About ShoutWiki

Wikis are sites that anyone can edit. This site is a wiki. The founder of Wikipedia (Jimmy Wales) started a wiki hosting company named Wikia in 2004. Since then, he has left the business, and he has really left it screwed. It has made several worthless skin changes. A skin is a design and site layout that a software running the wiki called MediaWiki uses to display the site. The same software that runs Wikipedia runs Wikia, which has been modified by Wikia so badly that it isn't even executable anymore by other servers. When I joined in 2008, I didn't know how bad they were to their users. Monaco was there, and I was happy and creative fully for the first time in my life. I left the site behind for a couple of years, and Wikia had changed by the time I got back. I was mad.

It was a place for users of all kinds to learn the MediaWiki software, and practice their writing skills. It was a good practice to communicate errors, communicate between editors, and make really great sites full of valuable information. But, on November 3rd, 2010 (that day, we had a tornado where I live, no lie) they changed out of Monaco and made it almost impossible to go back. But, Wikia had open-sourced it's code. They made sure it was screwed up beyond repair, not suspecting there were any developers good enough to re-develop the Monaco skin. It turns out they didn't think about the conversions that some developers knew how to make. That's where ShoutWiki proved the people at Wikia that they were stronger and smarter.

ShoutWiki
After the first expedition after starting up, ShoutWiki was watching closely as aggravated people began storming around Wikia, trashing the Wikia forums, making bad comments on blog posts, and doing anything to get banned. It was cannibalism that was happening. Wikia's new "change" was wreaking havoc inside Wikia and out. So, ShoutWiki decided to see how they could figure out how to decode the original Monaco into regular PHP, and make it an identical twin to the one that no longer existed. ShoutWiki then made emphasis that they wouldn't make anything default or take anything users loved away from them. This caused the old users from Wikia to come over to ShoutWiki's block and have a party. The several good wikis of the Wikia moved off, including WOWpedia, Wikia's MVP in the gaming market. ShoutWiki now has the key piece to becoming the old Wikia.

The Anti-Wikia-Alliance
To show Wikia that the users didn't like the changes, Anno1404 and Smiley12 decided to create a wiki on the Wikia hosting platform and see how bad they could defy Wikia's gravitational pull. It got to the point where Wikia gave them a copy of their wiki and told them to move it or lose it. They moved to ShoutWiki, and all the great users from the old Wikia moved to the newest addition of the wiki hosting family, ShoutWiki. The users eventually got disbanded because the ShoutWiki server failed during 2011 and part of 2012. Now, the users don't even know SW is back up. I found a site saying that someone who had greeted me on my first visit to Wikia's Community Central got booted off Wikia for something that wasn't his fault. He was a guy who deserved better than what he got.

Now, ShoutWiki is up but very few users know of it. We need to get the AWA back on track. Please go to http://awa.shoutwiki.com! They need to be started up again, and no admin has been active. We need one admin to start the gang back up before someone destroys the place.

The Effect
The effect of ShoutWiki has been very mind-bending. As the first magazine of OSM came off the belt, there was an article of ShoutWiki put in. Now, OSM works on the OSM website here at SW, and works on its own magazine. The magazine is known for connecting users to the online community. For example, the next issue will be very cool. We do every issue early so that we can get issues released at the right time (even though monthly was in our name and still is, we created an issue counting for two months instead of 1 for a head start. We are also working on the next magazine.