Halopedia:History

This page chronicles the history of Halopedia.

Beginnings: 2004-2005
Halopedia, originally known simply as "Halo Wiki", began on November 4, 2004 as a project of user AgentSeethroo, with the help of Porplemontage. Built as an offshoot of his then clan, the BlackBoxRepublic, it quickly attracted a small following of users.

To help the growing wiki, AgentSeethroo appointed several other Administrators to assist in the maintenance of the site, namely Buz and Dragonclaws.

Becoming ambitious, AgentSeethroo and Porplemontage created GamerFocus: a wiki network/gaming site. Because of the recent creation of Halowiki.net, the wiki's name was changed to "Halopedia" as a riff on "Wikipedia" and moved to www.halopedia.org, where it became part of the wiki network alongside a game cheats wiki, an general video game wiki, and the Super Mario Wiki.

Due to lack of interest, the cheats wiki and the video game wiki closed and the wiki network eventually shut down, leaving the remaining sites as stand-alone wikis, Halopedia among them. Throughout 2005, the site continued to grow as the user list expanded to a little over 150.

Notability: Early 2006
The site began to be recognized by the international community in early 2006; it was mentioned in a section of the Tahlequah Daily Press newspaper of Tahlequah, Oklahoma on February 20, 2006. The site eventually was recognized by Bungie as a reliable, yet unofficial source of Halo information for the Halo community. This recognition prompted Halopedia's membership to increase by 300 percent over several weeks.

Still, notability is not something Halopedia has acquired in a major sense. Attempts to add an article on Halopedia to Wikipedia have been met with failure three times, being deleted because the site is not considered notable enough to pass the site's notability standard. Unless something dramatically changes to result in widespread attention enough to create numerous secondary sources covering the significance of Halopedia, it is likely that this will go unchanged for the foreseeable future.

Server Problems: Mid 2006
Halopedia's growing community began to present a major problem for its creators; the site's growing size was producing a bill in excess of $150 a month for server usage. Throughout May, June, and July, the site would be sporadically offline, until it finally went offline for several straight weeks. AgentSeethroo had to admit that he could no longer host Halopedia himself.

The admins decided that Halopedia had to be merged with halo.wikia.com, a formerly rival wiki simply referred as Halo Wikia that did not have the same issues. Despite the process of having to manually import every article from the original Halopedia (now referred to as old.Halopedia due to its temporary filename during the transfer process), the site ultimately benefited with several new active users.

Halo Wikia
Halo Wikia was started on June 15, 2005 by Akashe. The user is no longer around to answer for his actions. It is unknown whether Akashe wanted to start a new site to compete against the old Halopedia or that he just did not know of its existence. Whatever the reason, without the support of other users, halo.wikia.com slowly died out, with Akashe last posting on June 15, 2005. The site would remain a dead wiki until it merged with and transformed into Halopedia. Around August 2007, Halopedia hit 3000 articles.

Introduction of social tools: Early 2008
In March 2008, Halopedia was one of the few wikis of Wikia having to experiment a social tools system and a new skin. Part of the reason behind these features was for Wikia to experiment with the extensions in question and finding out the accessibility and usefulness of the tools. The implementation of the social tools includes the point system, an editing system that rewards users points for editing, completing various steps to becoming an active community member, and participating in community activities.

At first, the social tools proved to be useful in Halopedia. A significant number of users enjoyed the features and were motivated to improve the wiki. However, the social tools created major problems with vandals and concern about the site's quality. The point system awarding equal value for both good and bad edits unfortunately encouraged most new users to contribute numerous edits of low beneficial value. These included adding random spaces and line breaks, fixing spellings one word for each revision, and unnecessary and redundant content. Users seeking a high point score without care for article quality caused an overall deterioration of quality in Halopedia.

The administration team sought to resolve the matter by limiting the rewards to only mainspace articles, uploading the first avatar to the user's profile, and for signing up to Halopedia. Though a significant number of the community were uncomfortable with these changes, they would later realize that the changes made were necessary to restore Halopedia to its quality state.

From 2008 to 2010
"Know your Halo history by studying Halopedia, and make sure you’ve finished all three games, and have played all the multiplayer maps a lot."

- Rob Adams

Halopedia experienced a great year in 2008, now featured with social tools. Though it met some controversy in the past, the social tools motivated the Halo community to continue improving and expanding the Halo database. Eventually, those who opposed the implementation of the social tools adapted and enjoyed the features. From 2009 to 2010, Halopedia underwent multiple design changes whereby the site would alter its appearance to a specific theme. These changes made it possible for the site to pay tribute for the release of Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach.

In late 2008, Halopedia moved back to the main Wikia codebase, which provided lots of software updates. Halopedia's skin was changed from the custom "Halopedia" skin to Wikia's then-default Monaco skin, which was customized to Halopedia's needs.

Domain change: Late 2010
In mid-August 2010, Halopedia's hosting service, Wikia, introduced a new mandatory skin change codenamed "Oasis" along with the removal of Monaco skin, and an update of the terms of use to the Wikia community. Declared by many to be a maintenance burden, Wikia defended its position for the removal of Monaco skin and offered the community a chance to experience the new skin. Though the skin is described by Wikia as "sleek" and helpful to newer users, it faced a lot of opposition from a significant amount of the Wikia community over what they saw as reduced accessibility and had unnecessary features. In addition, veteran contributors felt that Wikia's updated terms of use greatly restricted creativity and community freedom of each wiki, something the Wikia community had enjoyed when using older skins.

After a community consensus initiated by administrator Nicmavr, a majority voted to move back to its independent domain, halopedian.com, on October 17th, 2010. The wiki was moved again to its original domain, halopedia.org, in summer 2012.

Current
Currently, Halopedia continues to grow in anticipation of many new projects planned for the Halo universe, such as the new Reclaimer Saga of games. In July 2014, Halopedia adopted a special skin for mobile web-based browsers. On September 27, 2015, the site reached the 10,000 article mark.

Halopedia has been regarded as relatively accurate and reliable among Halo fans and website forums, many of which cite Halopedia's articles as sources of information. Although Halopedia frowns on speculation in its articles, its forums have become a central place for speculation and discussion of the upcoming productions.