One Piece Wiki:Overview

Origins
Almost every wikia has a main reason for existing. There is always someone who inspires a fan to create a wiki basing on his/her work. For example, if George Lucas was not born, there would be no Star Wars Wikia; if Jim Henson hadn't been born, there never would have been a Muppets Wikia; if Gene Roddenberry hadn't been born, there never would have been a Star Trek Wikia. And if Eiichiro Oda was never born, this wikia would never have been created. Eiichiro Oda is the source of this Wikia's existance.

Once Upon a Time
The story begins when Eiichiro Oda began his career at age 17 as an manga assistant to three different manga artists, and decided to create a pirate-based story. He created other works such as Wanted!, God's Gift for the Future, Monsters and Itsuki Yakou but it was because of One Piece that this site was created. At the age of 22, on Aug 1997, he picked up his pen and began drawing the first chapter of One Piece. One Piece was then released by Shueisha's Shonen Jump.

In 2002 One Piece became international and Viz started to translate the manga volumes, but they only released one every three months of the year. On 2004, after 4kids announced they would be dubbing the series, the One Piece article was created on Wikipedia, which would soon lead to how the One Piece Encyclopedia began.

Birth of the Encyclopedia: 2006
Nearly nine years after One Piece was published, the basics for a One Piece Wikia was made-- long before the present editors. In Febuary of 2006, a user named Kazuya2070 created the wikia but only made one edit before disappearing. However, he showed no indication of why he created this site, and it was never known if Wikipedia was what started him off to found it. But, his rude return many months later strongly suggests he'd created the site for very different reasons.

On April 7th, 2006 STAREYe made one edit on the main page before disappearing until March 24, 2007. In April 11th, 2006 a user named, Coopaii created the Straw Hat Pirates page which is the oldest page on the One Piece Wikia, created the spoiler template, set up the first picture in the main page, set up few info box templates, and created the Monkey D. Luffy page, then named "Luffy D. Monkey." In August 6, 2006 a user named Aquarius505 worked mainly on the main page, did edits on the Luffy page, set up the "Straw Hat Project" page (which was eventually deleted since it was never worked on), set up the One Piece and Anime page, before disappearing on the same day. There have also been a few IP address users (or anonymous contributors) before October 8th. The period between February 2006 to October 8th, 2006 was known as the "Lonely Period," due to One Piece suffering from a terrible stain, thanks to the 4kids dub, so One Piece was largely ignored. Any editors; including anonymous contributors who came to edit here before October 8th were known as the "sooners," and only two users never came back, while the other two came back for a short while before disappearing again.

After August 6, there was no more editors. Thus, the site was left to decay for 2 months and 66 days.

This site changed forever on October 8th, 2006 when a few frustrated Wikipedia editors came over. First it was Mugiwara Franky, and then it was Justyn. On October 10th, SigmasonicX arrived. By October 15th, Murasaki and Angel also came over. By October 18th, Joekido and Cody arrived. And later on, on November 5th, Battle Franky arrived. These people were the first major editors of this Wikia.

They came here after conflicting interests on Wikipedia broke down during September, caused by bland rules and "idiotic users" who wanted to delete many articles. These editors never had the creative freedom they would have here concerning One Piece, and could have discussions that wouldn't result in a ban. Many images doomed to be deleted on Wikipedia were moved here, and many early pages were copied directly from the former, before being adjusted to be suitably changed.

October and the following months, were a harsh time. This site suffered from major "Edit Wars" and conflicts of interests. The Wikia had no rules and set-ups, so arguments caused a few editors to leave. Many articles were being added and it became difficult to catch up. In order to maintain a "universally" recognized naming system, the site had to reject 4Kids dub names and keep the original Japanese names such as "Roronoa Zoro" instead of "Roronoa Zolo."

In early October, a user named Joekido (who used to browse the site long before Oct. 8 but never made an edit), was stressed out because he had recently had his rank on ArlongPark.net stripped, so he came here and sought "revenge" by turning this site into a clone of said site-- only to be repealed by other editors. However, the site was severely damaged and Joekido left an impact on the site. We became "aware" of its status compared to other fansites and took steps to ensure it did not just rip off other websites. But, there was still one more site that had its roots linked directly to the wikia that had yet to be broken.

Due to Kazuya missing in action, talks for an administrator to maintain the site began. One user went to the main Wikia staff to appoint a new administrator, so the staffer, Sparka, (now inactive) set up a vote. Only one person may be a bureaucrat and Justyn was voted most by the current editors.

In late October/early November, many pages were created, while some users wanted to merge others. Joekido wanted to de-merge pages to give the site over thousands of pages like other wikias. Which led to he and Cody into an all out edit war, forcing Joekido to bring Sparka as an administrator, and Sparka appointed Justyn to become a bureaucrat. Finally, as things started to calm down, Joekido began shaping the main page: giving it common templates that were found on many wikia main pages. But he acquired help from Angel, as he wasn't too familiar with codes. Joekido was also responsible for setting up rules.

By December, Kazuya, who had been missing for nine monthes returned and banned some members unfairly. This caused an uproar and Joekido had to once again tag Sparka for help. After order was restored, Kuyaza disappeared once again after apologizing and was given a one month ban by Justyn. The members then resumed giving the site more pages, and avoided anymore edit wars. The main page was given a "Do You Know" box, "One Piece world" box, and a "Featured" box. MF was a template master, BF did many redirects, Masukai handled subs, and Joekido, Angel and Cody cleaned up articles. SigmasonicX had stopped editing here in December, becoming the first of the original editors to leave due to disagreements over the rules. Soon Angel began to prepare the site for a new year where the wikia would take a different path.

During 2006, One Piece was going through half of the Enies Lobby and Post-Enies Lobby arcs. And the One Piece anime was still in the hands of 4Kids, while Viz was still releasing manga volumes at an incredibly slow rate.

At a Snail's Pace: 2007
The site was still nearly a Wikipedia clone since the October era, when several major editors made migrations from there to here, and still referred to the One Piece pages as its "sister site." Most information had not changed from being copied over, and due to the low number of editors, was fast becoming just an out of date alternative.

On January 1st, the site declared total independence from Wikipedia. At first little seemed to change, but by spring of 2007, the effects of its independence began to become noticeable; finally, it began to recover from its rebound of being a Wikipedia clone, to becoming original. Many pages were given an overhaul and reorganized. And after months of work getting away from its deep seeded roots, the site was succeeding in becoming what it was originally meant to be.

But during 2007, the One Piece Wikia was very slow. Only a handful of editors worked here, and rarely did the site update on a quick, regular basis. And it was only once in a long while that new editors came by. Joekido still wanted to push the site to the mature stage quickly, and the site still lacked a logo.

On March of 2007, 4Kids quit dubbing One Piece, and a month later a Texas-based company, FUNimation Entertainment, adopted the series. This was great news to the One Piece community, and excited many fans. And because the newly dubbed FUNimation episodes were set to air on September, the site started to go through major changes in preparation for the expected new traffic. However, despite the series' success, Cartoon Network only aired a few episode before it went on hold, before eventually being cancelled the next year.

Puberty: 2009
In 2009 the One Piece Encyclopedia reached it's puberty stage. On the homepage, an "Announcement" template and "Current Events" template was placed, it has reached 3,000 articles, and we have several foreign affiliations linked to us. And by May 30th, FUNimation was to simulcast the subbed series just an hour after it's original broadcast. But on May 29th, someone had hacked onto the site, and uploaded the episode before it was supposed to air. And Funimation ended up shutting down the site until they could investigate the situation. Finally, more than two months later, on Augest 15th, the plans for simulcast resumed. Even better, Viz decided to release five volumes a month starting on January 2010 to June 2010, in an attempt to try and catch up to Japanese manga releases, and fans would be able to collect 30 volumes. But as much as One Piece became popular, it is unknown if One Piece will ever get highly popular like the Muppets, or Star Wars, or other anime in America, as the wounds caused by 4Kids are still healing.

By this time, One Piece Encyclopedia has been widely edited and there are many solid pages. But, as Angel suggested, there were still many smaller issues to tweak out. The Encyclopedia is still understaffed and many rules aren't finished, and the One Piece Wikia is targeted heavily by vandals and many editors were pouring in.