Bulbapedia

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Bulbapedia
Web address Bulbapedia Main Page
Slogan The community driven Pokémon encyclopedia[1]
Commercial? No
Type of site Fansite/Wiki
Registration Optional (required for editing)
Available language(s) English (eight other languages are provided by other fansites[Note 1] affiliated with Encyclopædiæ Pokémonis)[2]
Content license Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License 2.5[3]
Owner Bulbasaur's Mysterious Garden (or "Bulbagarden")
Created by Liam "Archaic" Pomfret[4] and Zhen Lin
Launched February 14, 2005 (2005-02-14)[5]
Revenue Supported by advertising shown to non-registered users
Alexa rank Increase 3,134 as of January 30, 2014 (2014-01-30) (Bulbagarden.net)[Note 2][6][7]
Current status Active with at least 25,248 articles

Bulbapedia is an Internet encyclopedia wiki for information on the Pokémon media franchise.[8][9] The MediaWiki-powered[10] fansite was created on December 21, 2004 and opened to the public on Valentine's Day 2005.[5] The site details various Pokémon canon such as the video game series, anime, Trading Card Game, various manga, and the fictional species, as well as various Pokémon fanon such as other fansites and fan terminology. Since the site is largely prone to vandalism,[11] registration is required to edit articles on Bulbapedia. Bulbapedia's content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License 2.5.[3]

The wiki's name is a portmanteau of Bulbagarden, the site that runs Bulbapedia, and encyclopedia. Bulbapedia, Bulbagarden, the Bulbagarden Archives (a digital image archive for all of Bulbagarden), and Bulbanews (a Bulbagarden-run news source wiki somewhat similar to Wikinews),[10] all get their names from Bulbasaur, the first Pokémon in the National Pokédex.

According to the WikiIndex, Bulbapedia is one of the top 100 most popular wikis.[12] Currently, it is the largest Pokémon-focused wiki written in the English language,[13] surpassing the next largest, Wikia's The Pokémon Wiki, by more than 15,000 articles.[14][15] Bulbagarden as a whole receives around 5 million unique visitors per month and is run across seven servers.[4]

History

Bulbapedia was set up by Zhen Lin on December 21, 2004. The original period of development sought members of the Bulbagarden community to write for "a collaborative and open work environment which makes interacting with other staff and looking up information very simple." This proved unsuccessful, but the site proceeded with at least a dozen contributors, and reached 100 articles within three weeks. It eventually opened to the public on February 14, 2005, marketed as "Bulbagarden's Valentine's Gift to the Fandom".[5] At least twenty-one new articles were created within the first 24 hours of operations, and within three months, 1,000 articles had been written. The site's ten-thousandth article was created three years later, on June 29, 2008.[16]

Staff

The first Editor-in-Chief was evkl, starting 2004. In early 2006, Zhen Lin, the creator of Bulbapedia, was left the position. From 2008 onward, TTEchidna (who was previously the Deputy Editor-In-Chief) replaced Zhen Lin as the Editor-In-Chief. On December 1, 2010, TTEchidna resigned and passed leadership on to MAGNEDETH. On December 9, 2012, MAGNEDETH stepped down and handed the leadership position to Werdnae, who is the current Editor-in-Chief.[17]

Network affiliations

Bulbapedia is a founding member of two fan wiki networks, Encyclopædiæ Pokémonis[2][10] and the Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance (also known as NIWA). The former is a multilingual group of various Pokémon-focused encyclopedia wikis much like Bulbapedia, while the latter, inspired by the Encyclopædiæ Pokémonis project, is a network of various wikis independent from larger wiki groups (such as Wikia, which have made several attempts to take control of Bulbapedia and its content)[18][19] that focus solely on various Nintendo franchises and the video game company itself, save for at least one member site. Bulbapedia is the English language member of Encyclopædiæ Pokémonis and the Pokémon-focused member of NIWA.

Notes

  1. ↑ German, Japanese, Polish, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Chinese languages are respectively provided by Filb.de's PokéWiki, Pokémon Republic's Pokémon Wiki, Pokémon Polska's Wikinezka, the host site-independent Poképédia, Pokémon LAND's LANDpedia, PkStation's Pokéteca, Pokémon Central Wiki, and Pokémon Zone's 52Poké Wiki.
  2. ↑ Bulbapedia is the most trafficked portion of Bulbagarden with 93.26% of Bulbagarden's traffic visiting Bulbapedia's subdomain located at bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net.

References

  1. ↑ "Bulbapedia, the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia". Bulbapedia. Retrieved 2 May 2013. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Drew Davidson, ed. (July 2011). "The Deeper Game of Pokémon, or, How the world’s biggest RPG inadvertently teaches 21st century kids everything they need to know". Well Played 3 0: Video Games, Value and Meaning. Well Played. ETC Press. p. 4. ISBN 978-1-257-85845-3. Retrieved 2 May 2013. "There are Pokémon Wikis in 8 languages that have joined forces to become an Encyclopaediae Pokémonis; the English version, Bulbapedia, has over 16,000 articles." 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Bulbapedia:Copyrights". Bulbapedia. Retrieved 13 February 2013. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Meet the Spawn: Liam Pomfret". Good Game: Spawn Point Episode 29. Good Game: Spawn Point. Retrieved 13 February 2013. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 "Bulbagarden's Valentines Gift to the Fandom". Bulbagarden. Retrieved 12 February 2013. 
  6. ↑ "Bulbagarden.net Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 16 May 2011. 
  7. ↑ "Bulbapedia.Bulbagarden.net Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2 February 2013. 
  8. ↑ Neiburger, Eli (07/01/2007). "Games... in the Library?". School Library Journal. Retrieved 2 May 2013. "Players can refer (or contribute) to Bulbapedia, a wiki-style encyclopedia of the Pokémon universe, to learn about the attributes, strengths, and weaknesses of over 500 different characters; the literacy required for success extends beyond the game itself." 
  9. ↑ McKinley Noble. "Major Pokemon game to be announced May 10". GamePro. Archived from the original on 2011-06-07. "According to Pokemon Japan and Bulbapedia, the Internet's most detailed Pokemon database project..." 
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 O'Neil, Mathieu (2009). Cyberchiefs: autonomy and authority in online tribes (1. publ. ed.). London: Pluto Press. p. 148. ISBN 0745327974. 
  11. ↑ "Bulbapedia#Vandalism". Bulbapedia. Retrieved 29 October 2010. 
  12. ↑ "List of Mediawikis". WikiIndex. Retrieved 2 May 2013. 
  13. ↑ JP Porcaro (05/01/2010). "The Pokemon Generation". School Library Journal. Retrieved 12 February 2013. "Bulbapedia, the Internet's largest informational resource on Pokémon (with over 16,000 articles on the subject)..." 
  14. ↑ "Statistics page for The Pokémon Wiki". Wikia. Retrieved 12 February 2013. 
  15. ↑ "Statistics page for Bulbapedia". Bulbapedia. Retrieved 12 February 2013. 
  16. ↑ "Bulbapedia:About". Bulbapedia. Retrieved 2 May 2013. 
  17. ↑ "Bulbapedia:Staff". Bulbapedia. Retrieved 10 November 2013. 
  18. ↑ Archaic (22 April 2010). "Wikia makes another offer for Bulbapedia - Epic Fail". NIWA Community Forums. Retrieved 29 June 2013. 
  19. ↑ Archaic (6 December 2011). "Clearing some things up - Bulbagarden & HAVA Media". 昔の喚きたてるこ. Bulbagarden forums. Retrieved 29 June 2013. 

External links

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