Super Mario Wiki

Super Mario Wiki
Super Mario Wiki's logo
Language	English
Status	Active
Run	2005 - Present
Date opened	August 12th, 2005
Creator	Porplemontage
Current owner	{{{owner}}}
Number of Articles	11,882+
Forum	Super Mario Boards
Mascot	Mario
Website	Main page

The Super Mario Wiki is a collaborative knowledge-base about everything in the Mario, Donkey Kong, Wario, and Yoshi universe. It is driven by a fan-based community, and runs on a wiki (meaning any registered user can edit and create articles).

The wiki was created on August 12th, 2005 by Stephen Shinn (who goes by Porplemontage, the namesake of his original site, Porplemontage Studios), who received help from AgentSeethroo (who was an administrator on Porple's Halopedia site as well). Originally intended to cover everything about the Mario-series, the site was soon split into the MarioWiki, DKWiki, and the Wario Wiki (the latter being a project that only a limited few could access); there was also a Yoshi Wiki in the planning stages before the whole "Wiki Alliance" project was scrapped and all content was returned to the Super Mario Wiki in 2007.

The wiki covers various topics surrounding the Mario series: some of which include the games, characters, locations, TV series, movies, and comics. Anyone can sign-up and help edit articles, and users gain more abilities one week after signing up, such as the ability to create their userpage and having the ability to move pages. This is to help prevent new users from making excessive mistakes and have a chance to learn about the policies of the site before they make mistakes.

Administration

Patrollers, Sysops, and Bureaucrats; as administration is on other wikis such as Bulbapedia, are considered the "house keepers" of the site.

The Patroller ranking is often considered an in-between of regular users and Sysops: they have the abilities of patrolling edits, blocking users, rollbacking consecutive edits, and using the Checkuser feature. Users are given the Patroller ranking when the administration of the site feels that they deserve a promotion and that they are good potential candidates for Sysop. There are currently five Patrollers of the site.

Sysops have the abilities of patrolling edits, blocking users, rollbacking consecutive edits, using the Checkuser feature, deleting and restoring articles, protecting and unprotecting articles, and hiding and viewing hidden revisions via the oversight ability. Most current Sysops of the site are usually promoted to Patroller, and then to Sysop; although some users are, in rare cases, promoted straight to Sysop (when the Patroller ranking wasn't around, this occurred frequently). There are currently twelve users who are Sysops.

Bureaucrats, in addition to having all of the powers of a Sysop, have the abilities to rename users and are able to promote and demote users. There are currently three Bureaucrats of the wiki.

MarioWiki Forum

The MarioWiki Forum is the official forum of the Super Mario Wiki, which contains much discussion about the Mario- and Super Smash Bros.-series is held, as well as being the location of the annual Super Mario Wiki Anniversary awards shows and a board for the discussion of The 'Shroom.

The forum is also the main mode of communication between the staff of the various major projects of the Super Mario Wiki. The chat room staff, Awards Committee, Core 'Shroom Staff, Poll Committee members, wiki staff, and forum staff all have separate, private boards in which they come to discuss ongoing issues and problems.

The staff of the forum is divided into 4 membergroups (listed from most powerful to least powerful): Wiki Proprietor, In Charge of the Forum, Forum Administrator, and Local Moderator. Porplemontage is the Wiki Proprietor, and has full access to the AdminCP as well as having FTP access to the forum. The In Charge of the Forum ranking used to be almost as powerful as the Wiki Proprietor, although the ranking was stripped down to having the powers of a Forum Administrator after a Forum Administrator's account (Ghost Jam) was hacked into; the ranking now holds more of a ceremonial meaning and is held by Stooben Rooben.

Forum Administrators (commonly called Global Moderators on the forum) hold standard moderation powers over every part of the forum that they have access to, as well as having the ability to change certain aspects of a member's account (such as display names and membergroups). Local Moderators hold standard moderation power over certain boards that they are assigned to.

Chat

The Super Mario Wiki Chat was originally founded by Porplemontage in the youth of the Super Mario Wiki, and could only be accessed on the forum. The chat (then located at #mariowiki on the DarkMyst server) was often spammed and uncontrollable (back in the day, none of the users in the community knew how to register a channel; as of such, the first user to enter the channel would be give Operator powers). Eventually, the channel was registered, moved to the wiki, and the Operators learned how to use channel commands to enforce the rules. At the time, wiki staff were given preference when Operator promotions were made, although this system was abolished in 2009.

After spam attacks in 2007, the chat rules became extremely strict and the chat became regulated. However, in later 2009, many people complained that the strict policies that made the chat a success in 2008 and early 2009 were either removed or amended and weakly enforced, which led to the chat becoming what many have called a "hellhole of spam." The wiki administrators decided to terminate relations with the chat, and a new chat for the wiki was found in #mwchat, which the user Super Mario Bros. had originally created to hold staff meetings between several staff members and other trusted users.