User blog:Nightmare9188/The Rise and Fall of wikis

As we are talking about the worst case which could happen to our wiki if there are no more seasons, I think this is a great opportunity to talk about the theory behind that and what happened to anime-related wikis in the past. For that we have to go back to 2004 and 2005, the first years Wikia existed. Then already major anime wikis were founded, Pokemon Wiki, Digimon Wiki, Yu-Gi-Oh Wiki, Transformers Wiki and several others. They contributed to the growth of Wikia in its first years and still do it now, except the Transformers Wiki which has lost a lot of editors after it moved to tfwiki.net in 2008. Around the same time two other important anime wikis were founded: Beyblade Wiki was founded by DranzerX13 in Summer 2007 and Bakugan Wiki in Spring 2008 by Inferno the hunter. Both wikis were ghost towns in their early times. Even after a new Beyblade anime was announced in Spring 2008 and after a second season of Bakugan was announced in Fall of the same year they remained it. In Spring 2009 Koisuru adopted the Bakugan Wiki and soon after appointed Abce2 and DinoQueen13 as further bureaucrats. Soon after the wiki wasn't a ghost town anymore, but a fast growing wiki with an active community as our wiki is today. The Beyblade Wiki, however, remained a ghost town for a longer time. In Winter 2011, shortly after the first season of the Metal Saga started in the US several new users arrived, two of them were EdBoy3 and a few months later ~Mana~. They took over the administration and also made the Beyblade Wiki a major anime-related community. But the first signs of decline were not to overlook, since Bakugan aired its last season in the US and Beyblade episodes were cut in half in Japan. But 2012 and 2013 also still were successful years for both wikis. Bakugan aired the Baku Tech series in Japan and Beyblade aired Shogun Steel in the US, after it was replaced by Beast Saga in Japan. Around the same time two other wikis began to rise: Monsuno Wiki and B-Daman Wiki. On Monsuno Wiki Abce2 took over the administration after the founder Monsunogirl became inactive. On B-Daman Wiki ~Mana~ was appointed by the founder HazeShot. In 2012 and 2013 both wikis grew. While Monsuno aired from early 2012 to summer 2013, B-Daman started its run in the US in Fall 2013. But both series won't last long as Monsuno was cancelled after 37 of 65 episodes, the last being shown on the internet. B-Daman didn't have a better fate. After Season 1 ended the second season didn't air in any non-Asian country except Italy. Thus in early 2014 both wikis started to decline again. Also Beyblade and Bakugan Wiki became inactive, as Beywarriors Cyborg also was shown only in Italy and Bakugan ended its Baku Tech line in that year. While all four wikis started to decline our wiki was in a phase of rapid growth. But this will end if there is no second season.

Now it's time to post the theory behind that. There are four phases with which we could explain this. these are as follows.

Status quo: The wiki and also the franchise it revolves around are very active. There are several releases in important markets and several users edit regularly. Also the wiki has lots of views, an active administration and may also have a considerable number of new members.

Early decline: The wiki still manages to get lots of views on some occassions. But the franchise it revolves around becomes inactive and there may be something of a survival plan for the wiki to keep it active. Views are already declining and some users may have quitted or moved to sporadical editing. New members still arrive and administration also is still active enough.

Progressing decline: The wiki is not able anymore to have enough activity regularly. The franchise becomes increasingly inactive and more and more users give up. However it is still possible to have an active chat on few occassions. But more and more users quit or move to sporadical editing. The administration, who also doesn't edit as much as in better times anymore, may make some efforts to make the wiki more active again, but this will ultimately fail.

Advanced decline: The wiki is only edited by very few members within longer periods of time. Almost all users have quit or moved to sporadical editing. There may still be a few new users who arrive, but they often quickly give up after seeing how inactive the wiki is. Thus the wiki finally isn't anything else than a ghost town. And as no person wants to live in a ghost town in real life, no person wants to edit a wiki which is like a ghost town in virtual life.