Guide to writing wiki requests

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On Miraheze, unlike other wiki farms such as Fandom, users cannot create their own wikis; instead, they must file a request to create a wiki, which is then approved or declined by a wiki creator. This page outlines what is and isn't acceptable in a wiki request, and how to write a good wiki request.

Before you write a wiki request[edit | edit source]

Before you request your wiki, make sure that:

  • You have read the Content Policy and you're sure your wiki will comply with it. If the fundamental idea of your wiki/a significant portion of the content it will contain is incompatible with this policy, it's recommended to choose another wiki idea that aligns with it. If your wiki violates this policy after its creation, it may be closed/deleted by a Steward.
  • There isn't already a wiki with a similar or identical purpose. Checking the gazetteer of wikis and Special:WikiDiscover will help with this. If there is a wiki with a similar or identical scope to the one you want to create, contribute to that wiki instead. If the wiki is closed, you may request to reopen it.
  • The subdomain you want isn't already taken by another wiki.

Anatomy of a wiki request[edit | edit source]

You can request a wiki here. On that page, you'll see the following form:

  • Subdomain (subdomain.miraheze.org): A text box in which you put your wiki's subdomain.
  • Wiki name: A text box in which you name your wiki.
  • Language: A drop-down menu in which you select the language your wiki will be in.
  • Category: A drop-down menu in which you select the category of your wiki. Make sure you choose a category that best fits your wiki. You can select from the following categories:
  • Art & Architecture
  • Automotive
  • Business & Finance
  • Community
  • Education
  • Electronics
  • Entertainment
  • Fandom
  • Fantasy
  • Gaming
  • Geography
  • History
  • Humour/Satire
  • Language/Linguistics
  • Leisure
  • Literature/Writing
  • Media/Journalism
  • Medicine/Medical
  • Military/War
  • Music
  • Podcast
  • Politics
  • Private
  • Religion
  • Science
  • Software/Computing
  • Song Contest
  • Sports
  • Uncategorised

If you select "Uncategorized", a wiki creator may assign a fitting category for your wiki if one exists.

  • Private wiki (not readable by everyone; only readable by users given the member or sysop groups): Check this box to make your wiki accessible only by you and people you choose.
  • Will this wiki's main subject(s) be about living people? By checking this box, you acknowledge that people are the topic of your wiki.
  • The purpose of this wiki is... This is a drop-down menu in which you can select the purpose of your wiki to help it be found more easily in WikiDiscover search. You can select from the following purposes:
  • Alternate history wiki
  • Class or group project education wiki
  • Curriculum resource wiki
  • Documentation (hardware) wiki
  • Documentation (software) wiki
  • Encyclopedia (general) wiki
  • Encyclopedia (specialized) wiki
  • Eurovision-style song contest statistics tracking wiki
  • Fictional worldbuilding/constructed world wiki
  • Minecraft server wiki
  • Organization (coordination) wiki
  • Political simulation wiki
  • Roleplaying game wiki
  • Video game (specified video game) information wiki
  • Video game (broad genre or video game series) information wiki
  • None of the above

If your wiki doesn't fit well with any of these, select "None of the above". If you select this, a wiki creator may assign one closest to the scope you present, or you may have a harder time getting the request approved.

  • Reason: This is the most important input. In this one, you describe your wiki's purpose, topic, and scope. Make sure you put in sufficient detail, as described in "What a wiki request should contain" below. 2 to 3 sentences should usually be enough. If wiki creators believe that your wiki may violate the Content Policy, they may decline the request even if you have described a sufficient purpose, topic, and scope.

Writing a wiki request[edit | edit source]

Now that you've reviewed what the request form looks like, you should know what goes in a wiki request.

What a wiki request should contain[edit | edit source]

These are what wiki requests should contain:

  • A clear statement of the wiki's purpose (ex. "This wiki will be about satirizing various mainstream subjects.")
  • What type of content the wiki will contain (ex. "It will contain a humorous description of each subject.")
  • Its scope (ex. "Anything that is not obscure will have a page on the wiki.")
  • A subdomain that is related to the wiki's purpose (remember to fill out the subdomain in the subdomain box!) (ex. "satire.miraheze.org") Note: The domain needs to be relevant to the topic, avoid being too short/generic, and should not overlap with an existing domain.


What wiki requests should not contain[edit | edit source]

Never put any of this in your wiki request:

  • Content unrelated to the wiki you are requesting, known as filler (ex. "Me and my friends played Minecraft.")
  • A generic subdomain (ex. "wiki7.miraheze.org", "mywiki.miraheze.org")
  • Spam (or trolling) requests (ex. "uthfazrsfhfjfit7dt")
  • Any content that violates the Content Policy (ex. "I would like a wiki to advertise my business.")

What to put in "reason" and why do I have to indicate this?[edit | edit source]

A simple question. We would like to know what you will use your wiki for. After all, our servers are not exactly cheap and wikis that are hardly or not at all used only consume resources unnecessarily (storage space, memory, etc.). Furthermore, we need to ensure that wikis comply with the Content Policy.

The following are good and bad examples of what to put into the "reason" field in the wiki request form. Good examples are marked with green while bad examples are marked with red.

Good examples[edit | edit source]

This wiki will document about the online video sharing service YouTube. It will document its history, its content creators, its achievements, and the videos hosted on it. Most of its pages would be pages about popular YouTubers, popular videos, and important events.This request has a clear purpose (documenting YouTube, its features, and the people who upload videos on it) and scope (only popular YouTubers and videos and important events)

This wiki will be all about wikis. It will document wikis with at least 50 pages as well as wiki farms and wiki engines, all from an encyclopedic point of view.This request may be short, but it does its job. In only 2 sentences, it described the wiki's purpose (documenting information about wikis), topic (wikis and wiki-related things), and scope (wikis with at least 50 pages).

This wiki will be about an imaginary world where the only living things on it were turtles. It would document about imaginary villages, cities, species, and other things in the imaginary world. The imaginary world would have high technology advancement.Another slightly short request, but again, it does its job. It described the wiki's purpose (This wiki will be about an imaginary world), topic (where the only living things on it were turtles), and scope (It would document about imaginary villages, cities, species, and other things in the imaginary world...).

I'd like to create this wiki to save notes for my class. The notes will be general notes such as interesting things and things I want to study about later. It would have lots of notes and some other stuff, such as some interesting or hard questions.(Visibility: Private) This request is slightly unclear, but acceptable for a private wiki.

Bad examples[edit | edit source]

This wiki will be about wikis considered bad by the general community. It will outline the reasons why it's considered bad and the redeeming qualities, if any, it has. Pages about users will not be allowed on this wiki.Although this request has a sufficient purpose and topic, it is likely to cause drama and hate.

This wiki will document about YouTube and its creators.This request is not very clear. Will the wiki be about all YouTube creators or just popular ones? Will it document about hated YouTubers or not? If yes, will it violate the Content Policy or will it establish rules to delete everything policy-violating?

Recently, Fandom has been closing innocent wikis for no reason, so we'd like to host our wiki on Miraheze to be able to customize skins. We'd like this wiki to document an MMO game.This request uses the Fandom part as filler. The actual content is "We'd like this wiki to document an MMO game", the MMO game being unspecified.

A wiki for my imaginary world. Though imaginary world wikis generally have a short description, this request is completely unclear.

I want a wiki This request has absolutely no details about the wiki itself, and thus has no chance of being accepted. When creating your request, avoid doing this at all costs; stating that you want a wiki and nothing else doesn't mean that you will get one.

Example request[edit | edit source]

Now that we've reviewed the basics of wiki requests, let's follow the wiki requesting process of a user who, one day, decided to request a wiki. Here is that user's first wiki request:

  • Subdomain (subdomain.miraheze.org): archives.miraheze.org
  • Wiki name: Archives
  • Language: en - English
  • Category: History
  • Private wiki (not readable by everyone; only readable by users given the member or sysop groups): No
  • Will this wiki's main subject(s) be about living people? No
  • The purpose of this wiki is... Documentation (software) wiki
  • Reason: I want to archive fandom events

When the user submitted it, however, the request was declined. What was wrong with the wiki request? There were several things:

  1. The user chose a subdomain that was too generic for their wiki's scope. A subdomain such as "fandomarchives.miraheze.org" would've been a better choice.
  2. The wiki's name didn't fit well with the wiki. A name such as "Fandom Archives" would be better.
  3. The user selected a category that didn't fit well with the wiki's purpose. A category such as "Community" would've been a better choice.
  4. The purpose of the wiki the user selected didn't fit well with the wiki's actual purpose. The closest purpose would be "Encyclopedia (specialized) wiki", since it documents events that happened on the wiki farm Fandom. The user could also have selected "None of the above".
  5. The user didn't give enough details about the wiki. "I want to archive fandom events" says nothing about the wiki's topic and scope. The user should've explained what types of events that happened on Fandom (ex. "This wiki will contain important events that happened on the wiki farm Fandom.")

The user didn't give up on the wiki, however! The user thought about how the wiki request could be improved and made changes. Here is the user's improved request:

  • Subdomain (subdomain.miraheze.org): fandomarchives.miraheze.org
  • Wiki name: Fandom Archives
  • Language: en - English
  • Category: Community
  • Private wiki (not readable by everyone; only readable by users given the member or sysop groups): No
  • Will this wiki's main subject(s) be about living people? No
  • The purpose of this wiki is... Encyclopedia (specialized) wiki
  • Reason: This wiki will be about documenting events that happened on the wiki farm Fandom for easy access in the future. The events documented on this wiki will be important, such as a massive vandalism wave on a popular wiki. It will contain primary sources for accuracy, such as transcripts of conversations that users involved in the events had. It will also have chronologies of series of events.

This request was approved! It had several major changes:

  1. The subdomain was changed to an appropriate one.
  2. The user changed the category and purpose to fit better with the wiki.
  3. The user expanded on the reason, adding what type of content the wiki will have and its purpose.

My wiki request was declined! What should I do?[edit | edit source]

Don't panic! Think about why your request was declined (for example, your subdomain was invalid or your request unclear) and edit it via the "Edit request" tab to improve it. When you fix the request, you can easily be approved for a wiki in most cases.

My wiki request was approved, what now?[edit | edit source]

Congratulations! You now have a wiki on Miraheze. Being a new wiki owner can be daunting, but Miraheze is very flexible and has plenty of features. For more information on how to run a wiki properly, see this guide.

Examples of good wiki requests[edit | edit source]

Here are some examples of good wiki requests. You can use them as an example or template to your wiki request.