About the Silly Cats Wiki(And Wikis like it)

So I guess I haven't posted much on my blog, since there really wasn't much I was doing past well, Wawacraft:Evolved. I did have an idea to talk about a bit of the creative project that I let go of a few months ago. I might be posting blogs a bit more frequently, but to be quite honest: If I feel like I'm forcing myself to do it, it probably isn't worth doing. If I feel like I'm unnecessarily forcing myself to write down things, I probably don't have much to write about. That's true a lot of the time.

If you don't know what the Silly Cats Wiki is, then I'd be happy to explain it to you. It was(and still kind of is), a wiki about a story fully constructed out of internet cat memes. It started around 2 years ago, and is still alive. The wiki is based off of silly cats online, and is complete with a multiple-timeline lore tree and thousands of ideas, events, hundreds of characters, etc.

I won't try to go in depth explaining how the story goes, because the Fandom Wiki explains it very well, and so does my 30k word book, as well as the Miraheze Wiki. But the story goes as a black cat named Jinx, her cousin(or brother in some interpretations) Maxwell are taken from their regular lives and become the leaders of a paramilitary(The G.O.O.Dings) trying to fight against an evil group called (BAD), and fullfilling The Promise and The Prophecy, set out by The Esoteric Council, and The Poets respectively. If you're really interested, I suggest you take a read through the miraheze wiki, the book, and whatever's left of the fandom wiki(We abandoned it).

I loved the Silly Cats Wiki, and I still do. In fact, I've spent close to a year working on the wiki, with my first contirbution being in October of 2023, and my resignation being in this August.(10 months!!) I resigned for multiple reasons, the first of which being the botched migration of the wiki, and secondly my inability to carry the wiki on my back any longer, given that a majority of the dedicated authors have went on hiatus(me included), with new creative projects taking our time.

Now the reason that I think the Silly Cats Wiki is a very special thing, is that its a very spontaneous and special kind of community that was able to work together despite not working together as well. It was originally meant to be a database for silly cat memes, but through the repeated attacks of griefers, it was changed into a community-driven story wiki, wherein people would create characters and forge in parts of the story bit by bit.

But initially, the founder of the original wiki was done with it, and handed over things to a new administrator, as far as I know. That's when I found the wiki in early October of 2023, and began vigorously editing it. Before long, I had a good idea of how the lore worked, and had already connected several characters and events together. I actually even got into contact with some of the dedicated editors, Rosemaryhound, MeatballZZ(Thepomeloeffect), Cyclone(TheSogyPetarded), and later on I also found newer editors who were just as passionate: Orangutanbestmonke63, MayuriMagica(Mayuri's cringe alt acc), Manhandleover9000(A Small Hedgehog, I.E. Manhandle).

I'd say that the feeling of editing the wiki was what made it so awesome, but the story itself and the lore contained within it was also such an amazing part. It felt like a real story that could function as the base for a piece of media, given a few sandings around rough edges. The cycle of correction for the wiki was at its peak during November through January. That was I think the peak era of the Silly Cats Wiki. Newer people joined, and it was on the horizon of success.

However, the reason that I think we couldn't progress through that peak era was selfish beliefs both from me and Orangutan. We both wanted to standardize the lore, and by that time I had actually succeeded in writing a complete fanfiction for Silly Cats, and had started work on the Silly Cats Book, leaving Orangutan to become the resident lore standardizer in my wake.

Orangutan had a different interpretation of Silly Cats than me. He definitely didn't redefine the aspects of the lore that I had, but he completed the work that I started. I however had a struggle in my heart when I saw his work. I honestly was not pleased he had a different interpretation. This tension between him and me I think were a bit destructive to the wiki. We were one of the most dedicated editors, and the power vacuum that left behind after Cyclone and Pomelo slowed down and lost a bit of their dedication to the wiki. I think this was the special beginning of the issues of the Silly Cats Wiki.

This is all quite hard for me to admit, that I had actually been a bit less responsible of my position in the wiki than I should have. But there were other issues that also added to this.

He began considering to move the wiki over, a collosal task, but beyond that, taking the move as an opportunity to change the wiki completely, and destroy the lore that even made it as popular as it was. He believed it would be more interesting to just go back to the way that the Silly Cats Wiki was before the griefers.

Through my lack of communication with him, and also my irresponsibility, I also considered to keep the lore on a separate wiki as well. I found that moving from Fandom was going to be a choice I was willing to go through, but as well to make my own change. I put myself in the position of a supreme head of decisions on Silly Cats lore ideas since Ethar had no care for it. As well as most people not really caring to take part in this conversation, I decided to move the lore to be solely based on my book instead of the joint efforts of people together.

That ended up in a botched move, and on top of that I made the mistake of announcing the wiki move, which alerted Fandom staff to us, and Ethar basically went radio silent about that from then on to me. No real communication despite me asking him. This might change in the future hopefully.

Whilst I think Ethar's Catpedia wiki is a bit better off, both wikis are in a bad state now, especially the one that I intended to lead, and I knew it from the beginning actually, jsut didn't know what kind of solution I could take.

What lessons there are to learn from the failure of the Silly Cats Wiki

To clarify, we could use this information to actually improve the Silly Cats Wiki, maintain the lore, and keep a tight community of editors that have each others' backs. To clarify, I also have defined some terms that I may use in this section or in general.

Community-Driven Wiki

A wiki in which the community solely decides the contents and standards for the pages on a wiki. This is as opposed to the standard wiki structure, which I'll call a Media-Driven wiki. An example of a community driven wiki is the Silly Cats Wiki, wherein the information conveyed by the pages and the story that the wiki paints changes according to the likes of the community.

Community driven wikis have complete control over the information in a page, and alongside maintaining information on their storylines are also shaping the story or the information they convey.

Media-Driven Wiki

A wiki in which the contents and standards for the pages of a wiki are driven by outside factors, such as the media that a wiki is based off of or the topic of the wiki. This is as opposed to a Community-Driven Wiki, wherein the community has control over the information conveyed within the pages of a wiki. Examples of Media-Driven Wikis are Wikipedia, wherein the contents and standards of a page are not decided by the authors of said page and the general opinion of the Wikipedia community, but rather held up to the standards of experts in the field concerning the page, and professional works around the page.

A media driven wiki foregoes control over the contents of a page in order to convey information in an honest way. Media driven wikis are made by people to keep the standard of information on a topic, but usually do not have control over the information they convey. For example, it is a violation of Wikipedia's standards to alter the contents of the Wikipedia page on cats according to your liking. All changes to that page must be factually true, cited, and sourced.

If the administrators and people in charge do not take care to create and organize the community around the wiki, then the community will not be able to collaborate productively and manage their efforts in a good way.

This one is a pretty hard to do one, because it can be done in many different ways. It sounds hard to do, but it's important to do to make a productive and working wiki. This means making sure to put people with power complexes in their place, manage the actions of one person to another, and correcting drama within the wiki by taking the means necessary.

It goes without saying that wikis are really large. Moderators and administrators in general must be competent enough to deal with community issues as well as being ready to document.

If a person edits on the wiki a lot, they may be given roles. However, nobody should be allowed to trespass or disrespect people.

Secondly, a community must be organized in the sense that groups are established, and communication be an important aspect of contribution on the wiki. Consider facilitating a means for mass communication such as a forum on a wiki or a joint mailing list if members prefer e-mail.

Beyond just creating a means to organize the community, you must also allow for people to collaborate on a joint topic or effort that the wiki needs fixing. On some wikis, there are bounties for certain stub pages, with rewards for people who do fix them and expand the wiki. As well as that, I suggest the creation of a To-Do list system or something of the like.

What I learned from having a community be disorganized is that everybody is doing something, the focus isn't directed at one single thing, so the strength of many authors on a wiki is often times lost. If a wiki is focused in one direction, fixing one issue at a time it would work.

As well as setting up groups, you must also prevent power vacuums from happening, wherein experienced editors who did their time are allowed to make the same mistakes entry editors do. Moderators and administrators must learn to be able to manage their community and make sure nobody goes out of line or does something harmful to the wiki in the long run.

What this means, is that no one person should have the greatest say or be able to change the information conveyed within a wiki without the joint agreement of the wiki at large. I call the kind of editor who gains the ability to revamp an entire wiki a Superman, because they often have the mentality that they alone can fix the complete wiki without anybody's help, as if they had superhuman abilities.

I say this out of personal experience: Giving one person the ability to revamp the entire wiki is the worst thing you can do to a wiki. In that structure, editors are discouraged from helping out because their interpretation differs from that of the 'Superman'(the editor who vows to fix everything). And if there are multiple supermen, the conflicts between their interests and desires for the outcome of the wiki at large becomes apparent in edit wars.

The way to prevent supermen is to involve people of the group of experienced editors to oversee and agree on the changes that everybody makes. These include the changes that a person made regardless of what role they are. If the experienced editors cannot agree on one thing, it is passed up to the administrator, and if the administrator does not solve the problem, it is passed down onto the regular editors of the wiki to decide as well. This is just about the only way that a wiki can maintain itself from falling to the hands of supermen, who come in, change the wiki to their liking, and leave.

This particular issue happens a lot with Community-Driven Wikis if there isn't the correct amount of protection around what happens in an environment.

They are the first and last resort to ask to for an opinion on what should change. If an administrator is found to be very biased, the community takes their place in making head decisions. If the experienced editors are self serving, the community has the right to take out their roles and make decisions in their place.

I say this because the decisions Ethar made were between him and people who would quite literally have no consequence to deal with in the case that the decision he took fails. His decision to remove lore was firstly out of bias, and secondly accredited to him and a group of interviewees who didn't have much involvement in the wiki.

The reason he did this was because:

1. He did not value what the editors of the wiki found to be the best choice in the wiki, and referred to himself, and
2. He had no care in establishing tangible groups of responsible people within the wiki to keep him and his decisions in check, hence why the Community was not given a fair enough chance to seem competent, therefore why I think he chose to do what is described in number 1.

That's why if a community driven wiki is to be made, whenever anything happens, the community must be asked for their complete opinion on things, and have them make decisions in the wake of the administrator, as opposed to letting a person in charge make a decision without somebody to call their bluff.

This is so important because if you don't do this, you deny editors their autonomy in the process of things, and alienate many of them to your cause. That's basically what happened with EtharViolo when he made the decision to move the wiki, as well as sabotage the existing Fandom wiki as a ploy to decrease SEO for the fandom site, assuming everybody would be liking to what he had done and completely willing to move over to the self hosted wiki. Instead, the forums went feral asking and begging for what happened when the 2 most popular pages on the wiki were deleted by the administrator. In fact, that was about the last straw for the silly cat community's loyalty towards Ethar, and it shows in his Catpedia wiki now where a majority of the edits made on the website are not attributed to the pseudonames of the original wiki editors for the old wiki.

This is all to say that you should have loyalty to the wiki, and have them give the greatest say in things that they will be interested in themselves. In real consideration, Ethar had personal interests in mind, and not the interests of the people who made the wiki that he was an administrator of popular in the first place. This is not to say to be a pushover and let everybody do what they want, but it also means not to do what Ethar did and act in self interest or even more than that: act in self interest and forego letting the wiki community have a say and decision in what was going on.

No matter how safe it looks now, archive the state of your wiki AT ANY POINT. Keep servers with archives of how the wiki was, with each page kept. Before the internet, it took a considerable amount of time to document and archive things. Sure you could use a copy machine, but archiving it was still hard. Now with servers all around the world, it is really important to maintain wikis as archives.

Quite literally anything could happen to your wiki. A wave of griefers could destroy well kept information faster than you can correct it, the administrator of your wiki could delete the most popular pages simply to gain SEO against the original fandom wiki, and virtually destroy and make difficult the use of the old wiki to every extent, a mass-shutdown could happen, rendering everything at the mercy of the server maintainers. Whatever it is, a wiki is a very important piece of documentation, a record of itself, and often times a behemoth to take care of. Make it safe for yourself and archive everything in every way virtually possible. You could use a version control system to rewind to checkpoint states of the wiki at any point, hell you can even make people sign a contract, but whatever you do: Archive stuff.

The worst case for us silly cat lovers is that the entirety of the Silly Cats Wiki with its extensive lore universe has been lost to time, due to the mistakes of many(me included). As of now, it has suffered layers and layers of griefers who post useless pages in a dead wiki, destroying all the documentation of the stories and the details we have. As useless as it seemed before, it is important to archive everything in any case. Otherwise, you'll only have memory as an archive. It's thanks to volunteer projects of people who make art based on Silly Cats that we are able to keep a solid idea of how the story was. Even with my 30k word novel, it is still volumes away from documenting the complete story of Silly Cats, let alone the complete universe. We are in a position now, where the only real tangible piece of documentation that is readily accessible and untainted is a novel that I wrote out of love for the wiki.

Please, don't let this happen.

What I've learned from the Silly Cats Wiki

I loved my experience and the 10 months I spent dedicated to the Silly Cats Wiki. From it, I learned that Wikis are a powerful tool, a piece of media in and of themselves that can be used to tell narratives in ways other things dont. I learned the ability to collaborate with others on creative projects, and learned exactly why that's an important skill to have in our day and age. I also learned the ability to document things, and learned lessons from the failures that I and many others had about teamwork and working in a group in general, with people you don't really know.

I never thought I'd say this, and I definitely never thought I'd be proud to say it, but a fun wiki about silly cat memes helped me learn things that I don't think any other experience could in the way that it did. It was a fun, entrancing 10 months to be honest. It consumed every aspect of my life, and at times I dramatize a lot, but that's how it felt a lot of the time, and I think it's the best way to write a blog post about the wiki and the story and the thing that consumed close to a year of my life, and encouraged me to write approximately 40 thousand words worth of literature, and even more considering all the wiki pages I revamped, fixed, maintained, and wrote from scratch. It's the wiki that gave me my signoff signature phrase, and helped me have fun making stories with others.

I am extremely grateful for the kinds of opportunities to develop skills that I got from this silly hobby of mine, and the online friends I met from it. I don't think this blog post does it any service, but I'm OK with that for now.