Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on MicroWiki
During a time of social distance and limited contact with others, social media became an important place to interact, and this included an increased activity on MicroWiki, the largest micronational encyclopædia and wiki.
Whilst MicroWiki had continued to see growth in readership and the number of registered users since the beginning of the Discord Era in September 2018, micronationalist journalists, writers, MicroWiki editors and most of the community have agreed that the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the number of editors, as well as haven given frequent editors more free time to work on the wiki.
Activity
In 2019, the average number of editors which had made over fifty edits in any given month was 44; in 2020, that number rose to 70. Various micronationalist journalists, writers and MicroWiki editors agreed it was mostly or partly as a result of the pandemic.
Although, in contrast, in 2020 MicroWiki grew to over 20,000 articles and 10,000 registered users, up from 18,000 articles and 9,000 registered users in the previous year, which was the smallest growth in users since 2017 and article count since 2015.
Coverage of the pandemic on MicroWiki
As MicroWiki is an encyclopædia and wiki for topics relating to, or associated with micronationalism, articles relating to the coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic would thus be very limited, as it would have to be related to the pandemic and its effects on a micronational scale.
On 1 March 2020, the first article relating to the pandemic was created, "Micronational responses to the 2019–20 coronavirus outbreak", (which would later be renamed on 11 March after it was declared a pandemic) by a British user. It was followed by "COVID-19 pandemic in the micronational community" and "2020 coronavirus pandemic in Montescano" on 11 March, both created by the same user from the United States. By the end of 2020, there were fourteen articles relating to the pandemic, and "Micronational responses to the COVID-19 pandemic" had been edited 213 times from approximately 50 different users, and "COVID-19 pandemic in the micronational community" had been edited 229 times from approximately 30 different users. Editors and administrators worked to remove misinformation and hoax claims.