User:IDontCareAboutHistory/History

This is a story brought to you by the countless people who helped turn a tiny community from 2009 into a giant who still stands tall in 2019. Many people have come and gone during the wiki’s time. Keep in mind that this should not be treated as seriously as an actual historical document. This is all for fun and games, and a way to tribute the 10 great years of the wiki’s existence. While the wiki and the series it’s based on has had some tremendous ups and downs, there is no doubt that the community still stands.

This is in no way 100% accurate. Some things have been slightly changed to seem more dramatic, and some have simply been forgotten throughout time. Please forgive us for the inconsistencies.

For easier representation, we have split the wiki’s time into multiple periods:

2009 - 2012: The founding period, the early days. Not much is known about this period. 2013 - 2016: The golden age of the wiki. Everyone loves this part. 2017 - early 2018: The downfall Mid 2018 to now: The really slow uprise(And another downwards spiral)

The original Plants vs. Zombies released on May 5th, 2009. Ten days later, the wiki was created by Wckd. Not much is known about this user except the fact that he didn’t do anything after that, not even an edit. It was clear that the founder of the wiki abandoned it as soon as he made it which may have been for the better.

Four days later, the first edit of the wiki was made by the user known today as Vectorgreg, the edit being the addition of an image of the classic Peashooter. The user continued to add images to the wiki and eventually created the base of the early wiki and adopted the wiki. Then like Wckd, the user left, seen again but not the same. But that’s a tale for another time.

Some of the earliest known members were Swampert Rox, RandomguY and Wintermelon43. All of them were bureaucrats at one point, adopting the wiki after Vectorgreg left. At this point, the wiki’s community was steadily growing.

Later on, once things began to get interesting, came the year 2012. It demonstrated how much potential the place had. Users such as Jackninja5DipperGravityFalls, Drek’TharSuperSword and Brainulator shaped the place and had probably the largest influence on it by then.

Though, when a place becomes popular, it also attracts bad people. An iconic foe of the wiki was Nazi Peashooter, a person who vandalized pages and made sockpuppets. Around this time, or in early 2013, new rules were implemented to prevent anonymous users from editing to prevent spam, vandalism and other similar acts.

In 2013, the Wiki Management forum branch was created. Many changes have been made to the wiki at that time and countless arguments as well. People of this period were MeVsZombiesMeWin, MignightHawk, PvZBeast234 etc.

2014 was the peak of the wiki, right in the middle of its life as of 2019. Massive changes were made, lots and lots of users had joined, and the year was generally peaceful. Notable members who have joined during 2014 were Elemec/Light Bomber, Pepsicola45 (now known as Marcia Aeris), and Lily8763cp, all of whom would become staff members at one point in the future.

2015 brought a storm of vandals and a near wiki war between Uselessguy and Brainulator9. The year began with a false project created by the trickster known as CoCoNuTCannon22. His motives were to create a fan game of the series, titled Plants vs. Zombies Online, and, of course, dozens of people were attracted to the idea. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be part of it? What no one expected, though, was that he had never gained permission to make a fan game. Leading weeks, and possibly months, of discussion to waste. The person who exposed CoCoNuTCannon22, was none other than the great Buzzy Buzz; an ex-wiki admin who was known for modding Plants vs. Zombies 2 and controlling a popular PvZ channel at the time. This was not accepted lightly, and, as expected, the people who worked on the project left the thing angry and disappointed. However, a group of people who still had hope for the project; King Pea, Thecoollittlepeashooter, MangledMangle and others tried to replicate this project, though sadly failing once again. All that’s left from the project are two forum threads on the wiki and the Game Creation wiki, created by Buzzy Buzz himself.

In mid-2015, May 3rd to be exact, a new threat appeared. He was one of the biggest enemies the wiki had ever seen; AbramR, who created masses of sockpuppets in order to disrupt wiki peace, had triggered an uproar and panic amongst the wikians. One sock in particular, AbramR21, caught the wiki by surprise when no admins/bureaucrats were active, and proceeded to surge across the wiki, vandalizing many pages with the stated intent of “destroying the badges system.” TheZombiemelon fought the sock alone at first, and later, with the help of several rollbacks, held down the fort until Uselessguy became active and blocked him. The staff weren’t spared either. Everyone was concerned about their account’s safety after an announcement about a group of people known as Wikilizer. A user known as Zazme Yakuza created false stories about this group and how they had hacked him. He tried to warn the wiki, but people were either too skeptical or too afraid to listen. AbramR’s final stand was during the vote to range block him, created by Thecoollittlepeashooter (now known as IDontCareAboutHistory). Many users supported the thread, in hopes of the problem finally ending. It did not succeed. However, Wikia (now known as FANDOM), globally blocked Abram and all of his sockpuppets. Everyone was relieved and glad the thing was finally over. Though, people afterwards started noticing something strange; ThePurplePi, a forum moderator at the time, was also range blocked. People were shocked about the revelation that person who planned to become admin, and who had made a thousand mainspace edits in the timespan of a month, decided to commit such a terrible offense. He later admitted to the crimes, and made a sock with a username further proving that he was responsible for ALL AbramR sockpuppets.

Later on, another controversial user, known as MaxStories, also rose to fame through Wikilizer. Spreading propaganda and fear through chat PMs, he left the wiki in shock yet again. Soon later he got permanently blocked. There have been attempts to get him unblocked, mostly lead by DatDramaPlant and TheCoolLittlePeashooter, but all have failed. The biggest one got shut down in one move by Brainulator9, a great bureaucrat.

In terms of wiki changes, the year kicked off with a voting thread created by WinterMagnet. It was about going against COPPA. Though, as expected, this failed. You can’t go against the U.S. government, you’d have to be mentally ill to attempt it. MaxStories, the user mentioned above, created a thread where he had bid farewell to the wiki and PvZ community because of the pay-to-win model PopCap took. Note that this wasn’t the last time the wiki had seen or would see MaxStories. After all, this was before he even became a vandal and puppet master. A vote was carried about removing the Facebook page from the wiki and unofficializing it. The vote had failed, but this does not mean that the idea had, too. Much later on in the future, in March of 2019, the page was finally removed after a long period of inactivity. This comes to show that the right thing must happen at the right time. A common topic during this time was the lowering of staff edit count requirements. Some of these votes failed, some succeeded.

A thread, marking the beginning of an almost never ending war, emerged in early 2015. It was titled “Remove the gender-neutrality from the Mainspace.” The thread, as expected, spark mass controversy and the argument about whether kept flaming on until years later, when it finally got accepted.

Plants vs. Zombies: Reviews became a thing as well. It was a page where community members could post their thoughts about certain plants or zombies. It was taken down later, and, quite frankly, has been forgotten.

The Plants vs. Zombies Adventures branch got taken down after the game’s sad shut down. All PvZA badges were replaced.

A big problem during the early days was that anyone could oppose without any specific reason and bring down an entire thread quite easily. This was changed when TheHandsomePlant, a now ex-wiki moderator, created a vote challenging that dilemma. The vote did not succeed. It rather shaped the path the wiki would take in the future.

Fishy Gaspar, a great friend of Electromario2001, who was a famous moderator, created a thread that revolutionized the wiki in such a way that nothing like it would happen until mid-2018. He started a discussion about allowing swears in chat. Everyone was shocked when they had heard about it. No one expected anyone, especially not a normal user like Fishy, to dare do that. The vote ended up a success and almost every user fell in love with their new powers. In 2018, swearing had become completely allowed on the wiki.

On May 18th, the then-admin Uselessguy created a thread titled “Huge changes to this wiki”, which started a giant war between him and the great Brainulator9. Uselessguy tried to rid the wiki of many signature aspects - colored hyperlinks, users being able to start discussions and regular users making promotion threads. The users did not treat this nicely. Sinanco and Thecoollittlepeashooter manifested an event for Uselessguy to get demoted. Uselessguy, saddened by what happened, demoted and banned himself. He came back shortly afterwards, but the damage had already been done. AWPXML, then known as ZombieNinja723, continued Uselessguy’s work and started another thread, this one being a vote rather than a dictative rulebook.

The final strike to this wiki management revolution in 2015 was by Thecoollittlepeashooter. He created a thread that requested all users with suggestions to specify their intentions and reasoning. With the end of the management votes, 2015 came to an end and wrapped up nicely with grand-scale vandal attacks, an almost civil war, and many new users who might just score big later down.

2016

On August 1st 2016, the first ever Weekly Discussion was created. At first, things were looking lively but it didn’t last long and was nearly abandoned at around the 20th discussion. However, user GamesterD revived it with his massive amount of topic ideas(Though some were questionable to say the least) and eventually the discussion were back and running till the 116th one where it officially ended. 3 years later, a new biweekly discussion was made, inspired by its past incarnation.

By the time around PvZ2 and Garden Warfare was released, more users were coming, some good, some bad. Regardless of affliction, the community grew and the wiki was blooming(No pun intended). Articles were being added on, corrected, checked, and read thoroughly to help those who don’t know what to do in the series. Forum discussions and comment sections were used to discuss what the future held for the games. The years 2013-2016 were the glory days for the franchise.

However, nothing built can last forever as, by 2018, the series began to die down and so did the community. Users including staff members left due to lack of interest in the series, not helping the fact the games were not being updated as frequently as before (or not at all, in Heroes’ case). It seemed that the days of the wiki had finally come to an end.

That said, something built and crushed can be brought back up. And indeed, by the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019, things were picking up a bit; bad users such as AnonymousPvZFan23, DamonJD, and Newspaper’s seemingly never ending socks were thrown out of the community, while some users such as Ballistic Planet and TheZombiemelon returned to the community. Staff members were gained faster than lost, and the series was announced to have new content in the future.

But this period was also not without its challenges. In April 2019, staff members began to tire of a problem plaguing the main method they use to communicate. The owners of the staff’s discord server had an unfair monopoly over all users there. The owners, Dung Dinh Anh, and Mental Skillness would promote users to Discord Moderator after holding rigged elections. Users who were loyal to MS would be promoted, even if they did not apply for the position, while dissidents would be silenced with bans. MS could also see everything private the staff decided on for the wiki, even though it was none of his business as he wasn’t not wiki staff themselves. It was a total dictatorship. At 10:00 PM PST on April 28th, TCLP, TZM, Elemec, LettuceBirb, 7 GRAND UMP, and other staff members confronted Mental Skillness and demanded he resign. After an hour of resistance, MS finally surrendered. Elemec/Light Bomber took his place as Discord Owner. He began to reform the discord to be transparent in all matters, represent wiki staff, and give fair promotions and punishments. Unfortunately, this caused some users to leave the discord out of spite, causing abruption across the server making some users including Ballistic Planet and GamesterD regretful for their actions as they did not think of what would happen after they did their deed.

As of the time of writing this, the wiki is steadily growing back from the darkest depths of what it previously was. Currently, the community is working on getting it back up before the incident but what happens in the future whether it’s a full rise or another fall depends on the community of this wiki (and the game series too).