UMEMARO 3D Wiki:About

The UMEMARO 3D Wiki on Miraheze is the fourth iteration of the UMEMARO 3D Wiki, directly succeeding the third iteration on Referata. The Miraheze, Referata, and Wikispaces versions are the spiritual successors of the original UMEMARO 3D Wiki, hosted on Wikia in 2011 and 2012. It aims to be the leading resource on all aspects of the UMEMARO 3D canon.

Background
Note: This article uses Wayback Machine links for websites no longer available at their native locations unless otherwise noted.

The first UMEMARO 3D Wiki, created and managed by Wape, was built on the Wikia platform and hosted by Wikia from early 2011 through 2012. Wikia's censorship policies meant that the wiki stood on shaky ground right from the start - even with its attempts at censoring the necessary images uploaded to the wiki, the Wikia iteration of the UMEMARO 3D Wiki was shut down in April 2012, after a little over a year of operation. The wiki was exported and saved, and its pages were posted on a Blogspot blog to serve as a makeshift wiki until a more suitable host was found. Wikispaces was identified in May 2014 as a potential platform, and test pages for a new wiki were uploaded, but nothing ever came of that project, due to difficulties in publicizing the wiki.

The Wikispaces iteration was created on June 14, 2014, in anticipation of the then-upcoming release Work in Progress, after creator James Six Two Two took note of Wape's failed attempts to revive the wiki. James used his own knowledge of the UMEMARO 3D canon, along with supplemental information from both of hongfire's UMEMARO 3D threads, separating that wiki from the work of the previous wiki. The wiki was built in private, with James as the sole contributor, for the next two months, with no initial intention of publicizing the wiki or acknowledging its existence, due to Wikispaces' handling of publicizing wikis. On August 29, however, James noticed that Wikispaces had changed their criteria for publicizing wikis, and found that he was now able to open the wiki to all for free. With this knowledge in hand, he sheared off some of the rough edges of the wiki to make it more suitable for public viewing, and posted a link to it on hongfire in the early hours of August 31.

On September 16, Wikispaces announced that it would be revoking free hosting for non-education wikis. As a result, the UMEMARO 3D Wiki moved to the basic paid plan on September 26, covered in full by James. On December 3, however, the UMEMARO 3D Wiki on Wikispaces closed following an announcement on November 17, due to further revisions to Wikispaces' content policies. The entire Wikispaces platform later closed on September 30, 2018, citing declining usage and increasing hosting costs.

The Referata iteration of the wiki was created on December 6, 2014, after several weeks of searching by James in an attempt to find a new host for the wiki. The wiki's pages had to be completely rebuilt, due to the move to MediaWiki as a software platform; this process lasted until the 8th, when the wiki officially reopened, taking full advantage of MediaWiki's superior features. The wiki survived its entire existence on Referata without contact from the Referata administration regarding its content. It struggled, however, with occasional server issues (that would choke up the wiki's server to the point of the wiki being inaccessible) and an ever-present limit on the cumulative size of files uploaded to the wiki, set at 100 mb. The wiki pushed against this limit for nearly its entire existence, restricting what could be done with the wiki in terms of images.

History
In the summer of 2017, James began searching in earnest for a new host for the UMEMARO 3D Wiki, as Referata's file size limit had become too restrictive for the wiki's image-heavy content. Miraheze had been identified as a potential option as early as September 2016, when James first entertained the concept of moving the wiki. The domain was reserved in early July, and a full page import was completed on July 26, 2017. The wiki was considered fully imported on August 18, 2017, when the last of the missing images were uploaded, and went live the same day. The Referata iteration of the wiki stayed open as a failsafe for another week until being deleted on August 25.

The UMEMARO 3D Wiki has been affiliated with the unofficial UMEMARO 3D Discord server since January 2019.

Staff

 * james622, creator and curator
 * Shani Andras, translator/transcriber
 * KlemmoHazard, Discord admin