First edit on MicroWiki
The first edit—and thus the first page creation—made to the online micronational encyclopaedia and wiki MicroWiki was the creation of the main page,[a] then located on the wiki hosing service (wiki farm) Wikicities, on 27 May 2005 at 15:14 (UTC).[b] The edit was made by Fabian Schneider, the founder of MicroWiki, under the IP address 63.147.48.242. He later registered an account on the wiki under the username "Monsterfurby". The edit consists of an explanation of what MicroWiki was purposed to be, followed by a list of "existing micronations", which lists three, and a list of intermicronational organisations, which lists one—the League of Sovereign Nations. The edit is still available for viewing on the current MicroNations Fandom website.
On 14 November 2010 during the migration from Wikia, a new, independent domain was registered to succeed the old website hosted on Wikia (formerly Wikicities and today known as Fandom). The database dump could not allow the revision histories from the Wikia server to be imported, thus making the first edit on MicroWiki inaccessible on the independent domain. On 7 November 2013, MicroWiki would once again switch domains, this time to micronation.org. Consequently, the domain move deleted most of the original server data, including all page revision histories. This makes the earliest edit that is accessible in MicroWiki's database the default MediaWiki installation message that created the main page at 16:23 (UTC). It holds the revision ID of 1.
Since April 2012, a separate community has formed on the old Wikia website. Today known as MicroNations Fandom, the first edit can still be viewed on there.
Background
Wikicities—later Wikia (27 March 2006 – 4 October 2016) and now Fandom—is a wiki hosting service (wiki farm) founded on 18 October 2004 by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley Starling—respectively Chairman Emeritus and Advisory Board member of the Wikimedia Foundation. As a wiki farm, the website allows any user to register a wiki to be hosted on the site's servers as a subdomain of the wikicities.com domain. In late 2004, Fabian Maximilian Schneider, a foreign exchange student from Germany to Chopticon High School in Morganza, St. Mary's County, Maryland, the United States, founded the Sovereign Principality of Seraya alongside classmates Richard Conklin and Matthew McQuade. After word of Seraya spread at Chopticon around early May 2005, its citizenship proliferated to as much as seventy citizens, while Conklin and McQuade established their own micronations—the Holy Empire of Tritoniakamia in early May and Umoria on 12 May respectively. All three micronations later became member states of the League of Sovereign Nations. On 27 May 2005, Schneider, wanting to be able to easily and conveniently record information on these micronations, registered the domain micronations.wikicities.com on Wikicities and named the wiki MicroWiki.
First edit
- See also: MicroWiki:Beginnings
The edit, which was the creation of the main page—thus also being the first page creation on MicroWiki—was made at 15:14 on 27 May 2005 (UTC) by Fabian Schneider. By that time, Schneider had not yet registered an account on the wiki, with the first edit being assigned to the IP address 63.147.48.242. The edit consisted of an explanation of what MicroWiki was purposed to be—"a database of micronations"—followed by a list of "existing micronations", which listed Seraya, Tritoniakamia and Umoria, and a list of intermicronational organisations, which listed only the League of Sovereign Nations. The edit holds the revision ID 1 and is still available for viewing on the current MicroNations Fandom website (the successor to MicroWikia, which took over the abandoned database of MicroWiki on Fandom). The edit was made in wiki markup, with all contents listed in hypertext. As per Fandom's content policy at the time, the revision is available under the CC Attribution / Share-Alike copyright license. The edit, in full—including wiki markup—is:
== Micronational Database ==
This is a database of micronations, small nations, created for various purposes, that simulate the proceedings of a real country.
'''Existing Micronations'''
[[Empire of Seraya]] (formerly [[Principality of Seraya]])
[[Holy Empire of Tritoneakamia]]
[[Umoria]]'''Intermicronational Organizations'''
[[League of Sovereign Nations]]
However, as Schneider had incorrectly formatted it, the three listed micronations appeared alongside each other instead of the intended top-to-bottom list. Tritoneakamia is also a typographical error, as the micronation is named Tritoniakamia. The full edit, as was produced on the main page on 27 May 2005, appeared as follows:
Micronational Database
This is a database of micronations, small nations, created for various purposes, that simulate the proceedings of a real country.
Existing Micronations
Empire of Seraya (formerly Principality of Seraya) Holy Empire of Tritoneakamia Umoria
Intermicronational Organizations
League of Sovereign Nations
microwiki.org.uk and micronation.org
On 8 November 2010, after two wiki hosting services were unsuccessfully considered during the migration from Wikia, Petya d'Égtavie of Egtavia proposed that the wiki be instead moved to a privately-hosted server. This new domain was first registered on 14 November as MicroWiki.co.cc, later becoming MicroWiki.org.uk by 2 December. The database dump could not allow the revision histories from the Wikia server to be imported, thus making the first edit on MicroWiki inaccessible on the independent domain. The first edit made to MicroWiki.org.uk is unknown. In November 2013, d'Égtavie purchased the domain micronation.org from Luxor (Karl Friedrich) for "around £20" with the intention of using it as the domain for MicroWiki—said domain costing less annually, and perhaps also seeing it more fit for an international website dedicated to micronations as opposed to .org.uk, the country code top-level domain for the United Kingdom. Consequently, the domain move deleted most of the original server data, including all page revision histories. Because of this, the earliest edit made to MicroWiki that is accessible in its database is the default MediaWiki installation message that created the main page at 16:23 on 7 November 2013 (UTC). It holds the revision ID of 1.
See also
Notes
- ↑ The main page of MicroWikia, then hosted at
micronations.wikicities.com, not the current main page, which was created on 7 November 2013 at 16:23 after MediaWiki was installed and the domainmicronation.orgwas registered. - ↑ Schneider was residing in Ashburn, Virginia when he made the edit, where the time was 11:14 in Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), four hours behind coordinated universal time (UTC) at UTC−04:00.