MarioWiki:About

The Super Mario Wiki (often abbreviated to MarioWiki or SMWiki) is a collaborative knowledge base dedicated to documenting anything and everything about the Mario franchise and related series. Founded on August 12, 2005 by Porplemontage, the wiki is a fan project and has no affiliation with Nintendo in any way. Being a wiki means that our articles can be edited by anyone; just look for the "edit" button at the top of the page! Our helpful wiki staff of administrators and patrollers help to keep the site running smoothly and free of any vandalism. Whether you're happy simply reading, editing anonymously, or you'd like to join us and become an active member of the community, we're happy to have you here! Check out our introduction and help pages if you'd like more information on how to get involved.

Coverage
One notable thing about the Super Mario Wiki is that we have a fairly wide coverage policy, perhaps more so than other video game series wikis you're familiar with. What this means is that rather than simply covering the Super Mario series or even limiting it to the Mario franchise, we also fully cover partner franchises like Donkey Kong, Wario, and Yoshi, as well as Mario crossovers like Super Smash Bros. and Mario & Sonic. Mario characters show up in a lot of places, and we've always erred on the side of more coverage rather than less. In our early years, our coverage extended all the way out to include the Banjo-Kazooie and Conker series (see Diddy Kong Racing), but that was soon reigned in. Through it all, the Super Mario Wiki community has been at the center of these types of decisions, voted on through our system of proposals.

GamerFocus
The origins of the Super Mario Wiki can be traced back to a project known as the GamerFocus Wiki Network, a blog and collection of gaming wikis started in summer 2005 by Halopedia founder, AgentSeethroo. Porplemontage helped with the project and started three new wikis which would join Halopedia in the network: the Video Game Cheats Wiki (CheatsWiki for short), the GamerFocus Wiki (a general video game wiki), and of course, the Super Mario Wiki. While the CheatsWiki and GamerFocus Wiki would eventually close due to a lack of interest, and the GamerFocus concept itself didn't last much longer, the two shining stars of the network—Halopedia and the Super Mario Wiki—continue on to this day.

Wiki Alliance
The breadth of the Super Mario Wiki's coverage has always been a highly-debated topic. In the latter half of 2006, it was decided that rather than covering all the major Mario sub-series on one wiki, each would get their own dedicated wiki and link back and forth to one another, resulting in the formation of the Wiki Alliance. The idea was kickstarted by launching the Donkey Kong Wiki, with a Wario wiki being prepped to launch next. However, after only a few months, the whole idea was scrapped due to a lack of interest in the Donkey Kong Wiki. There was concern that launching more wikis would lead to them becoming inactive in favor of the Super Mario Wiki, so rather than risk splintering the community and our content, we closed the Donkey Kong Wiki and reverted back to keeping everything in one "super" Mario wiki.

NIWA
In early 2010, representatives from Bulbapedia and Zelda Wiki reached out to the Super Mario Wiki about forming an alliance of independent Nintendo wikis. The stated goal of the network was to act as a bulwark against Wikia and similar operators that meddle with the fans, and to provide assistance to small, up and coming independent wiki communities. Porplemontage initially dismissed the request, a combination of being busy with real-life obligations at the time and a healthy skepticism for wiki networks in general by this point, but the Super Mario Wiki community insisted on the idea and were successful in pushing Porple to accept the proposal. The Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance was born, and over a decade later the network is still going strong, with over 30 member wikis. History would repeat itself in 2019 when NIWA's Donkey Kong Wiki (a Wikia fork completely separate from the Wiki Alliance project of the same name) closed and had its unique content merged into the Super Mario Wiki.

The 'Shroom
The 'Shroom is the community-written and edited monthly newsletter of the Super Mario Wiki, devoted to delivering the latest wiki and community news and entertainment to editors and readers of the website alike. Founded by Sadaharu as a small community portal in 2006, the project took off in 2007 under the direction of Wayoshi, quickly building-up an assortment of eager writers, and today continues to have a large, thriving team of contributors and a devoted reader base keeping the project more active than ever. As well as covering the latest news and statistics relating to the Super Mario Wiki and its surrounding community, the newsletter offers a broad range of sections such as humorous fake Mario stories, games and activities, multimedia, and detailed review and opinion sections.

Mario Awards
On the Super Mario Wiki's first anniversary, the site was off to a good start, but there was still only a small number of active users. On our second anniversary, with a userbase finally forming, we marked the occasion with the first annual Mario Awards ceremony celebrating 30 of our favorite Mario topics, including favorite games, music, items, series, moments, enemies, and more, by running polls and producing mini creative writing and art projects to present those results in a fun way.

Over the years we've made big changes to our anniversary ceremony, including the addition of Userpedia, Fail, and 'Shroom awards early on (2008, 2009, 2010 respectively), formal game tournaments by 2011 with prizes, and by 2013, having our first Awards Committee director election. As time went on, presentation quality rose and activity hit its stride, with the ceremonies evolving with the community's needs (such as merging the User and 'Shroom awards into Community Awards, opening up a wider venue for recognition of the skills and efforts of our wiki editors). In 2016, we proudly funded a $1,000 donation drive for the Tommy Thompson Park Bird Research Station to honor our late bureaucrat, Walkazo.

Super Mario Boards
The Super Mario Boards, commonly referred to as the forum, serve as a major social gathering place for the Super Mario Wiki community. They provide a casual outlet where users can talk about anything, keeping the wiki itself focused on wiki matters. That's not to say it's all fun and games; the forum has a Wiki Collaborations board for collaborating on wiki projects and hidden staff and community boards, all of which contribute to running various aspects of the site. Our Discord server is modeled as a miniature version of the forum and achieves similar goals, only in a more-instantaneous venue. Before Discord, it was our IRC channel which primarily served the wiki's chatroom needs.

The forum has had a few name and domain changes over the years, originally launching on October 15, 2006 as the Super Mario Wiki Forum (or MarioWiki Forum for short), with the URL forum.mariowiki.com. Shortly after its launch, the forum was briefly branded as the Wiki Alliance Forum to coincide with the project of the same name, changing its domain to wikialliance.com, only to revert back to its original name and subdomain in early 2007. The forum's final rebrand would occur in October 2011, changing its name to the Super Mario Boards and moving to marioboards.com, where it can still be found today.

Wiki logos
The logo history of the Super Mario Wiki is detailed below.

Forum themes
The forum has changed its look a few times over the years. Below is a gallery of the different forum layouts.