Custom BIONICLE Wiki:About

Custom BIONICLE Wiki is a BIONICLE fan fiction wiki, which was created on September 13, 2007. Since its creation, it has been merged with the BioFanFic wiki, created on November 22, 2009. It is the 53rd biggest wiki on Wikia and the fourth largest fan fiction wiki.

The wiki mascot is the Order of Mata Nui member Brutaka, since his mask, the Kanohi Olmak, can take its user into universes full of infinite possibilities, such as the ones portrayed within the fan fictions of this site.

Creation
The Custom BIONICLE Wiki was created on September 13, 2007 by. The wiki was left abandoned for a week until joined and uploaded an image of his brother's MOC Krakana. The site began to gather attention, but only from a small number of scattered users. Only seven users joined in the wiki's first month.

November, however, saw an explosion of article creation, mostly due to the users and  (now ), who helped reach the 100-article mark in only a few short weeks. Over the next months, the membership began to increase gradually, most of the users having come from other wikis.

2008
As LittlemanJ95 had been inactive for two months, the prominent user known as, or "Seth," created a voting page to elect new administrators in February. The decision was eventually made to promote two users (The Oracle and ) to administrators, and make Crazy-Lihkan 38 a bureaucrat. Littleman was then demoted to a regular member. However, mere days later, Toa Retyk stopped editing. He has not been seen since. The Oracle then created a website known as Oracle Nui to support Custom BIONICLE, the main location for Custom BIONICLE and Bioniclepedia site discussion. It was replaced by the Wiki Metru Forums in April 2009. That month, an MOC competition for all users to enter was started.

In April, the 100th member joined. Three months later, Custom BIONICLE reached the 1000-article mark, which began an extreme rate of expansion. By the end of January, the amount had nearly tripled, though the speed has slowed since then.

Seeing as The Oracle was the most active member on the wiki, Wikia staff member promoted him to bureaucrat status, and The Oracle promoted, one of the first members of the wiki, to help run the site with Crazy-Lihkan.

In May of 2008, The Oracle requested to Wikia staff that the BioFanFic Wiki, created by, be merged with Custom BIONICLE. The decision was made, and on June 3, 2008, the articles were imported. BioFanFic was from then on closed, redirecting to this site. Xion was made an administrator due to his contributions on BioFanFic, but has been mostly offline. He last made a major edit on February 15, 2009, and has only been seen three times since. Once again, The Oracle found himself as only one of two active administrators, and promoted.



During November 2008, a vandal known as Makuta Krika was banned on BIONICLESector01 Wiki. He turned to the administrators of Bioniclepedia for help, but when they refused, he began a vandalizing spree using numerous duplicate accounts, most starting with "Atukam" (a backward spelling of "Makuta"). The spree eventually spread to Custom BIONICLE, and he was repeatedly blocked. He eventually promised not to vandalize again.

The event resulted in the promotions of to a rollback and  to an administrator due to their roles in the crisis, and The Oracle made  a rollback soon after.

In December, a contest was held to determine the new wiki logo. 's entry won, and on December 19 it was re-uploaded as the wiki image. The Best Page of the Year contest was also introduced that month; created by.

2009
On January 10, the first Board meeting took place on an IRC channel, and the Board of Trustees discussed many changes to the wiki. The decisions were made to place Toatapio Nuva in charge of the MOC competition, to start a story contest, and to remove links to the site from YouTube.

On January 31, Panakalego of BIONICLEpedia met with other members of Custom BIONICLE and Bioniclepedia to discuss moving to a new platform. Preliminary planning for Custom BIONICLE's move began, and on July 29, BIONICLEpedia's move was completed. This site remained in a state of preparation for the Move, and continued to be so for months. During this time, all official activity (the MOC contest, the story contest, and the Main Page templates) was halted.

Hodoka2 was not present at the January 31 meeting, as he left the site the day previously. He has since gone to another website, and has no plans to return. ArchlordZerato-Player812, OsmiuMap, and Pirakafreak24 left soon after, and even Crazy-Lihkan, the wiki's first bureaucrat, vanished from the site within a few short months of January. The Oracle, who had been active less and less for the past months, promoted Toatapio Nuva to bureaucrat, seeing as, once again, the wiki was losing its administrators. The Oracle has not yet returned.

Eventually, as Toatapio Nuva began leaving the wiki for longer periods of time, just as The Oracle had done before him, he promoted so that someone could monitor wiki activities while he was gone. The Move remained only a planned event, and after months of delay the decision was made to cancel it. During that time, TheSlicer began the early stages of an Improvement Drive to fix a number of the wiki's articles that weren't as up to par with others.

2010
Early in 2010, TheSlicer, deciding that the wiki required a default information template (as various kinds were being used at the time), had a lengthy discussion with Toatapio Nuva and the conclusion was that templates modified from their BIONICLESector01 counterparts could be used. Another discussion on the forums led to the demotion of most of the inactive administrators.

In April, a sister wiki to this site, BIONICLE Crossovers Wiki, was created for users to showcase their non-BIONICLE fictions.

In July 2010, on the request of TheSlicer, two active users, and, were promoted to administrators. TheSlicer was promoted to bureaucrat.

At the start of November, the first of a new set of policies was implemented by a community vote, with these particular rules regarding matters such as how articles should be organized, how administrators should behave, and the general style of this wiki. An important new rule was that all users are equal, including administrators (although they are allowed to make decisions on some trivial wiki matters, such as article protection).

Following the implementation of several new policies, TheSlicer requested for the older bureaucrats to be demoted by the Wikia staff. The vote for sysop status was set up again, resulting in the promotion of three active users,, , and , to administrators. Chicken Bond was promoted to bureaucrat.

2011
The wiki continued to prosper soundly at the beginning of 2011, with numerous efforts being initiated amongst site members to maintain full activity and development. Following a large drive to categorize pages, the site was featured in May, and a recruiting campaign begun among the users.

Two rollbacks were promoted, and, and another new administrator, , was accepted into the community. On the 4 July 2011, TheSlicer officially announced his retirement from his position as Bureaucrat and Administrator, and also announced his departure from active wiki life. He was replaced as unofficial site leader by Chicken Bond.

From there on, the wiki began emphasizing the expansion of the community through adveristement on other BIONICLE-based websites or groups, particularly on the sites YouTube, MOCpages, deviantArt, and FanFiction. This was also part of a plan to universally increase the members of the Wiki Metru Forums and all its family sites, including Herofactopedia, Custom Hero Factory Wiki, The BIONICLE Wiki and the Custom BIONICLE Wiki itself. The advertisement campaign had a degree of success, with many users signing up to create their own advertisements to promote the wiki to the broader BIONICLE community.

On September 7th, Administrators Biogecko and ToaFairon were demoted from their sysop status due to their lack of activity on the wiki. On sheer coincidence, veteran member Crazy-Lihkan38 also announced his retirement from his position as bureaucrat and administrator on the very same day, in order to allow more active and heavily involved wiki members to take his place. Despite this, he reassured the wiki he would still remain active as a regular user.

Soon after, a new community vote for administrators was held, and two active users, and  were given sysop privileges. Users and  (now known as ) were promoted to rollback.

After recommendation from Shadowmaster and further discussion among the community, it was decided that the Board of Trustees (which had been disbanded after its powers were effectively rendered defunct due to the changes to wiki policy) would be reformed and reinstated, and new members were elected onto the Board. The second Board's first official meeting was then held on Wiki Metru Forum's Mibbit chatroom, in regards to the color codings given to staff members.

On October 15th, a YouTube channel for videos specifically related to the wiki was established in order to aid the advertisement campaign. In the same month, the community decided to establish a monthly podcast serial hosted by the staff and special guests. Whilst the podcast was cancelled on February 10, 2012 due to the staff's inability to find time to record, it was revived later that year. As of 2013, it has been on hiatus.

2012
At the beginning of February, the wiki staff decided to trial out the new Message Wall function provided by Wikia for one week. As a result, the original talk page system was temporarily replaced by the new Message Wall. After heated debates among the users, the wiki eventually voted against the Message Wall, resulting in its removal in favor of the original talk pages.

On the February 11, Jareroden97 announced his retirement from all staff duties (including his position as a bureaucrat), so as to better maintain his own fictional storyline and upcoming projects. Despite this, he remains a fully-active contributor in the community and a member of the Board of Trustees, stating that his retirement would not affect his activity. On the 15th of February, administrator Shadowmaster was promoted to bureaucrat, so as to take Jareroden97's place.

On 2nd of June, the first wiki podcast was recorded by users Chicken Bond, Jman98, Varkanax39, Jareroden97 and Wiki Metru Forum leader Panakalego. This marked the official revival of the wiki podcast project, with individual episodes being posted monthly by the staff on YouTube. On the 15th of June, administrator SubAqua announced his retirement from his position as administrator, though he remains an active contributor to the community. A community Vote for Adminship went underway soon afterward, and rollback PepsiCola99 was voted in as an administrator and as rollback; both were promoted on the 20th of June.

On the 27th of June, a Board of Trustees meeting was held, where it unanimously agreed that would be immediately promoted to rollback status without a community vote needing to be held. On the 31st of June, Baterra1202 announced his retirement from his rollback position. Later, on August 30, PepsiCola99 announced his retirement from the position of administrator. In response to the retirement of these staff members, Rollback Jman98 was reinstated into his old role and position on the 15th of September, per a unanimous vote by the members of the Board of Trustees. A community vote was then held to increase the number of Rollbacks on the wiki. On September 22nd, users and  were voted by the community into rollback positions and both were promoted.

In addition, the Board also voted for the creation of several new expansions to wiki to exist alongside the YouTube channel. Five such expansions were made on the sites deviantArt, Tumblr, Weebly, MOCpages and Twitter. Since the 4th of August, an official wiki-wide art contest has been hosted by the community of the site. The Brutaka Artwork Contest, created by staff member Shadowmaster, seeks to have an art piece of the site mascot, Brutaka, included in the wiki's background skin. Currently, the contest remains open for entries, as judging has not commenced yet. On the 28th of September, the Board of Trustees met and established new policies regarding the promotion of Bureaucrats, Administrators and Rollbacks, resulting in the creation of new requirements and guidelines for staff nomination. During the same meeting, was elected the head of wiki's deviantArt group and Chicken Bond was elected as the official representative of the Board of Trustees on the Wiki Metru Forums. In addition, a new penalty was introduced, whereby repeated ignorers of the Manual of Style would be given a warning then a ban if they continued to consistently refuse to follow wiki policy.

After nominating himself and passing with a 7-0 majority, user Jman98 was promoted to administrator on the 28th of October. On December 9, 2012, the first Custom BIONICLE exclusive series MATA premiered on YouTube.

Later, on December 30, 2012, 's series, Bionicritical, was officially inducted as a Custom BIONICLE exclusive series alongside MATA.

2013
Despite the end of BIONICLE, this site continued to grow. At the beginning of 2012, the wiki still remained fully active, and many users still continue to ensure that the community grows and develops. Carrying on from the success of the advertisement campaign from 2011, many members are still striving to see new users come to the wiki. As of January 5, 2013, the Podcast is planned for a reboot, listed as a "Season 2," in order to make it more organized and watchable. During the same month, offered to make a banner for the community, which will be included as part of a greater plan to alter the layout of the Main Page. Not long after, on February 2, the Custom BIONICLE Wiki created a group for itself on the social networking site Facebook following a vote in the Matoran Council Chamber. In addition, the community later agreed to a wiki-wide revamp, which would see the site adopt a new skin inspired by 2001 era of BIONICLE.

On April 1st, the staff members carried out an elaborate prank whereby the wiki adopted a My Little Pony motif. The 'vandal attack' was jokingly blamed on Trombone Twister, a sock puppet account created by the staff to function as the "villain" of the occasion. The account was briefly granted staff powers so it could change the wiki in whatever way possible, though they were removed when the joke concluded and the wiki reverted to its normal state.

On May 3rd, administrator Jman98 unveiled an updated version of the wiki's official logo, and the refined version has since been put to use. On June 18, Echo 1 was added to the official roster of the Board of Trustees. Days later, on June 21, rollback Amanda113122 was demoted due to her lack of frequent activity. Later, on the 29th July, the first stages of the wiki's skin revamp began. On October 7th, writing contests starting with the Halloween Writing Contest were introduced as a new way of getting the community more involved with the site. On November 13th, 2013, a wiki-wide cleanup, dubbed The Bohrok Initiative, was initiated by administrator Jman98. The goal was to delete any articles marked with the Wikify, Stub, or Delete templates. The reason being a restructure of the site, including more enforcement of the Manual of Style. This resulted in the deletion of a number of pages. Along with this, the Brutaka Artwork Contest was tweaked and renamed to simply the Brutaka Contest. Later on, Custom BIONICLE began forming affiliations with other BIONICLE sites, such as Solis Magna and The Three Virtues. On November 27th, ThatDevilGuy officially announced his retirement as an administrator, citing disagreements with the staff and his own personal inactivity. Not long after, in 2014, he also stepped down from his position on the Board of Trustees.

2014
The year 2014 kicked off with the official conclusion of the Brutaka Contest. The voting period began on the 3rd of January and concluded later on the 9th January. The winning entry (pictured right) was created by, and it has since been incorporated into the background of the wiki's Oasis skin.

On February 14th, Custom BIONICLE parted ways with the Wiki Metru Forums after six years in order to move forward and create a website of it's own. On the same day, Custom BIONICLE unveiled it's new official home site, and while the wiki would still be in use, it recommended that users join the site so they can get involved with upcoming events, read new reviews, and interact with other members using the site's instant chat and forums, and more.