The Sonic Wiki Zone logo.
The Sonic Wiki Zone, formerly Sonic News Network, is a wiki project that strives to provide a comprehensive repository on information related to the Sonic the Hedgehog series published by Sega. The wiki format allows for anyone to create or edit the wiki, so we can all work collaboratively to make the Sonic Wiki Zone the ultimate source of Sonic the Hedgehog information. The Sonic Wiki Zone also presents users with multiple outlets to share their thoughts and creations. With dedicated forums, blogs, and a discord server, there are endless opportunities to enjoy the Sonic franchise with fellow fans.
- Started: September 11, 2005
- Language: English
- URL: https://sonic.fandom.com
- Number of articles: 20,960
- Administrators: HeroesSquad, Josiahblaze, Luma.dash, Mresc Myself 123, Mystic Monkey, SilverPlays97
Purpose
As stated above, the purpose of Sonic Wiki Zone is to provide a comprehensive, accurate, and up-to-date database on the Sonic the Hedgehog series. This is in service to the Sonic community and the public at large. This repository of information covers all officially licensed Sonic content and the characters, worlds, and stories that are within them. The wiki also documents the people, companies, and organizations that have created official Sonic content. The information the wiki documents is based on factual information from the content itself and/or reliable sources. Within the wiki, there are also high quality images, videos, and audio files that document the Sonic franchise. The users of Sonic Wiki Zone work tirelessly to make comprehensive articles in order for everyone to have easy access to any information regarding the Sonic the Hedgehog series.
Beyond the wiki proper, there are other aspects of Sonic Wiki Zone that work to also achieve our main goal:
Discussion board
The discussion board is used for a variety of different things: Here, users can coordinate in order to achieve editing goals and discuss wiki issues, such as policy, style, design, and coding, as well as participate in user rights nominations. Users also share news relating to the Sonic series; sharing their reactions, thoughts, and discussing it with others. In addition, users also share their thoughts and opinions on different topics in the Sonic series. This casual discussion is also done with polls and forum games. To visit our discussion board, go to Special:Forum.
Blogs
Blogs are used for users to give personal updates, share fan made creations, discuss the video gaming industry, and to share discussion board topics if a user wants to utilize the wiki's layout. Here, users can update everyone on their availability and/or speak their mind openly on wiki issues. They can also share fanart, fan fiction, fan games and projects, sprite comics, and other Sonic-related creations made by them (or they contributed to). Currently, Fandom is not considering integrating MediaWiki support into Discussions, so users can structure their posts better and link to wiki articles with a blog post. To see all recent blog posts, go to Blog:Recent posts
Discord
The Sonic Wiki Zone Discord server allows editors and Sonic fans to instantly communicate with each other. If an editor needs to contact another editor, or wiki admins, in an urgent matter, the discord server is a great and safe way to do this. The discord server is also a great place to socialize with other editors and fans. This is done with a variety of channels to discuss topics and share links and images.
The current Discord server was created by SilverPlays97 and is moderated by wiki admins and discussion mods who volunteer to moderate.
If you see this text, your JavaScript might be disabled or DiscordIntegrator plugin isn't working. If the latter, please contact one of our administrators.
Twitter/BlueSky
Sonic Wiki Zone's Twitter and BlueSky accounts are used to promote editing, share wiki news, Sonic series facts, wiki articles, and uploads by our YouTube channel. Twitter and BlueSky also allow the wiki to interact with Sonic fans; they often reply to tweets/posts that @ the account and share wiki articles. The accounts also retweet fanart, especially ones made by wiki editors and official Sonic artists, along with tweets/posts from official Sonic-related accounts and community figures.
The Twitter and BlueSky accounts are currently managed by HeroesSquad. To go to our Twitter account, go to @Sonic_Wiki on Twitter. To go to our Twitter account, go to @sonicwikizone.bsky.social on BlueSky.
YouTube
Sonic Wiki Zone's YouTube account is used to upload high quality, unfiltered gameplay footage of Sonic video games. These videos are shared in related articles and can be used by the general public for any means. The YouTube account is currently managed by 1stPlayer. To visit our YouTube channel, go to @sonicnewsnetwork3086 on YouTube.
Sonic Wiki Zone currently has an ongoing agreement with subreddit r/sonicthehedgehog to provide a weekly Character of the Week post. This agreement also allows SWZ to promote editing on the sub occasionally. SilverPlays97 currently acts as a liaison to the subreddit and posts the Character of the Week post, with Josiahblaze and Sonic Fan J527 assisting with writing.
Affiliates
Sonic Wiki Zone is affiliated with several other Sonic-related wikis, the majority of which provide Sonic information in languages other than English. All of them share a similar goal to SWZ. For a full list of SWZ's affiliates, visit Sonic Wiki Zone:Affiliates.
History
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Like most wikis, Sonic Wiki Zone had humble beginnings. It was created on September 11, 2005 by a user named Guess Who, who named it Sonic News Network (SNN) after a forum he had previously run. Guess Who's tenure on the wiki was short-lived, but another user, Almafeta, soon adopted the wiki and was granted sysop privileges by Angela Beesley, the co-founder of Wikia. By November 2005, Almafeta had created new articles and expanded upon the existing articles left by Guess Who, but his contributions were not enough to draw in an audience large enough to make the wiki self-sustaining. For the next two years, only a handful of users edited on the wiki, arriving piecemeal and making a small number of contributions before departing. In early 2007, two users from the RuneScape Wiki, Navij11 and Sacre Fi, arrived and adopted the wiki, then effectively abandoned. Angela Beesley granted both of them sysop privileges on February 12, 2007, and their work began. Their contributions initially involved copying material from Wikipedia onto Sonic News Network before implementing their own styles and establishing the infrastructure and framework within which users could operate. The increased activity and larger collection of articles on Sonic News Network in 2007 started to attract new users. One of these users was FerralMoonrender, who made the decision to move pages on fan-made topics into userspace and away from the mainspace articles, which would focus on canon/published Sonic materials. Under the administration of FerralMoonrender and Navij11, the wiki underwent a huge expansion, with a new generation of users arriving and editing. FerralMoonrender also introduced a process for nominating and appointing admins and other user roles, the origin of the process we still use today. Users Fairfieldfencer and SLJCOAAATR 1 took a more authoritarian approach to the administration of the wiki, clamping down on fan-fiction articles and vandal users. They completed the separated fan-fiction articles from canon articles, purging the wiki mainspace of fan-fiction. The community of users and the information in the wiki grew to great new heights, partly fueled by high-profile game releases like Sonic Generations in 2011. To help deal with this, more administrators, sysops, rollbacks, and bureaucrats were taken on. Wikia introduced blogs for users to publish what they cared about and keep in touch with each other, which quickly ballooned until they were hard to keep track of. FreeSmudger suggested that a chatroom feature should be added to the wiki, which was implemented on September 2, 2011 by Bullet Fransisco. The chat moderator user rights were introduced to help manage this feature. Chat allowed faster communication and coordination than had previously been possible, which was useful not just for socializing but also helped users deal with incidents of vandalism as they happened. Since then, Forums have been replaced with Discussions and the original chat feature has largely been phased out in favor of the SNN Discord server. The wiki has been affiliated with several different servers in its history, with Journalistic and DeCool99 hosting previous servers. The current server was created in 2023 by SilverPlays97. This latest iteration is focused on editing the wiki. The SNN community also came together to host a number of events that have raised the profile of the site more widely. In July 11, 2010, BlazeRocks55 created the Sonic Character Tournament, a highly successful tournament in which people could vote on their favorite Sonic characters. Thanks to the help of Sonictoast and Supermorff, the drew increasing numbers of participants over its 34-week run, culminating in a close race between Shadow the Hedgehog and the victor, Sonic the Hedgehog. In 2014, Shadowunleashed13 created the Sonic Level Tournament, which received over a thousand votes on its most popular poll, but which fell through after week 12 of a planned 34. In 2015, the Sonic Game Tournament was launched, this time using the external Challonge tournament management software and sponsored by the Sonic News Channel. Thanks to the help of Journalistic and SilverPlays97, the tournament began and concluded successfully, with Sonic Generations awarded the winning game. The wiki reached 10,000 articles shortly before the tenth anniversary of the wiki on September 11, 2015. In recent years, the site has continued to be updated and improved both by dedicated editors and new users arriving for the first time. NotLessOrEqual helped write down our article guidelines in 2016. DanikV helped with a complete overhaul in design for the wiki's design layout and wordmark in 2017. Veralann helped establish the wiki's Twitter account in March 2018 and a YouTube account in January 2019. SilverPlays97 established an interview series called 12 Questions With, and managed to have interviews with well known figures in the Sonic community. Luma.dash, in addition to redesigning the homepage and sidebar, implemented more features to the wiki, such as colored infoboxes, centered tabs for pages, new designs for navboxes to allow pictures to accompany info and added more tools for moderators to use. In May 2023, Sonic News Network reached the 20,000 article milestone, and on October 17 of that year, it was renamed Sonic Wiki Zone (SWZ) after community consensus. Just as the Sonic franchise shows no sign of slowing down, Sonic Wiki Zone continues to grow. We are constantly pushing to improve the site and its contents, and to attract new users. If you know something we do not, add it, and help us make Sonic Wiki Zone the best Sonic resource there is! |
Policy
Our policies, rules and guidelines are listed at Sonic Wiki Zone:Policy.
External Links
| Policy | Policy (Discussion Board) | Style | Affiliates | Don't feed the trolls | Fan fiction | Wikipedia |
|---|---|
| Community | Community Portal | Administrators | About | Helping Out | Seasonal projects | Userboxes | Editcount |
| Main Page | Featured Article (Nominations) | Poll | 12 Questions With | Featured User |
| Other | Requests for User Rights | Wiki Files | Parent Page | Level Tournament | Character Tournament |