Link to article: History Of The Universe: Part One.
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[[>]] [[module Rate]] [[/>]] Way back in '07, /x/ was an interesting place, bursting with new ways to keep you up at night. Stuff like the oldish creepypastas were actually creepy, instead of being something that made you wonder how it ever spooked anybody. On June 22nd of that year, what was intended as a one-off creepypasta became something explosive. [[[SCP-173]]], "The Statue" by Moto42.[[footnote]]Known also as S.S. Walrus or USS Walrus.[[/footnote]] [http://archive.is/QD9UF You can read an archive of this event here!] > //It all started with SCP-173. It was a random, one-off creepypasta, but it inspired a lot of people. before long, other entries started popping up, and then one day someone made a wiki for it, so they wouldn't all 404 eventually. This was when /x/ was still young-ish, and The Holders, Ted the Caver, Treedog, and other old-school /x/ rubbish was still very new and decent.// {{- DrGears}} The initial appearance of SCP-173 was something really different to the /x/ community. Instead of being a basic story with a jump scare punchline, or a thing that made you feel squicked and scared, it was designed to make you wonder, and draw fear from that. You can imagine the reaction of many internet dwellers as they first scrolled down to see that thread. It was popular. The original thread stuck around for a couple days, as many people marveled at the creepiness of the writing and the implication that there were more things just like it somewhere else. But as some were thinking of what //could// be out there, others wanted to know how they could get their piece of the SCP pie. Over the following 6 months, there were multiple reposts of 173 as well as a handful of low quality attempts at creating original SCPs. In January of 2008, the SCP concept experienced a huge surge in popularity. In five large threads created between January 17th and January 19th, a number of original SCPs were created. They became the very first entries to what was then known as "The SCP Series." Although many users embraced the SCP Series and used the idea well, some were unsatisfied with the limits of merely posting in forum threads. In addition, many denizens of /b/ and /x/ were beginning to grow weary of repeated threads being created. So on January 19th, 2008, the SCP Series wiki was created on the EditThis wikifarm - which was essentially a Wikipedia clone. The entries that were moved to the EditThis wiki were the original works of the users on /x/ and /b/. With the creation of the SCP Series wiki, the community began to post fewer and fewer threads on 4chan, instead writing directly to the wiki. As such, /x/ and /b/ ceased to be the primary medium of these works, with the threads slowly fading away. This active January was also when we got a few of our oldest and earliest shapers of the community, such as DrGears, A Fat Ghost, Kain Pathos Crow, FritzWillie, and Bijhan. With these writers, we also got some of the oldest and most loved(or hated) entries to the SCP Series. DrGears wrote many of his current 42 articles in the old /x/ and Editthis days. Some, like the now-deleted SCP-031 "Parasite's Generation" did not last. However, quite a few gems have survived to this time. [[[SCP-682]]] was made in its original form, ready to gnash and destroy all it could. But it too has been significantly revised over time. Originally, it didn't have the interview log and had a weaker description. It received its change from an anonymous writer on the EditThis wiki. The Dr. Gears character also came from this time, from a prototype tale. The tale in question was a note reprimanding some researcher for cross-testing two different SCPs, which resulted in the creation of SCP-682. When it was posted to /x/, it brought criticism for being far too emotional and un-scientific. As such, DrGears reshaped the character as a man who has no emotion, deeply traumatized by the goings-ons of the Foundation. The SCP wiki originated on EditThis, but that wikifarm was unpolished, a little bit sloppy, and in retrospect probably not a great place to start out. The entries were displayed on a big list, similar to the one we have. Communication between different members of the community was difficult to accomplish, since the discussion page as we know it did not exist, and the pages where we could communicate were primitive. This junction is also where we gained other influential members, such as Bright and Eberstrom. It's still possible to see some of the old comments by using the wayback machine on EditThis. Eberstrom was definitely one of the most influential members of the old wiki, yet has been buried in the dustbin of history. Looking through many of his posts on the old discussion pages, it is obvious he was very influential, and was well known by DrGears, Kain, and FritzWillie. His 001 proposal was one of the first on the site, and the oldest one to survive from EditThis(In -ARC form). The entries on EditThis grew from less than a dozen to many hundreds over the course of 6 months. The SCP-001 proposals did not exist, as the number 001 was initially held in abeyance, with the label "reserved until someone makes an entry worthy of SCP-001." Several SCP-001 Proposals were eventually created: Eberstroms Proposal(Site-19), Catalyst's Proposal(Also Site-19), DrGears Proposal(The Prototype), Jonathan Ball's Proposal(The Sheaf of Papers), and Taisaijin's Proposal(A Lost God). Only DrGears and Ball's proposal's still exist, with Eberstrom's having been -ARC'd and the rest deleted. Additional influential entries were made during this time, exclusively on EditThis. Josie the Half cat was one of the first major entries to be posted on EditThis, and was popular enough that the first SCP logo was based on her appearance. You can see it [http://scp-wiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/history-of-the-universe-part-one/Josie.jpg here]! DrGears also wrote a significant number of articles, posting entry after entry to the SCP Series main page. Many of the Broken God and MC&D stuff, as well as his classic articles[[footnote]]In this case 914, 682 and 882[[/footnote]] were written at this time. The community on EditThis was loose at best, with most communication taking place on /x/ or through the board discussion pages. There were few guidelines, with the only actual "How to Write an SCP" guide being at the bottom of the website and entirely optional to read. There was no deletion process, with many terrible entries being left on the mainlist. A few of these entries [[footnote]]Such as SCP-000, entropy reverser.[[/footnote]] would be left behind when the move to WikiDot was enacted. Despite the lack of quality control, the first hazes of canon began emerging during this time. Secure Facilities showed that the Foundation had a reach beyond Site-19, and the O5 council gave the idea that the SCP Series had in-character leadership. Concepts such as D-Class(then called variations on the name "D personnel") and Object Classes were introduced. There were no senior staff author inserts, and no such thing as Foundation Tales. Users would leave O5 notes at the end of articles, leaving comments about the articles. This led to a development to sillier and sillier notes, which in turn resulted in several edit wars between users who appreciated the humor, and those who did not. It was during the EditThis days that the scientific rigor we hold all articles to began to take shape. Prior to this, many authors casually disregarded basic science and mathematics in order to make their entries. As time went on and more additions were made to the series, people began to make more and more unscientific articles. People got sick of it, and on March 23rd, 2008, a user named Aiden made this post on the SCP Series discussion: > //Would anyone really object to me going through these over the course of the next week or two and truncating the overly precise measurements? There are quite a few SCPs that say stuff like "approximately 57.23545445 cm". There's no need to go down to nanometers when you're writing an executive summary. It could probably even be reduced to a single significant digit. In most cases I'll probably round it off to tenths or hundredths of a unit, if not whole units. I'll also be converting all measurements to SI, because that's what you use in a research report. Miles/pounds/etc may be included in parentheses if really necessary.// > > //I'm also seeing that a lot of reports are straying from the Item #/Object Class/SCP/Description format. Some are just missing an Object Class (and while I'm at it, some having the WRONG class, IMO) and others are just cluttered whitespace-wise. I'm going to go ahead and make the sections (#/Class/SCP/Desc) bold and add some white space where needed to make them easier to read. There's a couple that are pretty narrative, and I won't touch those without some discussion.// > > //I'd also like to edit the (IMO) over-doing of many of the SCPs and descriptions. Reduce the usage of the words "terminated", reduce the usage of ALL CAPS where it isn't needed, edit/remove unexplained/excessive procedures (not ones that add to the experience, I mean ones like burying an object in 10 tons of dirt and replacing the dirt every other day for no apparent reason or how every other SCP involves very precise temperature ranges which would never occur in nature prior to containment), etc. I don't mean to intrude on anyone's creativity here, honest, I just see an opportunity for improvement is all.// The response from an anonymous user was: > //Go ahead, that sounds like a good idea. Conversion to SI will really add to the scientific style. Removing oxymoronic expressions like the one you quoted is fine by me.// The basic formatting for the creation of these articles differed greatly from what we have now. For one thing, anyone could edit any entry at any time, and for any reason. Pop culture references were fairly commonplace, with many of the discussion pages mentioning them. Instead of the current comment system, we had discussion boards for each article. Articles were formatted in the same style as Wikipedia, and the general interface was primitive. But there is still something charming about the whole thing. It was just a group of anonymous users getting together to create something they all thought was pretty cool. Reading through the old discussion pages brings a sense of hope for the future. Joke articles also date back from the EditThis wiki, where they consisted primarily of pop culture references and the like. We had stuff from various books, movies and comics, with an entire series of objects based on the portal series. When the wiki was ported to WikiDot, there was some discussion about deleting the joke entries altogether, since at the time they occupied normal SCP number slots. They were eventually moved to their current section, with the pop-culture entries purged during the Mass Edit. In the end, EditThis was never a viable home for the SCP Series. The web host was running out of capital, and was forcing many of his subscribers to either pay him or be deleted. We didn't have the resources to pay, which meant imminent deletion was looming. There was some debate on the EditThis wiki on where the Series would go. Since EditThis had no admins, we'd basically been an anarchic internet society. With the EditThis wiki no longer being a viable home for the SCP Series, a new host was needed. > //I was on that site for a few weeks submitting with others when I found out the original creator had abandoned it, at it was in danger of being canned by the hosting network, so I migrated all the stores to wikidot by just copy and pasting everything over// - {{FritzWillie/The Administrator}} FritzWillie decided to set up the wiki, on WikiDot, and it went up on July 19th, 2008, and from there was an uphill battle to bring content and writers over. By July 25th, 2008, the WikiDot wiki was ready to go live. This message was the first news update for the wiki, posted by The Administrator as he opened up the wiki for the first time > //The Forum is up.// > //Page Rating is available.// > //The website is going live today. All permissions are open.// > //**Welcome**// However, when he set it up, there were actually two accounts opened up with his name. In secret, he set himself up both as "The Administrator" to do administrative work and as "FritzWillie" to do writing work. He told nobody about this, and contributed mostly under the FritzWillie name, while doing most admin work under the The Administrator account. > //I guess a little, like I said, I admined as one and contributed as the other, I didn't want people to upvote one's I submitted as "the administrator" just because I saved the site, so most were submitted as fritzwillie's// - {{FritzWillie/The Administrator}} There was soon a flurry of activity, as authors came in from the sinking EditThis wiki to see the new one. The first adminships were assigned to The Administrator, DrGears, FritzWillie and Kain Pathos Crow, while the first mods were Lt Masipag and Kraito. They got to work building the wiki as quickly as possible. > //The Admin wrote a few nice articles, but other than that, I have no [idea] what he was like. I don't even know who he was on the original wiki. I just know he chose me as one of the Big Four because I was active all the time on the old wiki.// - {{Kain Pathos Crow}} > //I didn't want to play favorites or have people favorite mine just because I was the adminstrator// - {{FritzWillie/The Administrator}} FritzWillie created the "The Administrator" account because he didn't want the man who started the WikiDot wiki to also be contributing stuff. He thought it might result in nepotism upvotes. He built the initial pages, such as the series page, assigned the moderators and administrators and worked diligently to bring folks in from EditThis. This is what established the WikiDot wiki as the de-facto home of the SCP series, and not just another option for the creepypasta series. He contributed several articles that continue to bring acclaim today, such as the coat of many arms and the Living Room. He also created "A Word From the Administrator." > //Mankind in its present state has been around for a quarter of a million years, yet only the last 4,000 have been of any significance. So, what did we do for nearly 250,000 years? We huddled in caves and around small fires, fearful of the things that we didn't understand. It was more than explaining why the sun came up, it was the mystery of enormous birds with heads of men, and rocks that came to life. So we called them 'gods' and 'demons,' and begged them to spare us and prayed for salvation.// > > //In time, their numbers dwindled and our numbers rose. The world began to make more sense when there were less things to fear. Yet, the unexplained can never truly go away, as if the universe demands the absurd and impossible.// > > //Mankind must not go back to hiding in fear. No one else will protect us, we must stand up for ourselves.// > > //While the rest of mankind dwell in the light, we must stand in the darkness to combat it, contain it, and shield it from the eyes of the public, so that others may live in a sane, normal world.// > > //We secure. We contain. We protect.// > {{- A word from "The Administrator"}} FritzWillie was active for only a short time on the WikiDot wiki, but his contributions cannot be understated. Some of the most influential entries on the main list were created by him, including Cassie, The Creeping Hungry Sands of Tule, Fernand, and the WW2 Molecular Fission Cannon. He was also responsible for the co-creation of the wiki's first guide, where he would attempt to describe tone. > //Well, Fritzwillie was intelligent, with a good eye for military matters. After that, I don't know, he disappeared soon after the Foundation secondary website was established.// -{{Kain Pathos Crow}} Kraito was one of the first two moderators, given moderative powers because of his numerous contributions to the series. He disappeared shortly after the series was moved to WikiDot. Over the years his contributions reached low scores and were deleted. Eventually his personnel file was also removed, relegating him to the dustbin of history. He resurfaced briefly in early 2014, and posted a new SCP. Lt Masipag(Known as "Unite 3-012" on the EditThis wiki) was made a moderator at around the same time as Kraito, and was the first female member of senior staff. Unlike Kraito, Masipag stuck around for awhile and contributed to the moderation of the wiki. She contributed many of the important pages that still affect canon in major ways, including the groups of interest page, telekill alloy, and moving articles over from the old wiki. SCP-001 was another point, if a comparatively minor one. The spot of SCP-001 was left open by the Administrator, to see what would happen. Masipag locked the page up, and in the debate that followed claimed that she didn't think we ought to have any 001 proposals at all. Today we have ten SCP-001 proposals, so she was correct at that time. If there'd been only one 001 proposal, we would've never seen some of the wiki's better pieces. The earliest effort on WikiDot was moving the Series entries over. There were several hundred articles, and only a few people able to move them. But it had to be done. The users who moved over most of the old stuff were far2, xthevilecorrupter[[footnote]]Also known as Ecks[[/footnote]], and Lt Masipag. Masipag had a computer program to move them over, while far2 and ecks did it manually. However, not everyone was aware of the change. Many users of the EditThis wiki would remain there for the following weeks, unaware of the WikiDot site. The EditThis wiki would continue to exist with a small community until its eventual deletion on September 6th, 2008. The WikiDot wiki was not the only one set up during this time. FritzWillie used the "The Administrator" account also set up the Soap From Corpses Products, Society of Skeptics and the Paranormal, and an Application wiki. These websites, while an interesting idea, were just not the right fit for a just-starting community. The Society and Soap websites were never used, with the only notable contribution being original art by far2. "SCP Admin Court of Council" was a pre-05command admin site, where the Admins of the site would be able to discuss private matters. There were only four members of the site, being DrGears, FritzWillie, Kain Pathos Crow and The Administrator. Many of the issues that affected the early wiki were discussed here, such as the implementation of different object classes, the HAGGAR attacks, and promotion of users. The site was later replaced by 05 command in May of 2009. The earliest promotion thread can be found here, where Kondraki, Clef, The Fishmonger and far2 were promoted. Kain Pathos Crow and DrGears were by far the most active administrators, with The Administrator himself posting a small but still significant number of times. FritzWillie had the least amount of activity, with only 3 posts, probably due to him wanting the account used primarily for writing. One of the three earliest Mods, far2[[footnote]]His username is a colloquialism of "Far too drunk for this", for when he was picking his username his usual name had been taken, and he thus decided he was "far too drunk" for the task[[/footnote]] was responsible for transferring a healthy number of articles to the new wiki, with a current count of the articles he worked on being 52. Interestingly, he didn't begin writing entries of his own until July of 2008, when he posted SCP-235, which was later transferred into a tale. He also contributed a great deal to WikiDot coding of things, creating the format for the threat classification modules and the threat level module. He drew up a great deal of photoshopped images for various articles, including Josie the Half-Cat and the Star Eyed Child. However, far2's most long lasting and arguably most important contribution to the wiki, was the creation of the SCP "logo." In October of 2008 a forum post was made to propose the creation of an SCP Foundation logo. Several entries were made, and were met with unenthusiastic reception. However, as it was winding down and being forgotten, far2 made a post that would influence the wiki for years to come: > //That's not the original logo I did up. The original is below, I just ran it through Photoshop's photocopy filter. I used that symbol to make it look like the 'shield' or badge used by law-enforcement agencies, and also because the arrows indicate moving inward - containing the threats.// > {{- far2}} The image(Which is no longer available) was the original iteration of the SCP logo. While countless additional iterations and versions have been created and altered over the years, the basic image of three arrows and a shield has remained intact. Due to personal life issues, far2 left the wiki in late 2008/early 2009. His final departure came after a long period of absentee administration. The Fishmonger was another early mod, known for his writing talent and his ability to write epic, overarching stories for the wiki. In his early years, he was known for being a very rude, sometimes outright cruel mod who also wrote most of the stories that the wiki was known for at that time. His SCP-808, a technopath, was used in his popular "Wanderlust" stories. At this early junction, Fishmonger was an indispensable asset to the site, as his stories attracted many new users and inspired new content. His mod powers, however, were not utilized for moderation of the wiki, instead being used to occasionally troll people or edit other works in order to have them fit in with his stories. While this behavior would usually not be tolerated now, it was put up with because of the high demand for his works. Canon was something new to the wiki, and we took great strides in creating what we now know as the Foundation. When the SCP Series was first moved over to WikiDot, there was conflict over what to call the SCP Series. Some thought that it'd be better to leave it ambiguous, while others wished to shape canon by creating an organization. Various names which were considered included organization, foundation, and collection[[footnote]]This was frequently used on EditThis[[/footnote]]. On July 27th, 2008, the name was canonized as "Foundation." WikiDot's SCP Foundation wiki was originally an open project, where anon edits were commonplace. During this time, anyone could come in and edit anything they wanted, in addition to making posts. Being a member was completely optional, and frequently disregarded. Soon, events would force this to be changed, from anonymous edits being allowed to anonymous edits being completely removed. The HAGGAR attacks took the wiki by complete surprise. The first incident took place on October 18th, when he created dozens of spam threads and attempted to delete many of the wiki's pages. They made the classic newbie mistake of sending the pages to the "deleted" category instead of deleting them properly. snorlison and far2 were the primary forces fighting back against these attacks, and were promoted for their efforts. The second HAGGAR attack, on October 25th, was successfully defeated by an active force of the new mods and admins. The threads created by HAGGAR and his minions were repelled. It was after this attack that the anonymous edits were permanently revoked. Administration followed the removal of anon edits with measures to keep the wiki safe, with the most notable attempt being an application website, where users wanting to join the Foundation could apply. The application wiki would test newcomers to the Series. They would have to join up, then make two successful audition articles to join the WikiDot site properly. However, this was another idea that was just too ambitious for its time. The Application wiki would be abandoned due to being overly complex, then used as a sandbox for a time, and eventually abandoned completely. The process for creating SCP's was also much more laid back. Users were encouraged to create sandbox pages in the "practice area", which was a section of the site used for drafting. Any user could create a sandbox there, and many did. There are still several sandbox remnants that can be found on the wiki, usually underneath the "Sandbox" tag. Pre-SCP thoughts would usually boil down to finding a picture that looked cool and writing an article around it. As a result, there were many bland, predictable, cliche, and otherwise negative articles. Quality control in the early days of the wiki was not nearly as stringent as we now have it. The process for deletion was informal at best, with no written guideline for how staff should be able to move stuff for deletion. As such, there were a significant number of entries which were either trying to be Able, or were just plain dumb. These articles had very low quality, hanging around in the low negatives indefinitely. There were also various debates on how to change the structure, primarily focusing on Object Classes. The three primary object classes currently used by the wiki are Safe, Euclid, and Keter. There is debate about which object class means what, and how they're really supposed to be defined in-universe, but that debate is for another place. For the purpose of this essay, we will go by this author's interpretation of the locked box test. Safe means if you lock it in a box, it stays put. Euclid is you put it in a box, it's unpredictable. Keter pops out of the box and eats your grandmother. However, these aren't the only object classes we can use. We've had several evolve out of contests, or old practices on the wiki which we no longer use. Explained articles came from contests to test out new object designations. Only a few were able to stick around, but they do make for interesting tidbits. At the time of this writing, there are eight articles with the -EX designation. Decommissions will be discussed in greater depth later in this essay, so here is a brief explanation. Decomms were created so that the wiki could be purged of the worse entries in the series. After awhile, they realized that it was counterproductive, since for every Mary-Sue SCP they got rid of, they made the researcher characters more Sueish. So the decomms were left as-is, and today serve as examples of "What not to do." In the beginning of the WikiDot wiki, there was discussion on sub-classes and threat identifiers. Some wanted the implementation of sub-classifications Alpha, Beta, Gamma within each Safe, Euclid, and Keter class—Alpha being the least dangerous subclass, Gamma being the most. For example: //SCP-3110 "The Chestnut of Doom" — Object Class: Euclid | Subclass: Alpha// The threat identifiers were basically images used to identify what the object could do on short notice. They served a purpose that's almost similar to our current use of tags - identifying what properties the object had in addition to their object class. Although there were many proposals to create new object class designations, all attempts to implement one failed. There are also some combo designations which are no longer in use. For example, split object classes were in use for some time, such as Safe/Euclid, Euclid/Keter, and Safe/Keter. The Groups of Interest was the creation of Lt. Masipag, one of the SCP WikiDot sites earliest moderators. People had created several groups which re-appeared through different articles, such as the Church of the Broken God and the GOC. Most of the first GOI's were created by Kain Pathos Crow and DrGears. The original[[footnote]]"Original" being defined here as "Created before October 16th, 2008"[[/footnote]] GOI's were ███████████ ███████ Labs[[footnote]]Later being rechristened as "Prometheus Labs"[[/footnote]], The Chaos Insurgency, The Church of the Broken God, the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution[[footnote]]Retconned to the "Office for the Reclamation of Islamic Artifacts" so it wouldn't be a real world organization.[[/footnote]], "Foo"[[footnote]]Later used in Fishmonger's works as a character named "First Observer One"[[/footnote]], The Global Occult Coalition (GOC), The Serpent's Hand, Marshall, Carter, and Dark Ltd, and the Unusual Incidents Unit (UIU) > //GOC was inspired by a pasta that was roaming /tg/ or /x/ at the time about how Nietzsche was wrong, God wasn't dead. At least, not when he wrote that. The entity that called itself YHWH didn't die until the late 50's, destroyed by the Russian Army.// > > //Chaos Insurgency was the around the idea of a "badguy" foil for the Foundation.// > > //Foo was just a random idea, the sort of "The Men in Black" kind of character. Someone else named him Foo, possibly Iceberg7. I think I had no name for the GOI.// > > //I set up the very first GOIs, the page and everything. It was a little bit more BRPD than one would expect, but I blame Hellboy for that.// > > //I also set up the tales page, but I didn't write any for a long time. I just instituted it because there were a lot of articles appearing that would have worked better as stories, or people wanting to do stories about things. There was also the stuff for incident reports, experiment logs, eyewitness accounts, all that was set up by me. I spent a good deal of time setting up the Creepypasta library too, but they removed that in recent times for some reason. I have no idea why.// - {{Kain Pathos Crow}} There was also the creation of the "Active Projects" section, with the first tasks being the SCP CYOA game started by Kain and the .pdf project started by Kondraki, only the latter of which actually got anywhere. The .pdf project was created as a .pdf archive of all SCP articles, created with a template[[footnote]]The template was created by far2[[/footnote]] which gave them an "authentic" look. However, many of the entries in the .pdf project have since been deleted, which was not a problem seen at the time due to the vagaries of deletion policy. There was very limited administrative action against the lower rated articles, as evidenced by the small number of pre-Mass Edit deletions. The only active administrators were Kain Pathos Crow and DrGears, with FritzWillie having left shortly after the establishment of the SCP Admin Court of Council due to health reasons. So shortly after the move to WikiDot, he left site administration. He had never been extremely active, posting most of his stories on WikiDot. Fresh blood in the form of moderation assisted somewhat, but it was still an uphill process. Following the departure of FritzWillie/The Administrator, a dual power system emerged. Most of the authority in the wiki was coming from Kain and DrGears, who would go through the site proposing projects and helping people write new SCP articles. There was also the attempt at a Choose Your Own Adventure game, a first person shooter game, and a collectible card game. All of these projects were eventually abandoned. As the site moved towards 2009, things were shifting, and major changes were occurring in tone. New users had entered the culture, and had begun writing a whole series of new classic articles. The new site administrative powers came in and began changing things more drastically than they had ever been changed before. The little wiki had finally gotten its footing, and was plowing ahead with its tiny but dedicated community. As the wiki continued, large amounts of poorly written entries were created. The discontent is expressed in this post by Kain Pathos Crow. > http://archive.is/QD9UF [[footnote]]Originally 404'd, this is a link to an archive of the original post that was rediscovered following a massive archival release of old 4chan threads in October 2018.[[/footnote]] > > //This is where we began.// > > //These are our roots.// > > //There were no X-men, no cliches, no self inserts, no glory hogging, no drama.// > > //There was only one thing.// > > //The will to create.// > > //To create something that was beyond the norm, but close enough to be intriguing. Something that was unbelievable, but capable of causing that slightest hint of self doubt. Something that added to the vaguness of this mystery organisation, rather than spell out it's hidden means and aims.// > > //True, we have become more structured, more informed, more thorough, but at what cost?// > > //The Foundation itself is no longer this great shadow that looms over the horizon, too huge and far reaching to truly see. It has become a pet, something that allows itself to tamed and groomed.// > > //This is where we were born, in that chaos, where the ignorant were spurned, the immature ignored, the worthless cast aside, and the great gave way to what mattered. The post.// > > //But how do we reclaim this lost glory?// - {{Kain Pathos Crow}} In the beginning of 2009, DrGears authored his response. It carried with it the goals that the wiki would take with it to the next year. By this time next year, most if not all of these goals would have been achieved in some respect. > //That is the issue we have: as we add, we destroy. With every entry, it peels away the horror more and more. Some entries add, and even enhance the feel of the first entry, however many more tear it down.// > > //Annihilation of the wiki and a return to the chans would work, but to give up due to a wave of fail and retreat back to the primordial ooze of 4chan is a action i would like to postpone as long as possible.// > > //We strive for involvement, for a openness to new ideas, and it has worked well thus far. Multiple people working in the same shared universe will skew the initial vision, but we've done tolerably well until now.// > > //However, we seem to now be drifting much more drastically. With a recent influx of new users, we've had to constantly remind, prod, and threaten to try and maintain the initial vision of the SCP. The SCP are made to be taken and placed into a game, movie, comic book, or any other "cool" application. They are creepypasta, short fiction designed to unsettle and creep out readers. Any other application is secondary.// > > //My solution to the Fail Influx is simple and draconian:// > > //1: Massive deletions - We have a ton of SCP items, and we could trim over 1/4 of them with no issue. No decommission, no "please edit" pleading, just gone. Free the number for someone else.// > > //2: Stricter Edits - If people ask you again and again to edit your work, and you do nothing, be prepared to lose your article. If you don't want to be productive, we have other people who are. If your only response is "ok, you fix it then", then be prepared to lose your article to the editor. If you made a steaming pile of crap, and someone edited it into solid gold, then THEY should get the credit, not you.// > > //3: Banning - If you are consistently a jerk/uncooperative/stupid/horrible at writing, we do not want you. If your SCP keep getting downvoted/deleted, maybe you should be doing something else. Instead of constantly cleaning up after bad users, remove the source of the issue.// > > //In addition, a major issue appears to be users who have NO IDEA what they are doing. I hate to use chan terms, but lurk the hell more. Read entries, go over the "How To" page, read comments, look over the highest and lowest rated. Take at least a couple weeks to get into things before you start trying to post. Don't dive in with a pre-made avatar, twenty SCP ideas, a revolutionary image for The Foundation, and a new "storyline".// > > //In short, we need to start acting more like The Foundation: a soulless, shadowy, bureaucratic entity, with zero tolerance for mistakes, incompetence, or insubordination. One who's actions are carried out swiftly, and without apology or explanation.// - {{DrGears}} This would be the new attitude of the wiki, as we moved to a new era. [[=]] **<< | [[[History Of The Universe Hub| HUB]]] | [[[History of the Universe Part Two| Part 2]]] >>** [[/=]] [[footnoteblock]] [[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box |author= Anonymous, rewritten by Modern_Erasmus]] [[include :scp-wiki:component:license-box-end]]