MicroWiki (name)
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As of 2024, there have been at least six wikis bearing the name MicroWiki.
Overview and background
MicroWiki is a combination of micro- (as in micronation) + wiki. A wiki is a website that can be collaboratively edited and operated by its own users directly through a web browser. Wikis contain webpages which may be linked to one another via hyperlinks. Most wikis are based around, or at least resemble, encyclopaedias. Although the first wiki, WikiWikiWeb, was launched on 25 March 1995, the general-purpose Wikipedia, launched on 15 January 2001, popularised the concept. By just January 2002, Wikipedia had over 100 daily contributors.
The first micronational website, the Micronations Page, was launched in November or December 1995, and from 1996 onwards, the Internet saw an increase in the number of micronations and micronational websites operating online. The first micronational encyclopaedia was the Portuguese-language Enciclopédia Jéssica, published on 22 November 1999. The earliest-known micronational wiki was ostensibly the Portuguese Micropédia, running on ASP.NET and said to be founded in 2003 by Rafael Filgueira and Bruno Cava of the Free Community of Pasargada. However, the earliest evidence for the wiki's existence is by at least 14 May 2005.
Sander Dieleman's MicroWiki (c.2 August 2004 – c.13 June 2005)
Dieleman
Sander Dieleman, the creator of the first micronational wiki called MicroWiki, was a Micran who had founded several geofictional self-described "micronations" since 1999; these nations were collectively known as SanderNations (spelled without a space) or Sanderist nations. The most prominent of these micronations included the Commune of Feianova, Democracy of Feijea, Confederate Rianates of Lemuria, Theocracy of Mediterranea (formerly the Commonwealth of Trián), the Micronation of Pacary and the Empire of Xantari. Dieleman was also prominent in designing websites and software applications intended for micronational economies; he won a FNORD Award in 2003 for a creating a free micronational banking software known as PHPBank.
MicroWiki.tk
Much of the history of MicroWiki is known only through isolated forums posts and archived webpages of the wiki itself. Sander founded MicroWiki before 2 August 2004. It ran on MediaWiki and was inspired by, and heavily based upon, Wikipedia, with the wiki's main page stating: "MicroWiki is, or at least is supposed to be a micronational encyclopedia in the style of Wikipedia." MicroWiki was located at microwiki.tk, with a mirror site—on a subdomain of Dieleman's personal website—at sander.domainmultitude.com/microwiki.
According to its main page, MicroWiki allowed any user to contribute; however, whether account registration was required to make edits to the wiki (or whether users could edit anonymously) is unknown. MicroWiki's general disclaimer stated that "no one is [responsible] for the content of these pages as they are open to all to edit," also reaffirming that no one micronation, individual or organisation—whether micronational or macronational—could own a page. As of 26 April 2005, the wiki had 228 articles.
MicroWiki did not exist for long; the last available snapshot of the website on the Internet Archive is dated to 26 April 2005, while a forum post on the Shireroth forums posted on 13 June refers to it as the "former MicroWiki". The reason for this was because Dieleman's domain "went down", possibly due to expiring. In Microscope by Scott Alexander (published about 2006), he writes:
Back in 2004, Sander Dieleman had taken steps to set up a micronational wiki, similar to the wildly successful Wikipedia. Unfortunately, after only a few articles had been written, Sander’s site crashed and the project lay dormant.
Fabian Schneider's MicroWiki (27 May 2005 – present)
ShireWiki (25 August 2005 – 2 November 2007)
On 26 July 2005, Scott Alexander, the co-founder of the then-Micronational Cartography Society and an influential figure in the Micras sector, proposed creating an encyclopaedia and wiki for the Imperial Republic of Shireroth that would also allow users to create entries on any micronational and intermicronational topics. Alexander intended it as a replacement to Dieleman's MicroWiki, which many micronationalists on the Shireroth forums found to be a useful resource. Despite his proposal to name it MicroWiki, others proposed calling it ShireWiki. Accordingly, on 1 August, the domain for ShireWiki was launched—shireroth.org/wiki. It operates on MediaWiki.
However, on 25 August, Alexander formally renamed the wiki to MicroWiki 2 after discovering that the Grand Commonwealth was allegedly planning on launching its own intermicronational wiki under the name MicroWiki. After receiving backlash from several micronationalists, who viewed the name as unconventional and criticised Alexander's decision to change the name without consulting anyone, he renamed MicroWiki 2 to just MicroWiki by 2 September. The wiki's name was later reverted to ShireWiki on 2 November 2007. As of May 2024, the ShireWiki domain was still active.
micronations.net's MicroWiki (10 December 2006 – c.9 February 2008)
Listofmicronations.com's Micro Wiki (29 March 2009 – 11 February 2010)
On 29 March 2009, George Cruickshank, Emperor of the Empire of Atlantium, launched Micro Wiki (formally the List of Micronations Micro Wiki) as a supplementary website to his Listofmicronations.com, a database of micronations and forum. Hosted via the wiki-hosting service Wikispaces at listofmicronations.wikispaces.com, Micro Wiki was created in order to document a "considerably broader range of micronational content" than what was allowed on Wikipedia, without "compromising content or sacrificing editorial standards." The wiki disallowed geofiction and was said to focus on more secessionist or "serious" micronations, but in practice this was not strictly the case. It had about 100 articles during this time.
On 12 August, Cruickshank said that his Micro Wiki was in the process of establishing itself as "the world's most reliable and objective data source" about micronations, and dismissed Schneider's MicroWiki as consisting of too many fictional micronations. On 2 February 2010, administrator Kieran Bennett announced that Micro Wiki would be moved to MediaWiki in order to make its layout and user interface more user-friendly by closer resembling Wikipedia. Founded by Cruickshank and Bennett, Micro Wiki was renamed to Lomwiki and became fully operational on 11 February 2010 under the new name and domain—a subdomain of Listofmicronations.com.