Combine OverWiki
| Wiki size: | 1,400 article pages see stats |
(Page count as of: 2022-12-25)
Combine OverWiki is a wiki dedicated to documenting all aspects of the Half-Life series of video games, as well as its shared universe with the Portal franchise. The wiki also serves as a hub for Half-Life and Portal fans alike.
History
The wiki began on February 12, 2006 with the founding of the Half-Life Wiki on Wikia, then named Wikicities. On May 18, 2007, the wiki's name was changed to "Combine OverWiki" to better describe the wiki's contents. On December 14, 2008, Klow was appointed as an administrator and introduced new policies to improve the wiki's standards, such as a Manual of Style and improved image management.
2009 saw considerably increased traffic to the site. Many improvements to the wiki's content were made during this time, specifically targeting misinformation, head-canon and speculation. Many new articles with concise behind-the-scenes topics were introduced, whilst poorly written articles were cleaned and/or removed. On February 28, Klow and MattyDeinhoff were promoted to bureaucrats by Wikia staff. User YabbaMyIcing led the first community project in June to place all unused files onto content pages, leading to the subsequent creation of projects pages on July 6 to encourage more editors to assist. On February 9, 2010, Bramblepath was appointed as the 4th rollback user, later being appointed to administrator on October 24 of that same year.
On July 11, 2011, the wiki made the decision to fork into independence. Klow created a teaser utilizing the new URL which introducing the new wiki motto, "Run. Think. Shoot. Edit." The move itself was spearheaded by Bramblepath. The drive behind forking was the diverging path of Wikia, currently named FANDOM, which sought to turn communities into advertising farms that profited off the work of volunteer editors. To the wiki's dismay, Wikia had a strict policy of never closing wikis, even after a fork. This affected SEO (Search Engine Optimization), ensuring that the old wiki would always trump search results. Shorly before the move, two users, Fijure and Barnz, were appointed as sysops, and the wiki would officially reopen on January 2, 2012 after a slight false start. On November 12, 2012, the wiki moved its hosting to ValveTime, citing the need for a host that provided superiors speeds compared to Wikia, while also the need for people who could easily manage technical issues.
On October 3, 2014, user Marphy Black was appointed as bureaucrat, and is currently the most active on the site. On May 26, 2017, the wiki moved to a different hosting provider and updated to the latest MediaWiki version. On November 2022, the wiki officially began its first non-Valve independent wiki affiliation, beginning with the Independent Fallout Wiki, with Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages following suit later in December.
It runs on the MediaWiki wiki engine, and contains no advertising.