History of The Universe

By Roget, Decibelle, and Modern_Erasmus

When did the General forums lose relevance?

2013 Outline

Chronological events:

• January Blaroth joins the site, later becomes a moderator
• March Aelanna's first ragequit, main one comes in next entry
• April UraniumEmpire joins the site, later becomes a moderator

• December: SCP-2000 Contest
• December: Heritage list is launched

General trends:

• Cold not cruel

Staff Join Dates

Could be a useful page for a supplement? Also just like as a staff resource?

User	Activity Status	Join Date
AdminBright	Active	19 Oct 2008
anqxyr	Inactive	3 Jun 2011
Dexanote	Reserve	13 Jun 2010
DrEverettMann	Active	18 May 2009
Drewbear	Inactive	24 Mar 2009
Dr Gears	Inactive	25 Jul 2008
FritzWillie/The Administrator	Inactive	26 Jul 2008/19 Jul 2008
Kain Pathos Crow	Reserve	25 Jul 2008
Pair Of Ducks	Inactive	18 Aug 2008
Photosynthetic	Inactive	11 Aug 2009
Quikngruvn	Reserve	2 Jun 2009
Roget	Active	19 Jan 2012
snorlison	Inactive	17 Oct 2008
Sorts	Inactive	9 May 2009
SoullessSingularity	Active	23 Dec 2010
thedeadlymoose	Reserve	13 Mar 2011
TroyL	Inactive	6 Mar 2010
Waxx	Inactive	30 Apr 2009
Zyn	Active	23 Jul 2012

Moderator

User	Activity Status	Join Date
Accelerando	(In)Active	18 May 2013
A Random Day	Active	26 Feb 2014
Blaroth	Reserve	7 Jan 2013
Bouncl	Inactive	23 Mar 2009
ChaoSera	Reserve	2 Aug 2015
Croquembouche	Active	15 Nov 2016
DrKens	Reserve	26 Mar 2009
DrMagnus	Active	20 May 2009
Elogee FishTruck	Active	23 Feb 2019
Heiden	Inactive	8 Apr 2009
Jacob Conwell	Reserve	29 May 2012
LadyKatie	Active	14 May 2015
Leveritas	Active	27 Jul 2014
LilyFlower	Active	23 Apr 2014
LurkD	Inactive	1 Dec 2012
MayD	Reserve	19 Aug 2012
Modern_Erasmus	Active	18 May 2017
Modulum	Active	20 Apr 2017
Pig_catapult	Inactive	12 Mar 2009
ProcyonLotor	Active	20 Mar 2011
pxdnbluesoul	Active	21 Aug 2012
Randomini	Inactive	18 Jun 2012
RockTeethMothEyes	Active	6 May 2018
Sophia Light	Inactive	2 Apr 2009
Taffeta	Active	26 Jul 2015
taylor_itkin	Active	26 Jun 2017
TheMightyMcB	Active	13 Aug 2018
TSATPWTCOTTTADC	Active	5 Feb 2018
Tuomey Tombstone	Active	6 Apr 2010
Uncle Nicolini	Active	18 Dec 2017
UraniumEmpire	Active	2 May 2013
Varaxous	Active	18 Jan 2016
Vincent_Redgrave	Inactive	25 Aug 2012
Vivax	Active	20 Nov 2012
WrongJohnSilver	Active	22 Oct 2014

Operational Staff

User	Activity Status	Join Date
AbsentmindedNihilist	Reserve	17 Aug 2016
aismallard	Active	12 Sep 2018
Alces_alces	Active	6 Jul 2018
Captain Kirby	Active	10 Nov 2017
cybersqyd	Active	8 May 2019
dankaar	Active	12 Mar 2014
DrAkimoto	Active	25 Mar 2019
DrBleep	Active	9 Nov 2016
Dr Solo	Inactive	19 Oct 2013
EldritchCadence	Inactive	14 May 2013
Fantem	Inactive	2 Jul 2012
fieldstone	Active	8 Sep 2012
Fingo7	Active	19 Sep 2015
Gabriel Jade	Active	9 Dec 2009
gee0765	Active	22 May 2019
Joreth	Active	29 May 2012
Lazar Lyusternik	Active	30 Oct 2015
ManyMeats	Active	23 Mar 2015
Mistbourne	Inactive	3 Jul 2013
MisterFlames	Inactive	6 Feb 2010
MrAnakinSpecter	Active	1 Nov 2012
MrWrong	Inactive	5 Jan 2015
N_Aepic_Fael	Active	9 Aug 2018
Nioki	Inactive	10 Aug 2009
Pedantique	Active	14 May 2017
Pixeltasim	Inactive	21 Nov 2012
rumetzen	Inactive	30 Aug 2011
Shaggydredlocks	Inactive	13 Sep 2013(WikiDot Join)
Sirens	Inactive	11 Aug 2016
Sly161	Active	2 Feb 2017
spikebrennan	Inactive	20 May 2011
stormbreath	Active	22 Apr 2017
subtletea	Active	31 Dec 2016
Wogglebug	Inactive	9 Apr 2012
Yossipossi	Active	24 May 2018
Zachary Maxwell	Active	10 Feb 2017

2013 draft

Preface

Welcome back to the past, dear readers. It has been some time since we last spoke about the history of the SCP Wiki, and it's changed so much since then. When last we spoke, Sigma-9 wasn't even a thing yet, Canons didn't exist, there weren't even GoI formats. My goodness, that hardly scratches the surface. But our time apart has also given me time to reflect on how the old essays were written. A bit of style holding together big lists of everything that happened.

I'm not a fan of that style, and I'm going to be writing things a little differently this time. Personnel and staff changes are going to be up front, so that I don't have to interrupt the story to tell you about who was promoted when. I've also organized this into a few chapters, so that I don't get tunnel vision on the senior staff perspective.

I'm going to be writing them as I go this time, no doing them all at once to drop all at once. Keep an eye out for 2014 in the not too distant future, and 2015 by Christmas. In addition, I'm no longer working alone. Modern_Erasmus, who rewrote two of the prior entries to account for new information and archive releases, is now also writing these essays with me. Decibelles also assisted with background research for this entry.

Senior Staff Personnel Changes

April: Zyn and Soulless promoted to senior staff

July: Vezaz and Wogglebug promoted to senior staff , Roget and Zyn become moderators, Moose and Drewbear become admins

September: Soulless becomes a mod, MisterFlames and Silberescher join senior staff.

Senior Staff, in terms of staff members who are not Moderators, Administrators, or Junior Staff, renamed Operational Staff in future promotion cycles.

Introduction

The SCP Wiki in 2013 was a continuation from a period of transition that started in 2012. The community continued a move from the old way of doing things and trying to figure out what the future would look like.

But there was a lot of dissent on what that future would be. The community was sort of aimlessly drifting along after being pushed to its limits by containment breach.

As had been the case since the beginning of the site, our website was ugly.

Cracked.com photo circa 2012, the appearance of the site had not changed by 2013

"Increasing anti-lolFoundation and anti-author-avatar sentiment cause the cartoony hijinks of over-the-top characters to give way to depictions of agents and staff as faceless, jaded drones in a bleak world where "Cold but not cruel" tends to emphasize the "cold" part.

This shift encourages more mature and nuanced storytelling, but also leads to an overall more somber tone and the stagnation of character-driven work on the site for much of 2013-2014.

Scips and the stories behind them become more intricate, increasingly emphasizing narrative and characterization in contrast the trends with tales. Flat "Thing that does a thing" scips begin to show their age, and many series I articles start to fall from grace (and into deletion range)." -Scorpion141

Contests

There were nearly as many contests in 2013 as there had been in all previous years put together. If you count the Great Short Story Contest as one event (which it officially is but if you look it's more like several small contests under one theme), the numbers are outright even. In any case, it was definitely the year contests came into their own. The community enjoyed the Canon Contest, Five Questions Contest, Time Contest, and the SCP-2000 Contest.

At the spearhead of this bold new move into contesting colleagues was TroyL. Contest culture, like many other parts of the site, would not exist without him. Troy had been first exposed to how much fun a contest can be when he was an active participant in many of the Great Short Story Contests. That is short-selling his contributions though, as the reason he did not participate in all of them was that every contest he entered, he won, and had to withdraw to give other folks a chance.

This was to the point that the 2010 Crack-fiction contest did not gather any other entries after TroyL posted, Saving Sigurros Potter by Darkblade was too much to ask anybody to reasonably expect to compete with.

All of this is to say that if anybody knew contests, it was TroyL.

The Canon Contest marks the first time contests were used to expand the SCP Wiki's collaborative space. The SCP-1000 contest which opened Series II could maybe be debated on this point, but that's not even in the same galaxy as canons.

Teams of up to four writers were challenged to create a series of tales set in the SCP universe. Unlike stand alone SCP entries, these canons would be ongoing narratives that would expand and develop the lore of SCP. The Unfounded canon - created by Clef, Fantem, Photosynthetic, and Pig_Catapult - was eventually declared the winner. Its vision of an anomalous world where the Foundation never existed captivated the contest's readers.

In total, eleven different canons were created for the contest. While most wouldn't see much development by others following the contest's conclusion, some such as Broken Masquerade and Coldest War became popular and iconic parts of the SCP universe that remain popular to this day.

The Canon contest and the entries that resulted from it greatly increased the popularity of tales (relatively speaking) within the community. At the time of writing, there exists no less than 37 different canons, and they form an integral part of SCP literature.

The Five Questions contest and the Time contest achieved more modest success. Each contest challenged writers to create a single tale answering a prompt. Five Questions, as the title would imply, was structured around answering five ongoing mysteries from SCP lore. By contrast, the Time contest had a broader prompt focused around showing how an SCP was or would be affected by the passage of time.

Each contest received 12 total entries, which was a significant improvement compared to the old short story contests (two of which received only a single entry), but failed to reach the scale and excitement brought by both the Canon contest and the final contest of 2013. That final contest, was the SCP 2000 contest.

After two and a half years, Series II had finally begun to run out of empty article slots, necessitating the creation of a new series. Per the tradition established by the 1000 contest, the series would start with an ambitious contest to write an SCP article worthy of starting a new era of SCP writing, with the runners up becoming other initial entrants into Series III.

January: Canon contest gives rise to 11 canons and helps raise the popularity of Tales on the site. (relatively speaking) (http://www.scp-wiki.net/new-years-contest)

• February: Five questions contest

All of the different contests bookended by Canon Contest and SCP-2000

Content

January 2013 had the Djoric-Dmatix 001 proposal posted. The last two 001 proposals had gone up in late 2011, so it had been a year and some months since a new one had been posted. While it's still nothing to take lightly, the fact that there were fewer 001 proposals made it much more difficult for new ones to succeed.

First history of the Universe essay was posted!

Personalities

It is tragic that Josh Sortelli was not made an administrator earlier in his tenure, when his perspective and way of doing things was more valued. Sorts, writer extraordinaire, retired to work on his webcomic in 2013.

Djoric

Aelanna is the designer of the Sigma-9 theme, pioneered many of the chatbot conventions we now take for granted and was a prolific author who penned many iconic works. Project Foundation started with her and she came as close as anyone else has so far to making it a reality.

Aelanna is also very difficult to work with and her frequent bouts of pique doomed both Project Foundation 1.0 and her long-term career on the Wiki. The first of many ragequits came in March of this year and would be a recurring trend until her retirement.

Community

A global confederacy of SCP Communities seems like the norm in 2020. Many of the people reading this are members or readers of an International Branch. But for many years it was only the Russian and the American Wiki.

SCP International http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-727416/scp-international

One of the most enshrined principals of the Wiki, the right of authors to have total control of their original works up to and including self-deletion, seems like it must have been enshrined in stone by The Administrator and Gears. But it is here in 2013 that the concept along with many others was first pioneered.

http://www.scp-wiki.net/forum/t-578702/new-glitch Double voting

The trend at the time focused on emphasizing the Foundation as being cold, not cruel. Stories were still being told primarily through the Foundation's perspective.

http://www.scp-wiki.net/forum/t-566500/mackenzie-s-random-statistics

http://www.scp-wiki.net/forum/t-655085/dr-mackenzie-s-random-statistics-2-0

• April: Moose proposes and creates the first criticism policy, in response to concerns from Mann over staff and user conduct (http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-648563/criticism-policy)

Self Upvoting banned due to staff and community distaste, include mention of later reversal and reasoning (http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-653908/self-upvotes)

• November: Creation of current rewrite system and forerunner of current image policy (http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-732818/change-announcements-thread)

Collective Posts 2013 Supplement

This supplement was made as I was researching, when there were any snippets of text or forum posts I thought were interesting or reflective of the time I've placed them here in chronological order. There's no structure beyond that, but I'm hoping it will be like a book I read recently where I liked the effect it had.

http://www.scp-wiki.net/forum/t-682455/voting-behaviors

http://www.scp-wiki.net/forum/t-677977/why-do-you-write-here

http://www.scp-wiki.net/forum/t-664664/what-does-it-take-to-earn-an-upvote-from-you

http://www.scp-wiki.net/forum/t-512834/which-vote-matters-to-you

http://www.scp-wiki.net/forum/t-463483/wiki-in-jokes

http://www.scp-wiki.net/forum/t-611207/new-years-scp-foundation-resolutions-2013

2014 Outline

Chronological events:

• January: End of 2000 contest and beginning of Series 3
• January: Aelanna returns to being a moderator
• January Aesthetic overhaul and background guide updates by Aelanna (http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-762885/site-template-overhaul)
• January: Heritage list becomes controversial, is abandoned forever
• Feb- Slur ban http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-773630/should-we-ban-slurs
• March: Aelanna leaves staff again (maybe mention stranglegate), og Project Foundation dies an ignominious death
• March: Under Appreciated Contest
• March: Image enforcement starts, causes some controversy.
• May: GOI contest, major changes to the way the site saw old ones like Cotbg/prometheus and new ones became more prominent
• May: Accelerando, Anborough, Azzleflux, BlueSoul, Break, Crayne, Cryogen, FaminePulse, FlameShirt, FortuneFavorsBold, Gaffney, Nioki, ProcyonLotor, Rumetzen, ThatTallFellow, TuomeyTombstone, and Vivax promoted to op staff. Crayne, CryogenChaos, DrKens, Gaffney, Silberescher, and Vivax promoted to moderators (might want to start only mentioning people who stay relevant in the long term here, cuz dayyum)
• May: Kaktus writes first article.
• August: Echo demoted from staff after years of issues (http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-992528)
• September: Izumi Kato gives us permission to use 173's image (http://05command.wikidot.com/forum/t-1016698/response-from-izumi-kato-re:173)
• October: Dystopia contest
• November: Kalinin, Riemann, Anqxyr, Reject, weizhong, and Vincent_Redgrave promoted to op staff
• Harassment policy (http://www.scp-wiki.net/forum/t-1047816/harassment-policy)
• December: Secret santa becomes popularized

Ongoing trends (also relevant for 2015):

"**The Series III Renaissance, or "What is an SCP?"

Growing awareness of the styles and vibes of various site eras, with phrases like "reminds me of an early series I" being used frequently.
In-Universe reflections of out-of-universe debates and discussions are a major theme, with many scips and tales from this period reflecting and examining the ongoing changes in site tone and content though the lens of in-universe shifts in the culture of the Foundation.
People start examining the site, its lore, and the SCP format itself on the meta level, with discussions reflected by several contests:
GOI contest: What does the world outside the foundation look like? How else can epistolary fiction be used?
Short SCP contest: what are the essential parts needed to make an SCP, when you strip them to the basics?
MTF Contest: how can tales and SCP's be used together to create meta-narratives?
New takes on old ideas
author avatars revisited: Beloved part of site lore, or spawn of satan?
The Resurrection canon attempts to rehabilitate old storylines and lore. Initially leads to much debate and hurt feelings, including Kalinin's protest sabbatical. It also, however, leads to a new look at how the oldest site lore relates to the newest, and how the two can be reconciled and built upon in the future
Crackfic contest as a watershed moment- lolFoundation, done well, can be enjoyable. Done very well, and in the proper context, it can even transcend itself into mainstream site writing.
Crosslinks may not, in fact, be inherently evil. Cautious investigation begins, suspicions remain.
GOIs gain depth and reinterpretations in the wake of the GOI contest:
The Factory's rebirth as military-industrial abomination,
CotBG's transition from generic cult to multifaceted culture with rich internal politics and complex motives
The Serpent's hand move from Anomaly-PETA to a confederacy of conflicting agendas and methods beyond opposing the Foundation
The GOC as a zealously militaristic, anomaly-exploiting, and dangerously effective foil to the Foundation…that actually has some valid points when it comes to just destroying certain anomalies
AWCY as a troubled group of artists tainted by high-profile bad seeds and a hyper-nihilistic internal culture
Prometheus Labs as a fallen paratech megacorp destroyed more by poor management than a failed experiment
MC&D gains a more nuanced characterization as amoral broker and marketplace to the anomalous world
UIU as more than parodical X-files knockoffs- even boasting a few wins.
New GOIs with old roots
Anderson Robotics
The Sarkists
Pitch Haven
Exploration of the world outside the halls of the foundation leads to an explosion of worldbuilding, eventually spawning a more fully realized world with intricate inter-faction politics and novel settings like The Three Portlands.
efforts to update Series I and reinterpret old site lore
preservation of poorly aged classics as artifacts of the early site vs. "Hulk want smash badly written lolFoundation wasting intriguing idea and coasting on old votes!"
The D-class Contest comes much later, but the questions that inspire it are increasingly asked: Who are they? Where do they come from? Where are they going at the end of the month?

Staff changes

New guard takes the helm as many founding members step down or scale back.

Other stuff

SCP death matches
KaktusCasts" - Scorpion141

2. Rising trend of large scale, "epic" storys in popular SCPs. Might be more relevant for 2015 when Sarkicism really explodes.

2014 Draft

Text goes here. Pretend this is a draft.