Interested to read about the History of the FFWiki? Intriguing; most people would avoid history lessons like the Plague. Without further ado, here is is a little history of our site.

Contents 1 Timeline 1.1 The First Year, 2005 1.2 The Second Year, 2006 1.3 The Third Year, 2007 1.4 The Fourth Year, 2008 1.5 The Fifth Year, 2009 1.6 The Sixth Year, 2010 1.7 The Seventh Year, 2011 1.8 The Eighth Year, 2012 2 Fads 2.1 Best/Worst-fad 2.2 Userbox-fad 2.3 Reviews fad 2.4 User infobox-fad 2.5 Talk text box (Talk Bubble) fad 2.5.1 History Section 2.6 Make-Your-Own-Dissidia character Fad 3 Article Milestones

TimelineEdit

The First Year, 2005Edit

The Wiki was founded in early March, 2005 by Shane613. Back then, many of the articles were copy-pasted from Wikipedia (especially by Seancdaug), and many of the early contributors were Wikipedians first and foremost and did not have the energy to contribute to the Final Fantasy Wiki. Most new contributors focused mainly on the games Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, and Final Fantasy X (although Shane himself focused on the original Final Fantasy). Many articles on the characters of these games were created.

The Second Year, 2006Edit

Eventually, the first group of editors gave up editing the wiki. One day, Crazyswordsman was told about this wiki because he was upset that many of Wikipedia's articles on his favorite games, Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy VI, were getting deleted. He arrived, but found no activity and only three articles relating to his favorite games. He began to write articles related to them completely from scratch. During this time, a Wikipedian named Ryu Kaze continued to dump Wikipedia articles onto the site. CSM was upset by this, and began thinking about how he was going to "de-wikipediafy" the site. Similarly, an editor named Roy Al Blue arrived and had similar views to CSM's, and he focused mainly on Final Fantasy Tactics, a game which had absolutely no coverage or mentions on the site. He made articles with zeal equal to CSM's, and eventually complained about the lack of admins on the site. CSM was quickly admined.

Another zealous user, TacticAngel arrived at this point, and began to greatly expand coverage of a game which to that point received very miniscule coverage as well: Final Fantasy XI. When vandals began to be a problem, he was made an admin as well, and CSM was promoted to bureaucrat so he could manage the Wiki without having to bug people like Sannse or Angela for help. Hecko X arrived in May, and helped give the site a complete facelift, in addition to becoming the wiki's best vandal fighter. He was quickly given adminship as well. Many of the old templates, based on Wikipedian design, were changed to give the site a unique look. The Dragon's Neck Colosseum was created as well, in order to foster community bonding and to welcome new editors.

The Final Fantasy Wiki was featured on the main Wikia Central page in November 2006, just in time for the release of Final Fantasy XII.

The Third Year, 2007Edit

The year of 2007 began for FFWiki with the announcement by CSM about two new affiliates for the wiki, one being the FFCompendium and the other a site ran by Renmiri. As time passed, more articles are being added into the mainspace and the community spirit has been fostered with care. In May, Renmiri announced her participation in the Anime Central Convention (ACEN), where she was to present on Final Fantasy XII. She gave a shoutout to the FFWiki there and even advertised the wiki to many who attended.[1]

The ranks of Administrator, at that time being CSM as Bureaucrat and the sysops TacticAngel and Hecko X, was expanded with the inclusion of another administrator. On the 1st of June, Diablocon woke up to find he suddenly had admin powers. He was rather pleased. As time passed, mainspace articles continue to increase with the creation and expansion of enemy articles from various titles within the Final Fantasy series. Then, on 6 September, Bluer created UFO?, the Wiki's 5000th article - at this time he was working on Final Fantasy VIII enemy articles and CSM was working on enemies of Final Fantasy VI and both were struggling for the mainspace's 5000th mark.

The year ended with a massive character tournament called Magicite Madness, where nearly every character in the series participated in a single elimination tournament of 128. Kain Highwind, Tifa Lockhart, Vivi Orunitia, and Cidolfus Demen Bunansa made the Final Four, and Vivi won by beating Kain in the championship match.

The Fourth Year, 2008Edit

As the Wiki entered its fourth year, the number of registered users had steadily increased. Disputes and arguments arose here and there, and many vandals had made their destructive edits to the wiki. Many in the community were aware of such problems, and on the 17th of January, Mymindislost became an admin, making her the first female administrator. Good times. But still, sometimes vandalism happened at times when no admin was there to handle the situation. Clearly the different timezones were the problem. So on 18th March, Bluer, who lived half across the globe from the other admins, was given administrative powers to safeguard the Wiki.

However, not all was well. There was much tension in the Wiki due to self-proclaimed vandal, End Game. But in early June, tension within the wiki relaxed greatly as she finally moved on.

The Wiki continued to grow with its 7000th article on 27th of March. What's the article called? Jachol Cave. Makes one wonder what the 6000th was...

The creative juices of the FFWiki never stopped flowing. Walkthroughs were being written and had become quite the obsession for many editors, moreso than the mainspace edits. A small number of walkthroughs have been in existence in the early years of the Wiki, but coming in its fourth year, each Final Fantasy had at least one walkthrough dedicated to it.

Between the months of March and April, a fanmade radio drama basing around Final Fantasy VI commenced with the participation of several editors from the FFWiki: The first chapter of Intangirs are VIndigo was released in April. However, due to CSM's mic breaking, the project was put on hiatus until he could replace it.

But something else should be marked on the 20th April of this year. After much careful deliberation, a unanimous vote made Diablo the second Bureaucrat of the FFWiki. Merry news indeed! On a less merry note, one of the wiki's admins, Hecko X, left the wiki only a day later due to creative differences.

After much debate on the status of walkthroughs and their position on the wiki, it was finally decided to create a custom Walkthrough space with help from Wikia. This makes the FFWiki the first to have one!

Towards the end of the year, the presence of advertisements on the main page prompted a sleek redesign. The new format was created by several hardworking users and notably resulted in the slimming of the Featured Article area and addition of an Affiliates box. A "Did You Know?" section was also implemented. Unfortunately, the beloved Main Page Chocobo was removed due to space issues.

The Fifth Year, 2009Edit

The Dragon's Neck Colosseum celebrated its 100 week anniversary in January. Soon after, the DNC template was redesigned by TacticAngel, featuring a shiny new "Versus" crystal.

On March 4th Bluerfn left the FFWiki, stating simply "Bluer's interest in both Final Fantasy and this wiki has died." He was not to leave forever, as he claimed at the time.

On April 6th, the Wiki reached the number of 10,000 articles under its domain. That same day, two new Admins were chosen to replace those who had left: Faethin and 8bit BlackMage. Only three weeks later, on April 27th, Mymindislost also left the Wiki.

On April 26th, the wiki began showcasing Featured Images on the main page, beginning with artwork of the love triangle in Final Fantasy IV. Steadily moving on, between May 29th and June 2nd the Wiki got a facelift with the addition of a background image and custom theme, a somewhat troublesome work that ended up neatly with the help of Master Conjurer; as every other major Wiki throughout Wikia, the Final Fantasy Wiki now had an awesome custom theme for Monaco! Shortly after reaching 11,000 articles, another sad notice hit the community with the departure of one of their best contributors, BlueHighwind, on August 19th.

The Waystone, previously a haven for often off-topic forum posts, was demolished in the summer, while the Labyrinth of Time was created to house important policy forums from the past. In the fall, The Blackjack forum was created, allowing for more casual chat once more, as long as it was centered around Final Fantasy.

On December 14th, Mymindislost returned to the wiki.

The Sixth Year, 2010Edit

The New Year opened with benefits to Moderators, who were granted the abilities to suppress redirects, move pages without rate restriction, and move files. Rollbackers rejoiced! On January 18th, our very own deserving WikiGnome Yuanchosaan became an admin!

During June and July, following a lengthy discussion, the Wiki implemented CSS coding for tabs. Following this almost all of the Wiki's enemy templates were radically redesigned to use tabs instead of collapsible templates to display information for different releases of the games.

The summer ended with the beginning of the second Magicite Madness tournament, featuring twice as many characters as the first. Tifa Lockhart, Balthier, Sazh Katzroy and Terra Branford were the final four, with Terra toppling Sazh to win while Tifa defeated Balthier for third place. Crowned Champion of the second tournament, Terra faced returning Champion Vivi and was narrowly defeated by the defending champion.

The Seventh Year, 2011Edit

Entering its seventh year with Wikia, the Final Fantasy Wiki gets a surprise in August. The Wiki is officially recognized by Square Enix in their first issue of the Official Square Enix Magazine. The FFWiki is described as a "colllaberative[sic], fan-driven effort to create an ultimate Final Fantasy knowledge repository." To read the entry in all its glory, click here.

In September, the community decided it was time to promote three new admins to help manage the growing wiki. After much deliberation, Bluestarultor, Henryacores, and ScatheMote were promoted on October 24!

The Eighth Year, 2012Edit

The Final Fantasy Wiki stayed strong in the early parts of its eighth year. The much-awaited restructuring of the popular Dragon's Neck Colosseum came to fruition, with the new committee run by ScatheMote, Jimcloud, and Deadlyslashsword. To accompany this, along with making up for the lack of activity from previous bureaucrats, the long-standing admin TacticAngel was promoted to bureaucrat status by Diablocon on February 15! On July 4, the first episode of the official Final Fantasy Wiki Let's Play of Final Fantasy VI was released, marking the Wiki's first successful foray into collaborative video production.

FadsEdit

As the number of users grew, fads began appearing. We have gathered a list of those fads.

Best/Worst-fadEdit

While the actual idea for the fad started on Crazyswordsman's userpage on 9 May 2006, it wasn't until AuronKaizer's re-design it to a table on 12 January 2007 that this caught on as a fad.

Userbox-fadEdit

The first fad to appear on the FFWiki was the Userbox-fad. It was initiated on June 30th 2006 by Crazyswordsman and is still growing larger thanks to the contribution of many users. Userboxes were used as graphical information to tell about a person, such as their FF game and class preferences. Later on, Userboxes with character quotes and boxes with more user specific information were added. Hecko X also created a special userbox that the user could edit to their liking, creating a more personal spin to the fad.

Reviews fadEdit

This fad was first started by Darth Cow on 30 July 2006 on a user-subpage simply entitled User:Darth Cow/Reviews and has thus far had reasonable success as a fad. Users would give a short resumé of the story, noting things as sound, graphics, system and story and giving them all a score. The coding for the giant right-aligned scoreboard was later turned into the Reviews template by StijnX for easier use.

User infobox-fadEdit

First appeared 10 August 2006 on Hecko X's userpage and started off as a joke of sorts, inspired by a semi-serious attempt by TacticAngel, who had redesigned the enemy template for Final Fantasy VI and added it to the Returners' Conclave. It contained mostly jibberish, but was enough kick off the idea in Hecko's head. The infoboxes included on user pages were changed to reflect specific user information, thus providing easy-to-read information about a user, a thing the userboxes at that time did not provide.

Talk text box (Talk Bubble) fadEdit

This fad first appeared on 21 April 2007 and was designed by TacticAngel. It provided a more humorous way of making comments on a talk page, as well as providing a clearer division of who made what comment. In essence, it is a user-selected avatar and speech bubble where the text output is shown. Some users took it to the next level and added multi-colors and other minor tweaks to further personalize their talk box, all of which were later incorporated into the main Talk bubble template.

History SectionEdit

With the Talk Bubble template being created and editing one's talk bubble became extremely simple, BlueHighwind got the idea to make a history section on his userpage on 24 September 2007 to show off what his former talk bubbles had looked like. After a while, this caught on as a fad, and is now regarded as part of a standard beginner's userpage.

Make-Your-Own-Dissidia character FadEdit

A more recent fad, this one is about users making fan-made pages of themselves if they were in Dissidia. This originated as part of the fan project "Dissidia Wars", but soon spread to include other users.

Article MilestonesEdit

As the Wiki grows in terms of mainspace content, so does the number of articles. Below is a list of article milestones.

Number	Date	Article	Remark
500	12 Mar 06	Ultima (Tactics)	Was initially called Altima, this article is believed to be the 500th.
1000	12 Apr 06	Ring (Equipment)	Was initially called Rings, remained a stub until mid-'09.
5000	06 Sep 07	UFO?	Two editors; Bluer and CSM were competing between making a Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy VI article the 5000th. This is the result.
8000	11 Jul 08	Odin (Final Fantasy V)	A "Just as planned" moment for Bluer as he created four stubs during Gamer2127's Final Fantasy X-2 enemy article creation spree.
9000	22 Nov 08	Magitek (Command)	Was initially called Magitek (Ability), written by Drake Clawfang after splitting it from the Magitek Armor article.
10000	08 Apr 09	Library (Echoes of Time)	Written by Griffen78, not realizing he had made article number 10000 until it was brought up on the article's talk page.
13000	31 Aug 2012	List of Final Fantasy Dimensions Enemies	Not planned to be the 13000th article, was written by Kaimi. Remains an unfinished article to today.