MicroWiki
MicroWiki (abbr. MW), known colloquially by the exonym micronations wiki[a] and the endonym the wiki, is a multilingual open collaboration online encyclopaedia dedicated to cataloguing and documenting every aspect of micronationalism. Founded on 27 May 2005, it is written and maintained by a community of volunteers via a wiki-based editing system. MicroWiki's lenient content policies intentionally contrast Wikipedia and allow any micronational-related article to be created on the wiki, which in-turn makes most articles on MicroWiki a primary source of information. Since its foundation, MicroWiki has grown to encompass the largest English-language community of micronationalists on the Internet, in addition to being the largest micronational wiki with 39,940 articles and 84,660 registered user accounts as of 21 May 2024.
MicroWiki runs on MediaWiki, the same software Wikipedia uses. The wiki is written from a micronational point of view, though MicroWiki's content policies stipulate neutrality. A wiki, the content is moderated by a group of administrators who hold the ability to delete and protect pages, and block abusive users. Content—aside from images—is available under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license. The main page of the English-language MicroWiki is somewhat similar to a web portal, including—among other content—four sections for links to external micronational websites: a section for administrator-approved news publications, other news publications, analytical reports and opinion pieces, and "Entertainment" for micronational media. MicroWiki also maintains several sister projects, with varying levels of activity—Czech MicroWiki, the Czech-language equivalent of MicroWiki; MicroCommons, a repository of micronational literature, documentation and oratory transcripts, and; MicroWikiDictionary, a dictionary for micronational jargon. The MicroWiki administration also runs MicroWiki@Discord—hosted on the social application Discord—and formerly ran the now-defunct MicroWiki forums between 2010 and 2021.
MicroWiki was launched on 27 May 2005 by Fabian Schneider on the wiki hosting service Wikicities (later Wikia and now Fandom). After a few months of dormancy, activity on the wiki was revived in September upon seeing an influx of micronationalists discovering the wiki online, and thus a community based around the wiki was formed. A short-lived Portuguese-language version of MicroWiki was launched on 27 February 2006 by Pedro Aguiar. MicroWiki reached one-thousand articles in April 2008, and migrated to an independent domain on 17 November 2010, managed by Petya d'Égtavie. MicroWiki launched several sister projects between December 2010 to 2012, including the MicroWiki forums on 22 December 2010, UnMicroWiki on 27 January 2011, MicroCommons in mid-2011 and Czech MicroWiki in 2012, with the former three websites having since been discontinued. In April 2012, a breakaway community formed on the old Wikia website to rival MicroWiki by claiming to be the "true MicroWiki", causing a feud between the two wikis that would formally end in October 2018. On 7 November 2013, MicroWiki moved to micronation.org. On 13 May 2014, Jonathan I, Emperor of Austenasia, purchased the wiki from d'Égtavie. MicroWiki switched to its current domain, micronations.wiki, on 26 October 2016, and reached 10,000 articles in January 2017. On 17 September 2018, MicroWiki@Discord was launched. MicroWiki reached 20,000 articles on 1 May 2020, and 30,000 on 18 January 2022. On 14 February 2022, Luxor (Karl Friedrich) became a co-owner of MicroWiki alongside Jonathan I. MicroWiki adopted its present logo on 21 May.
The largest micronational wiki and community, MicroWiki has been mentioned in several macronational news publications, books and academic journals, including Shima: The International Journal of Research into Island Cultures and the publishing houses Wydawnictwo Poznańskie and Cambridge University Press. MicroWiki's worldwide individual readership was approximately 1.8 million in 2020.