By Roget, Decibelle, and Modern_Erasmus
When did the General forums lose relevance?
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
Could be a useful page for a supplement? Also just like as a staff resource?
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| Active | 19 Oct 2008 | |
| Inactive | 3 Jun 2011 | |
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Moderator
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| (In)Active | 18 May 2013 | |
| Active | 26 Feb 2014 | |
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| Reserve | 26 Mar 2009 | |
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| Inactive | 8 Apr 2009 | |
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Operational Staff
| User | Activity Status | Join Date |
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| Reserve | 17 Aug 2016 | |
| Active | 12 Sep 2018 | |
| Active | 6 Jul 2018 | |
| Active | 10 Nov 2017 | |
| Active | 8 May 2019 | |
| Active | 12 Mar 2014 | |
| Active | 25 Mar 2019 | |
| Active | 9 Nov 2016 | |
| Inactive | 19 Oct 2013 | |
| Inactive | 14 May 2013 | |
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| Inactive | 6 Feb 2010 | |
| Active | 1 Nov 2012 | |
| Inactive | 5 Jan 2015 | |
| Active | 9 Aug 2018 | |
| Inactive | 10 Aug 2009 | |
| Active | 14 May 2017 | |
| Inactive | 21 Nov 2012 | |
| Inactive | 30 Aug 2011 | |
| Inactive | 13 Sep 2013(WikiDot Join) | |
| Inactive | 11 Aug 2016 | |
| Active | 2 Feb 2017 | |
| Inactive | 20 May 2011 | |
| Active | 22 Apr 2017 | |
| Active | 31 Dec 2016 | |
| Inactive | 9 Apr 2012 | |
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| Active | 10 Feb 2017 |
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.
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Table of Contents
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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)
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
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.
Text goes here. Pretend this is a draft.






Per 


