Miraheze
Miraheze logo
Screenshot
Screenshot of the Meta Miraheze home page
Type of businessNot-for-profit charitable organization[1][2]
Type of site
Wiki hosting service
Available inMultilingual
Country of originEngland, United Kingdom[3]
OwnerWikiTide Foundation[1]
Miraheze Limited (former)[1][3]
Founder(s)John Lewis & Ferran Tufan[4]
Key peopleOwen Baines (Secretary, Treasurer and Chair)
RevenueDonations
URLmiraheze.org
CommercialNo
RegistrationOptional (requirements for editing differ between wikis)
LaunchedJuly 2015; 9 years ago (July 2015)[1]
Current statusActive
Content license
Written inPHP

Miraheze is a not-for-profit[7] open-source[8] wiki hosting service,[9] founded in July 2015 and run by a group of volunteers. Miraheze uses MediaWiki, the open-source wiki software used by Wikipedia, and hosts over 5,000 wikis as of 2022. It relies on donations for funding and does not impose advertisements on the wikis it hosts.[7]

History

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Miraheze was founded in July 2015 by John Lewis and Ferran Tufan[10] and within a couple of weeks, they drafted the support of several volunteers from another wiki farm, Orain.[note 1][10] The goal was to create a community-led wiki farm based on the Wikimedia model of community governance where the community is consulted in all decision making. At the time, Lewis was volunteering for the Wikimedia Foundation and deploying two servers there named after stars Mira and Heze and suggested the name Miraheze for the new wiki farm.[6][11][12] Miraheze opened wikis to the public on 3 August 2015.[12]

In November 2019, Miraheze became a registered not-for-profit organization in the United Kingdom as Miraheze Limited.[1][3][13]

On 6 January 2024, Miraheze Limited ceased operations and handed control of Miraheze to the US-based WikiTide Foundation, a non-profit created and operated by then-former Miraheze volunteers in response to incidents that happened in June 2023.

Services and features

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Administration

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Miraheze is community-led, wikis are autonomous,[7][14] and the users are consulted in all decision-making. Stewards manage the community aspects and day-to-day admin tasks,[10] while the technical staff focus on the backend.[12]

Users can request for creation of wikis, which are then reviewed by volunteer users known as 'wiki creators'. Wikis can be either public or private, provided that they comply with the site's content policy.[15] Miraheze operates without advertising and relies on community support.

Miraheze allows wiki bureaucrats to choose to implement or remove various MediaWiki extensions, as well as choose the licensing status of their wiki.[5] They also allow wiki owners to put custom domains for their wiki(s). Wikis hosted on Miraheze can also use images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

Technology

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Miraheze uses Phabricator in order for volunteer users to collaborate on the source code of the site, as well as for users to request and propose new features to be added.[16]

Miraheze also develops its own extensions that allow communities to operate wikis with minimal oversight from Miraheze staff. For example, ManageWiki is a special MediaWiki extension developed for Miraheze that allows bureaucrats to modify their wiki's settings; from basic changes like setting the logo and enabling extensions, to more complex changes such as creating user groups and customizing every action a given group of users can (not) do.

Wikis

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Since 2021, Miraheze has become home to wikis closed by Fandom, deemed to violate their community creation policy. This included wikis for the Monster Girl Encyclopedia, Monster Girl Quest, Agent Aika and Polandball, among others.[17] They have also become home to various long standing LGBTQ+ wikis forcefully merged into one and purged of many articles by Fandom, such as the LGBTA Wiki and EZGender Wiki.[7]

A student-led wiki for Northeastern University students called Huskypedia was started in 2022 on Miraheze, in face of dissatisfaction with existing online resources of student information provided by the university.[18]

Miraheze is used by the University of Hildesheim as an educational tool[19] and is used by wikis such as Rosetta Code.[20]

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ Orain was founded in July 2013 in response to other wiki farms at that time with restrictions on content, either for free with advertising or without advertising for a fee and with few options for customisation. Orain encouraged their users to help with the infrastructure and released their system under open-source licensing. In September 2015, their servers were compromised and all content was deleted. Subsequently, their domains redirected users to pornographic websites for a while before completely going offline.

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e "WikiTide Foundation". Miraheze Meta. Archived from the original on 15 January 2024. Retrieved 16 January 2024.
  2. ^ "WikiTide Foundation, Inc :: Idaho (US) :: OpenCorporates". Companies House. Retrieved 21 October 2022.
  3. ^ a b c "Miraheze Limited filing history". Companies House. Retrieved 21 October 2022.
  4. ^ "Miraheze celebrates one year!". Miraheze Meta. 22 July 2016. Retrieved 24 March 2022.
  5. ^ a b "Tech:Changing your wiki license". Miraheze Meta Wiki. 15 April 2023.
  6. ^ a b "Miraheze celebrates three years!". Miraheze Meta Wiki. 2 December 2022.
  7. ^ a b c d Holmes, Juwan J. (22 February 2022). "What's Happening with the LGBTQIA+ Wiki?". INTO. Retrieved 23 October 2022.
  8. ^ "Miraheze". GitHub repositories.
  9. ^ Epler, Pam; Jacobs, Jodee (2022). Guide to Integrating Problem-based Learning Programs in Higher Education Classrooms. IGI Global. p. 27. ISBN 978-1-79988-179-7. OCLC 1311489671.
  10. ^ a b c "Build Your Own Wiki Platform And Grow Your Community With Miraheze". Website Planet. Retrieved 23 October 2022.
  11. ^ "Why are you called Miraheze | FAQ". Miraheze Meta. 5 August 2023.
  12. ^ a b c Yaron Koren (30 March 2019). "Episode 31: John Lewis". Between the Brackets (Podcast).
  13. ^ "Miraheze's Future – How Miraheze Limited Will Remove Current Limits". Miraheze blog. 26 December 2019.
  14. ^ "FAQ – To what degree are wikis autonomous?". Miraheze Meta. 19 October 2022. Retrieved 23 October 2022.
  15. ^ "Content Policy". Miraheze Meta. 29 March 2023. Retrieved 17 January 2024.
  16. ^ "Miraheze Phabricator". phabricator.miraheze.org.
  17. ^ "Monster Girl Encyclopedia Wiki Will Be Sacked By Host Due To 'Fetish' Content". Kotaku. 16 November 2021. Retrieved 24 June 2022.
  18. ^ Bak, Jesica (1 November 2022). "Student-created Huskypedia aims to provide resources, information to students". The Huntington News. Retrieved 7 January 2023.
  19. ^ Franziska Frank, Ninon (20 December 2021). ""Dazu haben wir ein Video!" – Tutorials als asynchrone Schulungsmittel" ['We have a video on this!'– tutorials as asynchronous training tools]. German Medicial Science (in German). 21 (3): Doc26. doi:10.3205/mbi000515. Retrieved 17 September 2022.
  20. ^ "Rosetta Code". Rosetta Code. 24 August 2022. Retrieved 23 October 2022.
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