User blog:SlyCooperFan1/Acepedia's 10th Anniversary

Wow... 10 years, everyone. 10 years ago, User:Thunderhead made his first edit on this wiki. That's just absolutely insane; I would venture a guess to say that many wikis on Wikia don't manage to last 10 years. I've only been an administrator here for almost three years, but I am absolutely honored to be able to initiate the celebrations.

This is going to be a long blog post, but I promise it's worth it :D If you really don't want to read through it, there's a table of contents below :P

The First Edit
I went digging through Acepedia's edit history a couple of weeks ago, and as it turns out... Thunderhead's first edit (look at how old that Main Page looks, btw) is not the first recorded edit on Acepedia.

I'm sure some of you are aware that Electrosphere, which this wiki used to be named, has its roots in both AceCombatSkies (another Ace Combat fansite) and EditThis.info, both of which are still online. At some point prior to August 19, 2006, EditThis.info's Electrosphere edit history was actually somehow ported to Wikia. I don't know if Thunderhead was the one who imported the edits, or if someone else did, but technically the very first edit on this wiki goes back as far as January 2006! (Unfortunately, only administrators can access those edits as they have been technically deleted from the system.)

Yet, for the past few years, our observance date for Acepedia's anniversary has been on August 19. It's an easy date to remember; one month before Sitting Duck and Siege of Farbanti, and it's still the date of the first edit on the .wikia.com domain. So today will continue to be our anniversary observance :)

A Quick History
When Acepedia began as Electrosphere and later AceWiki... well, we all know it wasn't so hot. Fan fiction ruled all over, with articles on aircraft such as the ADFX-03 Beam Morgan and the ADF-37 HellHawk continuing their infamy. Acepedia didn't improve until 2010, when Protostealth, Raymorn, and Koveras Alvane became administrators and began massive efforts to overhaul the wiki. Following their inactivity and, in some cases, unfortunate circumstances, we come to today with Qbicle and I continuing our administrative duties.

If you go through my blog history, or even my edit history, I'm sure you'll find tons of immaturity. Maybe not quite on the levels of the ADF-37 HellHawk, but my first blog post is all about how I re-discovered my Wikia account, and in May 2012, I had basically quit Acepedia entirely. Growing pains, I know. But past all of that, over the years I've done my best to improve the experience on Acepedia.

A quick look through my blog history can tell the story of how the past few years have been, if I may say so myself, a massive improvement to the wiki. I updated the Wikia skin and fixed the Monobook skin, got rid of all the useless videos we had, began removing all fan material, remade the Main Page, and created Twitter, Google+ and Facebook accounts for the wiki, among so much more.

Electrosphere shutting its doors a while back was a heavy blow to the Ace Combat community, since that website hosted many memories for many people, including myself (though regrettably, not as many as I'd liked to have had). By the time Electrosphere closed, Acepedia had become the largest Ace Combat encyclopedia available, and we proudly continue to hold that position. I personally feel responsible to keep maintaining this wiki as best and long as possible, at the very least to honor Electrosphere's name.

I'm proud to say that we're continuing down that road. We currently host over 2,400 articles and almost 9,000 files, which cross almost 20 games in the series of flight games we all love so dearly. Being able to reference our content to prove facts has been a massive help in cleaning up the fan fiction, and our work is never done on adding more information, missing images from the old websites, and more hidden gems from the games and their Perfect Guides. And not to mention, Ace Combat 7 is coming up.

New Features
Okay, now that I'm done selling the wiki and myself, it's time to celebrate our double-digit anniversary with a couple of announcements!


 * Firstly, Acepedia is joining many other wikis in beta-testing the brand-new Discussions feature! You can find it at http://acecombat.wikia.com/d
 * Our current forums are incompatible with mobile devices, and Wikia could not work with the code to make them compatible. Discussions, still in beta and incomplete, is the mobile-friendly solution to having a forum experience. One day down the line, our forum threads and posts will be converted over to Discussions, and updates to Discussions are coming next week, so I thought our anniversary would be the perfect time to start the transition.
 * When the Javascript is approved, there will be warnings around our current forums to nudge you guys towards using Discussions instead of the forums. However, if the forums are absolutely required (for example, continuing a discussion already there), there is an easy link to open the reply form to continue using them. But please try to refrain from it!
 * This does not affect user Message Walls. Those are unchanged.
 * Secondly, navboxes are returning! See Template:Navbox/AC5-Missions for the navbox that will be on all AC5 mission articles!
 * I removed navboxes from the wiki two years ago, because I incorrectly assumed that users didn't want them. As it turns out, since Acepedia has become more popular through Ace Combat Infinity and Ace Combat 7, users have been consistently requesting them. In addition, I learned last week that they help with SEO on wikis. So, learning that I was completely wrong, I decided to remake their design and begin to bring them back!
 * We're going to start with mission articles, and then move on to war operations and characters. After that, we'll see what else can fit with their design. If you guys have any suggestions, please let us know!
 * Thirdly, and this one is a little more minor, we're updating all of our social media icons! We'll be using the Elite Pack from now on, so we don't get confused with Project Aces who will be using either Infinity's Ulysses/PA avatar or 7's PA avatar.
 * Lastly... I've sent in an application for a mobile app!
 * We have not been approved yet, but I'm hoping that our popularity (we're in the top 1.4% of all wikis on Wikia!) and the imminent flood of details on Ace Combat 7 will propel us through the approval process.
 * If this happens, we'll have an easy way to access Ace Combat content through both iOS and Android without needing to use mobile browsers. Plus, Discussions will have built-in support!

Thank you!
Some of the people who hate on Acepedia claim that I'm the one who owns it or completely runs it and edits everything, or even that I make money on the ads. (Spoiler: I don't, they're Wikia's, and they're Wikia's sole source of revenue to keep running.) What they don't understand is that Acepedia is only as good as it is because of people just like them - all of you guys. We're all here because of Ace Combat, and the only reason Qbicle and I have our administrator positions is because of our performance and because of your trust.

Recently, we haven't even been the highest editors on the wiki. People like Shayanomer, Zaptroxix, and AWACS SkyEye in the past few weeks and months just continue to prove how maintaining Acepedia is a fan effort. None of us are paid, and we don't care - we love doing this for the millions of Ace Combat players out there, and to this day I continue to get messages on PSN and elsewhere thanking me for my efforts.

But it really should go to all of you. So, to everyone in the community and all of our readers and contributors on Acepedia, thank you so very much. We couldn't have made it through 10 years without you. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Tokyo Game Show 2016 is less than a month away (September 15-18). Hopefully we'll learn soon that Bandai Namco will be showing AC7 there, so we've still got a lot of work to do. Keep flying high, aces!