 1.2 The start of year two 1.3 The start of year three 1.4 Goals for the future 2 Important additions 2.1 STUFF 2.1.1 First attempt 2.1.2 Overhaul 2.2 Featured articles 2.3 Da Basement 2.4 The Stick 2.5 Recent changes patrol 2.6 Welcoming Committee 3 Important upgrades 3.1 Wiki Tiki Tavi 3.2 MediaWiki 1.3 3.3 MediaWiki 1.4 3.4 MediaWiki 1.5 4 Administration and maintenance 4.1 Early Administration 4.2 April 2005 Sysop Nominations 4.3 Later additions 5 Infamous vandals 5.1 Willy on Wheels 5.2 NSMC 6 Spinoffs 6.1 Forum 6.2 Fanstuff 6.3 IRC channel

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 page originaly started out with the name "Sysop water-cooler". Several users posted ideas for new titles. The title Da Basement, posted by FireBird, became the new name. This originated from Arcade Game.

The Stick

The Stick is the community center of the wiki. It has links to all the commitees, the community project, and more.

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.

The Welcoming committee was created on October 7, 2004 by FireBird after a (brief) discussion with Tom.

Important upgrades

Wiki Tiki Tavi

MediaWiki 1.3

MediaWiki 1.4

MediaWiki 1.5

Administration and maintenance

Early Administration

The original group of bureaucrats consisted of JoeyDay, Tom, Stu and InterruptorJones, who heavily aided in the wiki's creation and early developement. AgentSeethroo was also added when the wiki was still with WikiTikiTavi. Later, Drhaggis and FortyTwo were given administrative powers as normal sysops.

April 2005 Sysop Nominations

In April of 2005, the Wiki held its first sysop nominations. The nomination process was simple: once a nomination was made, several users posted their thoughts on who would be the best choice, though all the final decisions were made by the Admin Team. Late that same month, the following users were nominated and accepted: Thunderbird L17, FireBird, Jay, Furrykef, Kilroy, and The Paper. At the same time, Homestar Coder was offered the position, and she accepted.

Later additions

On 9 September 2005, two other sysops were added: BazookaJoe and It's dot com, and on 21 November of the same year, It's dot com was made a bureaucrat and a part of the Admin Team.

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

The HRWiki Internet Relay Chat channel was created on Monday, 8 August 2005, at 2:56:34 by Tom Preuss, as nickname Tom39. Although its name, #hrwiki, and parent wiki both suggest that the topic would be kept strictly to Homestar related material, the atmosphere is calm and friendly. Language is kept at a PG level and personal attacks are not tolerated to keep the chat channel this way. Currently, this channel is kept in check by five of the six members of the Admin Team, JoeyDay, Tom, Stu, InterruptorJones, and It's dot com. 11 weeks and 6 days ago, the Fanstuff wiki IRC channel, #hrwiki-fanstuff, was founded. This is a sightly looser and less constructed atmosphere for those who choose it, just as its parent wiki.

Users of the chat channel are encouraged to register a nickname, preferably identical or similar to his or her wiki user name, by typing the following: /msg Nickserv REGISTER <your password>. This keeps your nickname to yourself, requiring a password to properly access it. You will need to recognize yourself to the server each time you log on to assure that you are really whom you say you are: /msg Nickserv IDENTIFY <your password>.

The IRC channel is a faster, more group-oriented, yet still annonymous way to communicate with fellow wiki users, as opposed to using talk pages.