The Merlin Wiki is an online encyclopedia dedicated to building knowledge on the 2008-2012 BBC TV series Merlin. The wikia was created on 21 September 2008 by Michael Downey, who promoted many users to staff.
The wiki was abandoned after about a year, and was adopted by MrThermomanPreacher on 25 September 2011. The wiki flourished under his lead for about two years. When he left, the other bureaucrats took over, chief among them Ḡwẵine Ḹٍٍkƨ Ĺiĸe Ͼềлȑềd and Merlinarthur, who went on to create the Revolutionary Admin Team (R.A.T).
However, in early 2018, the wiki was abandoned again, and was adopted on 14 May 2019 by November Witch.
History of R.A.T
The following is the history of the Revolutionary Admin Team, whose members made many outstanding contributions over the years and who helped shaped the wiki into what it is today.
The Beginning
In late 2011 the Wiki saw the arrival of Alfóns (Ḡwẵine Ḹٍٍkƨ Ĺiĸe Ͼềлȑềd) and then Dryuuu. At this stage there was merely one admin that had to be relied on for managing the Wiki, that was MrThermomanPreacher. At this stage the Wiki was quite big, with flocks of people coming into it, articles being made for every character and event, as it was, and still is, the only place for Merlin information on the web apart from the official Merlin website and a few other small social networks, which are not as simple and organised.
While there were many quality articles, and a group of devoted users, the Wiki lacked quite a bit - a lot in fact, compared to now. The Wiki saw several vandals and trolls visiting daily, or weekly, fabricating false plots, ruining people's work, deliberately messing up articles and spreading false rumours which risked ruining the expectations of the show for some people. These trolls were slipping away and not being dealt with promptly. It's surpising how far one small line of text can accumulate. Some users even posted obscene images. In these times, only one admin could be called upon, and this Wiki was not the admin's main Wiki of focus which rationed his time spent on managing this Wiki. Wikia's staff had to be contacted for something to be deleted or user affairs to be dealt with if the one admin was unavailable, and this took several days - giving more time for the trolls to continue. So, as you know, the Wiki was quite susceptible to damage.
New Leadership
The current most active users were not interested in the role of admin, and saw it as even quite an intimidating role. The attitudes were very different. Even Alfons, the no. 1 user on the leaderboard, and the most devoted user at the time, did not want the role, believing it would ruin his experience. The role seemed pretty unlikely to get as well, as the current admin was not active enough to consider promoting.
Then, came the day of change. Dryuuu and Alfóns, who met through their efforts to stop one of the Wiki's most notorious and hilarious trolls (who even has a Wiki devoted to herself), and had began contact through email and now Message Wall (the old Talk Pages are now completely obselete), were in deep discussion of gaining power over the Wiki. Dryuuu decided to stand up and started, well, demanding some change. Then, hallejuah, at last, one quiet night, MrThermomanPreacher pressed the magic button and made him admin! Dryuuu embraced this role, and within the next couple of days, the Wiki was radically different. The top menu bar was updated to the new version, and the navigation was spruced up. The wallpaper was changed (boy, that was harder than it looks), and over the next month you could say it was a bit of an experimentation period, which is something the Wiki definitely needed. The home page was completely overhauled, and areas unthought of and untouched were given the touch of magic. It is a Whole New Wiki now!
Most fortunately, with the new look and feel, also came a new attitude. Everybody was open to change. You could say there was an atmosphere of excitement, people were beginning to see how we could move forward. Dryuuu began madly preaching even more revolution, and managed to pull Alfóns into the admin position, which Alfóns and Dryuuu couldn't regret less! Dryuuu and Alfóns also worked together to earn an extension on admin power: bureaucrat power, which matches that of the founder of the Wiki's power, which lets them promote admins.
The Wiki blossomed, with many users taking their time to write their thoughts and feedback on the admin's wall and in blog posts. It was really quite awesome, the community was brought in a way like never before.
Formation
Then came the next step. A couple users around the place spoke in interest of the role of admin. Dryuuu thought, "Why should admin position be held to only a couple of users?" The idea behind a Wiki is democracy, where everybody has a voice, so why should those who deserve more responsibility, and do good with it, not get it? It may be time to start distributing admin power to more people. The attitude towards this move was wariness at first, with worries there will be disputes about admin decisions, abuse of admin power, and simply loss of the idea of who is really there to make the final decision. These fears were put to rest, though, when Dryuuu took a wild chance, by assigning eight other users admin power! This could have turned out to be a stupid decision, but, only one person needed to be demoted, not being up to it, and it turned out, they embraced their new position, and so we formed a team, The Revolutionary Admin Team! (Named by Alfóns)
The admins are loyal, helpful and bring only more of what they already did to the Wiki! These admins are Cassie, the first admin other than Dryuuu, MrThermomanPreacher & Alfóns; Gerda, who is basically an allrounder who signed up at the fall of 2011; Chris, who spent his first month or so doing most of his edits on blogs before moving to bigger stages; Lihini, who uploads pictures as quickly as the flash of a camera; Cai, who works hard to shut down the dark parts of the wiki; Ochristi, who fixes grammar mainly, and also edits in plain source code. The whole admin team is in email contact (something that never happened before R.A.T on this Wiki), ocassionally discussing different affairs and future plans. Upon these events we have seen the rise of some new editors and even the temporary fall of others.
So that is a bit of backstory behind R.A.T! We like to think we're the best admins on Wikia! (For our Wiki) Drop a line on any admin's wall, and they'll be happy to chat.
Former Members
The following are the former members of the Revolutionary Admin Team:
- Alfons (Ḡwẵine Ḹٍٍkƨ Ĺiĸe Ͼềлȑềd)
- Daniel (Dryuuu)
- Chris (Morganaforever)
- Gerda (Waterwecna)
- Lihini (Merlinarthur)
- George (GWAINE)
- Matthew (EmrysOfAlbion)
- Gustave (LokiIsAwesome)
- GokaiGreen (MrThermomanPreacher)
- Cassie (Chawk1993)
- Rod (Rod12)
- Sybil (WorshipperOfTheOldReligion)