Robot Wars Wiki:History

In 2008, Robot Wars Wiki was created as part of the long-running Wikia project. Prior to this, the only information on the many years dead TV show Robot Wars was from the Team Run Amok tournament trees, and the archived website Tectonic Robot Wars. Many of the Robot Wars community had congregated on Youtube, where they held discussions in the comment section.

The creation of Robot Wars Wiki led not only to a new location for the Robot Wars community, but it established the facts and results of the entirety of the Robot Wars franchise. This article describes how Robot Wars Wiki came to be what it is. "I had been toying with the idea of creating the wiki for a few weeks, but I was unsure whether I wanted to put in all the work that would be necessary to get it up and running. In the end I decided that it would be worth the effort to create a definitive source of Robot Wars information and it would also give me a good excuse to watch all the battles again, something which I hadn’t done since Five had cancelled the series four years earlier. I knew I would need help eventually, but I realised that it might be a while before anybody else arrived so I worked as hard as I could to create a solid basis for wiki in those early weeks."

- Christpohee

2008
Robot Wars Wiki was created on February 18, 2008 by Christophee, a long-time user of Wikipedia. Having edited a few Robot Wars related articles on Wikipedia and seen that most of them had been deleted as they were not deemed notable enough for the site, Christophee decided to create a specialised wiki on which all aspects of the show could be covered in full detail. Having had the request to start the wiki granted, Christophee set to work creating a basic logo for the wiki and improving the main page.

Having done this, Christophee tried to drum up some support for the wiki by advertising it on the talk page for the main Robot Wars page on Wikipedia, but did not receive any replies. Christophee worked alone for two weeks to get the wiki up an running, creating articles on Robot Wars, all nine UK series (including Extreme) and the three World Championships, as well as creating a few useful templates.

On March 5, 2008 Christophee attempted to recruit two fellow Wikipedia Robot Wars fans called CBFan and Izzy259. For two more weeks there was no reply and Christophee created articles for the UK and World Champion robots and uploaded images for some of them from Wikipedia. CBFan finally joined the wiki and made his first edit on March 20, 2008, quickly establishing himself as a valuable user by continuing the work started by Christophee on the individual series articles and creating new general articles for the house robots and notable competitor robots.

"Hi there, Robot Wars fan! I thought you might like to know that I have recently started a new Robot Wars Wiki on Wikia.com which can be found here. The Wiki is in its very early stages at the moment and it would be great if you could help to make it a success. The reason I have started it is because there is a limit to the amount of articles that can be made about Robot Wars on Wikipedia and you may know that most of the articles about individual robots have been removed from the site due to notability issues. I am therefore inviting all fans of the show to use the Robot Wars Wiki as a new home for all Robot Wars articles that can or cannot make it onto Wikipedia and together we can make the biggest database of Robot Wars content on the worldwide web. It would be great if you could help out and also tell other Robot Wars fans you may know about the site. Thank you!"

- Christophee’s invitation

In June 2008 CaptainAlex joined the wiki and began to add battle summaries to the main series pages, which were originally removed by CBFan, but eventually moved to their own articles. Following this, several other individual heat articles were created, mainly by CaptainAlex, which provided a significant expansion for the wiki.

In August 2008, tentative Wikia users such as Behesloth and Robert Caprenter created and edited several new articles for robots that were never UK or World Champions, such as Behemoth and Hypno-Disc. These were immediately redirected to other articles by CBFan as he did not deem them as worthy of having their own articles, something which would become a major discussion point on the wiki early the following year.

It was not long afterwards that a Competitor Robots page was established, with a brief summary on all semi-finalists and other notable UK robots. It was this page that CBFan often redirected to, and this page that would ultimately lead to new changes.

From the end of August through to the end of 2008, new articles were created for the Gauntlet and the Trial but very few others were made and the wiki started to become stagnant until January 2009 and the arrival of Toon Ganondorf, who would breathe new life into the wiki that it desperately needed to help it to grow.

2009
2009 heralded the arrival of several Wikians who would bring about earth-shaking differences to Robot Wars Wiki, but it took a long struggle on many parts.

January
"In retrospect, I think its very amusing that my first edits were on January 1st. Its almost like the new year marked a new beginning for the Wiki. In many ways, it did."

- Toon Ganondorf

On the 1st of January16:38 Wiki time, Toon Ganondorf uploaded File:Razer, and added it to the Razer article.

Toon Ganondorf, or TG as he would later be know, took one look at the tiny amount of pages that were on the wiki and immediately expanded into individual articles. TG drew on the existing pages about each series, despite his almost non-existent knowledge. After the establishment of Firestorm, Hypno-Disc, Pussycat and Behemoth, TG set up the Requests for Adminship page, as it was his true desire to become an admin. "On Smashwiki, where I came from, I’d been rejected as an admin candidate. This led to my desire to set up the Robot Wars Wiki so that I could hold the power to delete and block. When I realised that a wiki already existed, I felt that it would take a while to get there, but I definitely wanted it, and it was going to be easier here than elsewhere."

- Toon Ganondorf

At this time, those pages set up by TG were poorly constructed, but were still more than anywhere else on the web. However, CBFan, upon seeing these articles back, immediately redirected them. However, unlike Behesloth and the others, TG hit back, restoring his articles. This action set hostility between CBFan and TG that would last many long months.

TG restored the Mortis page, as well as creating a page for Corkscrew and SMIDSY. It was Corkscrew that would bring about the greatest headache for the three involved, as CBFan was unwilling to even consider it a Notable robot. TG also split each House Robot from their original overview page, which were also redirected for being extremely sloppy and poorly done. "If you mention the word “notability” to me these days, I’m quite likely to scream. It was a frustrating, and ultimately pointless procedure, I think."

- Toon Ganondorf

Christophee finally settled the dispute in the first ever discussion at the Community Portal. Here, CBFan, TG and Christophee decided on key points that led to the beginnings of the wiki. CBFan’s proposal that the Wiki move through very notable robots first, then down to the less notable ones, was taken on board with the trio, who then moved on into doing so. The House Robots were allowed their own pages with a restructure and the creation of the House Robot Profile Template, but remained poor quality until late in the year. In the discussion, Christophee also put up the possibility of beginning to categorise articles. The first few categories included Seeded machines and UK Finalists. This all happened in the space of three days.

The rest of January followed, and at the creation of Terrorhurtz, another issue arose. TG posted on the community portal as to whether Killerhurtz should be included in Terrorhurtz’s article, or whether it should be left off. Christophee tentatively put forward his belief that all robots should eventually get their own articles, but he was spoken over by CBFan, who proposed that all robots from the same team should share an article with their most notable robot. Later on, Robot the Bruce was added to Chaos 2, Beast of Bodmin to Roadblock, and so on.

By now, CBFan and TG had gotten used to each other, both aware that neither was going anywhere. On January 14, TG’s request for adminship went through, and Christophee promoted him. In addition, Christophee promoted CBFan to admin, hoping that the two users would resolve their differences with their new responsibility. He was wrong. "With the wiki finally being expanded I knew that I would eventually need at least one administrator to help me run things, and I was encouraged by Toon Ganondorf’s early edits. I was reluctant to give admin status to a brand new user, but TG’s hard work and devotion to the wiki during his first two weeks convinced me that he deserved promotion. Having agreed to promote TG, I thought it was only fair that I also promoted CBFan as he had been working hard virtually since the wiki was created and had helped me a lot in the early months. Looking back, maybe I should have ensured that they both possessed the necessary skills needed to be an administrator, but I was an inexperienced bureaucrat and I thought that their hard work was enough to merit promotion. I had hoped that with their new responsibilities, TG and CBFan would resolve their differences for the good of the wiki, but unfortunately that did not happen for many, many months."

- Christophee

Two days later, with the creation of the Gravedigger page, another argument kicked up between the two. It was here that TG established the Opinion Policy, outlawing Bot-Hating and Bot-Worshipping. The first Terminology pages were created that same day – Clusterbots and Walkerbots. TG also continued uploading images from websites, and the previously stagnant wiki was now alive with colour, but it was struggling to find its feet with only three regular contributors – CaptainAlex continued to write the First Wars heats before moving on to the Second, but remained outside of the main discussions.

On January 17, Christophee put in the first Robot History for Roadblock. The others jumped at this idea, giving them to Panic Attack and Tornado. This idea soon spread, but it was a long time before every robot had its full summary.

On January 21, internal links were utilised after TG deleted the redirects Mousetrap 2, X-Terminator 2 and Atomic 2. January 25 also saw TG develop the Did You Know Template, but this was not used outside his user page, and included the same 5 facts for many months.

TG also established the first Watercooler Forum discussion with a discussion on the Series 4 Award recipients. However, this topic was not discussed heavily.

At the end of January, the total list of every UK Series Competitor was proposed, similar to a page created on Wikipedia by CBFan. However, this ultimately did not happen until April. TG also managed to get the Robot Wars Wiki a Spotlight, which brought significantly more attention to the Wiki.

Finally, after a solid month’s work from all three admins, every semi-finalist was complete. From there, TG published a list of robots he believed warranted an article next. Despite some arguments around Derek in particular, robot’s articles were created left, right and centre. CBFan published his final list.

More arguments continued between CBFan and TG, but these were relatively mild.

February
January’s Wiki period was so extensive, that TG created the first archives on the Community Portal and his own talk page.

There was another huge clash between CBFan and Toon Ganondorf, this time regarding 259, and its “notability”. TG yielded this argument when it became clear that CBFan would not.

In late February, TG’s most notable section was completed, and the “Big Three” moved on to various other robots. There was then a decision to put all insignificant robots on a page called Minor Series _ Competitors for each series. However, once it became clear that TG wanted full length articles anyway, Christophee and CBFan decided to move each robot to an individual article regardless of performance. The Minor _ Competitors was dispatched very quickly.

February passed without further incident, except with the arrival of another user – Gutripper. This Wikian had originated from Smash Wiki just as TG had, and came over at the request of TG. His first edit was to upload a picture of Haardvark in late January, but had indicated that he would not be staying. However, he contributed significantly in February, helping the Big Three remove the final few Content categories on Robot Articles. By the end of February, Robot Wars Wiki had taken a significant step forward.

March
March heralded the arrivals of several new users, but only two remained to significant aid of the Wiki. Llamaman201 was a new Wikian, but his eagerness very much took the load off the Big Three. In addition, famed Youtube name Resetti’s Replicas joined the Wiki under the name RA2, and brought a much desired element of fun to the Wiki. RA2 also introduced the Wiki to rwnl.tk, which proved a very useful website in procuring Robot images, as well as teaching TG and Gutripper how to printscreen images. This technique became extremely useful for the Wiki later on.

"I originally discovered the wiki back in the summer of ’08, but because of the hostile environment, I decided I wanted nothing to do with it. In the time I was away, my passion for Robot Wars still was well and alive; you can see on my YouTube channel that I was actively posting videos in my absence. Once I’d become a well-known name, I decided to return.  I figured that I could use my replicas as evidence of my devotion to Robot Wars.  Anyone can say they’re a fan, but when you have an entire channel devoted to showcasing how you explored and replicated each and every detail of the robot with a fine-toothed comb...  It's proof positive that you are no part-time Robot Wars fan. Show, don't tell, as the adage goes."

- RA2

The Notables template was finally established in March, listing all heat finalists and competition winners outside the semi-finalists. The selection criteria was a particular controversy among users, particularly with Centurion. Eventually, Gutripper and TG won the argument and Centurion was allowed on the template.

Gutripper immediately intervened into the arguments between CBFan and Toon Ganondorf. However, his protests at having conflicting admins fell on deaf ears, and he was blocked for his troubles for a short period.

Once he returned, Gutripper sided with TG in the discussion of a new Annihilator set up. The previously uninformative setup was ditched in favour of a Sixth through to First setup.

Throughout March, the Wikis articles grew significantly, with articles such as Weld-Dor, Ultor, Hydra and Chompalot being written. Christophee also created the Style Guide in order to provide new editors with a set of editing guidelines.

March also saw TG and Christophee alter the Request for Adminship page into the much simpler Request for Promotion. The idea for Request for Adminship was taken from SmashWiki, but after visiting the Harry Potter Wiki, TG simplified the page significantly.

CBFan also raised his problem with the Wikia bot user welcoming vandals and spammers, such as DJSimmy2k9. As a result, TG disabled the Wikia user.

April
April brought about a significant change to the Wiki. A Wikipedia user named Spinningspark brought across a page that was deleted from Wikipedia. However, CBFan immediately fought the page’s creation on instinct. Spinningspark appealed both to Toon Ganondorf and on the Community Portal, but CBFan deleted those comments as well. Faced with an admin that was alienating new users, something that Robot Wars Wiki really needed, Christophee made a hard decision in stripping CBFan of his admin privileges. Not long afterwards, stating that Toon Ganondorf’s hatred for him was so strong, CBFan departed the wiki with the intent of never returning. "I was very reluctant to demote CBFan as he had been a valuable member of the wiki and I hoped that I could get him to improve his behaviour by reasoning with him. However, when his actions directly caused a new user to leave the wiki that really was the last straw. I tried to persuade Spinningspark to stay but the damage had already been done. I could not have an administrator who was alienating new users so I had to take the reluctant decision to strip him of his admin powers. I was disappointed when he left though as I thought he could still be a valuable member of the wiki, and I’m glad that he was able to put the incident behind him and continue to be an outstanding contributor."

- Christophee

With CBFan gone, Christophee began the grand list of UK Series Competitors himself, listing by the most notable robots in the team’s debut. This list was added to for several months until it was at sufficient length at the start of June.

However, it was not long later that CBFan started contributing anonymously. Gutripper, Christophee and Toon Ganondorf immediately recognised his tone. Irritated at this, TG blocked CBFan’s IP addresses mercilessly, forcing CBFan to return to his account, albeit reluctantly.

Later in April, TG utilised an effective system of Succession Boxes from the Harry Potter Wiki. CBFan also came up with the idea to split the Semi-Finals for each Series from the main Wars article. Gutripper’s contribution during this time was to use the Printscreening technique to begin uploading images for each battle. He added these to various semi-finals once they had been split. Gutripper also took over Featured Content – Robot Wars and the First Wars Grand Final had been the respective Featured Article and Video for 14 months now, so Gutripper obliged to take over with permission from TG and Christophee.

In late April, CaptainAlex had opened a Request for Promotion. However, Gutripper, TG and Christophee opposed Alex, feeling that he was too inconsistent and only wanting the powers for a reward. CaptainAlex was not heard of for a fair while after that.

May
Early in May, CBFan deleted an entire page of a Series 3 episode. In response, Gutripper told him off. TG was more direct, issuing a one-day ban to CBFan. Beside himself with anger, CBFan insulted TG and departed the wiki once more. "I was shocked and quite hurt by the extremity of his reaction. My brother, parents and friend all read the response and were appalled – I was reluctant to continue working there. I got over it fairly quickly, and decided to keep going."

- Toon Ganondorf

Not long afterwards, TG took on a hard task of sorting robot redirects to appropriate parts of a page. He had also opened a Request for Bureaucrat Promotion, which Christophee passed when TG received three supports. Gutripper, TG and Christophee also took on a huge task of re-categorising images, and on the 15th of May, TG changed the Forum Water cooler to the Pits, which was another idea taken from Harry Potter Wiki.

Late in May, Christophee had been taking on the management of his new wiki – the Animals of Farthing Wood, so TG took it upon himself to set up a new Awards and Badges system as incentives for good edits. Gutripper received the first Award for Best Design in his creation of the Minor Meltdown page. TG also edited the Monaco sidebar to include browsing links to various articles.

June
In June, the Did You Know template and the Poll were added to the main page alongside the Featured Videos and Articles by Gutripper. Soon after, Gutripper’s amount of contributions decreased significantly.

In June, discussion began on international robots. Christophee had already created pages on Robot Wars: Extreme Warriors back in January, but now the discussions began in earnest about expanding outside the UK Series. When TG – an Australian – proposed his nation’s two representatives, Christophee stated that they would all get articles eventually. TG asked that they finish the UK robots first and Christophee agreed – Zorro was written later that day, bringing the Wiki very close to finishing.

TG also started up a competition with some fresh new users – namely Zutroy1 and Llamaman201. It was mostly a plan to benefit the wiki using his new badges and awards as incentives. IP addresses frequently visited the wiki, leaving an infobox but no information. TG told new users that they would be rewarded if they sufficiently expanded an article of his choosing and one of theirs. It succeeded as Llamaman201 was awarded the Best Engineered Award for his expansion of Red Dragon and Brimhur.

June 15 saw RA2 make the first expansion into Dutch Robot Wars. The American user had gained extensive knowledge of Dutch Robot Wars from rwnl.tk, and it was now that he created the article Dutch Robot Wars: Series 2. He also expanded Crushtacean to include its time as Krab Bot in that Series, and created the PulverizeR article as well. As a result, TG presented RA2 with the first badge for Crushtacean. This was swiftly followed by one for Stinger. June also saw the Forum Flipped Out of the Arena converted into a proper informative page by Toon Ganondorf.

The most significant change in June was the arrival of Salak. A talented Wikian, Salak created a new results table format which immediately appealed to the whole Wiki and was swiftly taken up and adopted into all the robot articles.

TG had disappeared for some time now, and when he finally reappeared, he revealed that he was sick with swine flu. However, he still managed to contribute to the wiki, mostly handing out badges and keeping others rolling in his absence. The 9 days that TG was sick was the longest period of time he spent away from the Wiki since his very first day.

July
Once again, CBFan returned in July. He immediately made edits to Plunderbird, accusing the Wiki of not being consistent. A recovering TG started a bitter argument, and banned each of CBFan’s IP addresses just as he had in April. CBFan returned to the Wiki once more, after a long discussion between CBFan and TG.

Another new user joined the ranks of Robot Wars Wiki. Ohargreaves of Youtube, renamed ManUCrazy, joined the wiki with excellent edits to Behemoth. He immediately received a badge, one of many he would go on to receive.

Also in July, TG set the precedent of Did You Know disputes, and he and Christophee re-activated the Wikia user.

Midway through July, TG made contact with Noel Poncelot of Hassocks Hog, John Willoughby of Steel Avenger and Laurie Calvert of Lightning. These roboteers helped TG improve quality of certain articles.

July also saw one of the greatest shifts in the Wikia. On the Community Portal, TG proposed that all robots be split to individual articles. This same idea had been suggested by Hunterj much earlier, but had been disregarded at the time. This idea was supported by general consensus, and the split began immediately. The Merge/Split Forum allowed the Wikians to vote for robots to merge into once article, or to be split with a team page. The Tetanus robots are one example of a merge.

As a follow-up, TG constructed the Job List. This page listed all ongoing projects as well as pages badly in need of editing.

Late in July, TG also proposed that the Extreme Robot History be altered. He also published The Combat Robot Hall of Fame article on Robot Wars Wiki. Also created was the List of Shortest Battles in UK Robot Wars, a concept grasped by the rest of the Wiki and developed over the following months. The rest of July passed without incident.

August
In August, the Wikians set up new articles in the Annihilator and Tag Team Terror, whilst CBFan received the first non-robot badge for dramatically expanding the second season of Extreme Warriors.

On August 11th, TG pushed for a more professional style of writing on the wiki by putting out a sitenotice regarding the acceptable elements of style. It stated that editors should be extra careful to avoid abbreviations, slang, and referring to a singular robot as “they”

"The problem usually arises when users watch Robot Wars, and hear Jonathan Pearce calling singular robots “they,” and speaking in a largely conversational tone. Then, when they go to write the summaries, they incorrectly use Jonathan Pearce as their yardstick."

- RA2

Llamaman201 proposed a new idea on the 11th, helping the Wiki list each robot’s Wins and Losses. This was spread out across the Wiki shortly after discussion closed. August was in general a very quiet month, however, with RA2, Christophee and Llamaman201 all taking holidays at various stages.

Although the Wiki had already begun work on Video Game articles, they begun in earnest in August. Also in August, TG received the results of German Robot Wars from his Dutch contacts, who had provided him with the first Dutch Series results also. These pieces of information made Robot Wars Wiki the only place on the internet to list the results of every single Robot Wars tournament in the world.

Around the final week of August, the focus turned towards pages of people in Robot Wars. Thanks to TG, Christophee, and Helloher, several presenters’ pages received a much-needed expansion.

28th of August was marked by the arrival of Headbanger14, a long time Robot Wars fan, budding roboteer, and the second American user on the Wiki. He quickly established a name for himself by kick-starting a handful of Extreme Warriors competitors’ articles.

The 18 month anniversary for Robot Wars Wiki passed, and Christophee deliberated over a celebration. TG’s answer was the Wikia Series 8, which was posted at the new Forum base The Arena.

From the eight big users of Robot Wars Wiki in 2009, the eighth was about to arrive. Late August heralded the arrival of Helloher, a budding roboteer and Robot Wars extraordinaire. However, with Helloher’s arrival came a loss to Robot Wars Wiki – Gutripper turned over his responsibilities as Featured Content Co-ordinator to TG and departed the Wiki in order to follow his medicinal studies properly.

September
September 6 saw Wikia Series 8 kick off to a well-enjoyed start. Fun aside, several other jobs were completed during September.

18th of September saw the creation of a UK Finalists page, which quickly became a highly edited project, and was completed within a short period.

Also proposed on the Community portal by Helloher was the idea of pages on the different weapon types in Robot Wars. This idea was toyed with, but ultimately discarded for a short period of time. However, at the same time as this, Helloher wrote Direct Action, the very last UK Series competitor to be written. The project that had started in January was now finished.

Though he had but a month’s experience on the Wiki, Helloher campaigned for promotion to Rollback’r. His devotion to the Wiki impressed the bureaucrats, who both agreed that the promotion would be well-deserved. On September 27th, the request was officially granted.

However, as the month of September drew to a close, there was another storm on the horizon. An IP user created pages for several Extreme Warriors competitors, severely lacking in content and well below the acceptable standards. CBFan intervened, but his temper got the better of him. He wiped the pages clean, and replaced them with redirects to the Extreme Warriors page, harshly telling off the IP user responsible. TG however, did not see this as an appropriate way to handle the situation. He undid CBFan’s edits, and protected the pages so that regular users like CBFan couldn’t edit them. Infuriated by this action, CBFan took the page protection as a personal attack, and lashed out at TG before declaring that he was leaving the Wiki for good. TG refused to take CBFan’s resignation seriously, as he had threatened to leave several times before but never had. He wrote a message on CBFan’s talk page expressing his beliefs, which CBFan promptly deleted. For over a month, that was the last time he was heard from.

October
The first half of October was largely uneventful, with everyone working hard and going about their business. TG rolled out new categories, and RA2 unearthed several dozen pictures of Dutch and German competitors. On October 20th, TG reached the prestigious milestone of 10,000 edits. To celebrate, he had everyone gauge how well they knew him, by hazarding a guess his age. The majority of guesses were in the range of the low twenties, so it came as a shock when he revealed that he was only 17. "Those of you who will now see me as a child, I ask you to go and stick your heads down a toilet - I'm still the same person I was."

- TG

Towards the end of the month, TG and Christophee’s busy schedules caught up with them, and both foresaw that they would have to reduce their level of activity on the wiki during the early part of November. With the joint bureaucrats of Robot Wars Wikia on the verge of inactivity, tough choices were saved when RA2 wrote a passionate request for promotion on October 28th. Using his replicas as proof of his devotion to Robot Wars, he promised to handle conflicts with a firm but gentle approach. In the hours that followed, TG, Helloher, Christophee, and Llamaman all came out with resounding support for RA2. Less than 24 hours after RA2’s request had been made, TG granted it, and promoted him to admin.

November
RA2’s first test as an admin came soon afterwards. On November 11th, CBFan returned to the wiki, claiming he was there to participate in the fan made World Cup competition, and nothing more. TG reposted the message that CBFan deleted right before he left, sparking another flame war between them. Interventions from several users, including Christophee, came to naught. Just as things came to a fiery climax, RA2 stepped in and provided a reasoned mediation, mollifying the irritated CBFan and restoring a long-lasting peace in the community.

"Back when I was just a regular user, I could duck out and avoid the fire when arguments like this one arose. But having recently been promoted to admin, I felt a newfound sense of responsibility."

- RA2

November 11th marked the beginning of another large project; pages for weapon types. The pages would include a list of all the robots to wield each weapon, and assembling lists would be no easy task. Nevertheless, everyone in the community pitched in and helped. Before long, most of the lists and descriptions were finished.

December
On the 10th of December, Thyrus, Helloher, and RA2 completed preparations for replica tournament on the computer game Robot Arena 2. They had offered to build replicas for anyone who didn’t have a copy of the game, so that everyone in the community could take part. The first battle was posted that day, with a new one added every day or so.

Having grown tired of anons and new users hanging around the forums instead of doing editing work, TG decided to lay down some guidelines. On the 18th of December, he posted a bulletin, telling anonymous users that they were considered expendable, and were not allowed to take part in the forum games or fantasy battles. He also stated that registered users could not post in the arena forums unless they satisfied the edit count quota, which he and RA2 had set up.

On the 18th of December, RA2 was perusing the website of Team Run Amok, a father and son team from Extreme Warriors. While looking through the Q&A section, he came across a somewhat disconcerting dialogue between an anonymous inquirer and Mark Joerger, the captain of Run Amok. The anon had mentioned the Robot Wars Wiki in his question, prompting to Joerger to dryly reply that he was growing tired of doing research for the wiki and not getting any of the credit. The anon had written an inflammatory response, which only served to aggravate Joerger.

After seeing this back-and-forth, RA2 was concerned that the spark could turn into a wildfire if left to burn. Out of all the American robot teams, Run Amok had arguably the most power on the Internet, and negative PR was the last thing the Wiki needed. He posted a message to the community, telling whomever was responsible that they were not to escalate the feud any further. No further inflammatory messages were posted, and the culprit remained anonymous. The community hoped that that would be the end of it, but Mark Joerger had other ideas.

On December 20th, the elder Joerger joined the Wiki under the name Run Amok. His first order of business was to wipe away the Combat Robot Hall of Fame page. It was quickly reverted, prompting him to go post angry forceful messages on several users’ talk pages, stating that copying the Hall of Fame page from his site was a copyright violation and that if it was not taken down, he would be reporting to the Wikia staff. He also demanded that his website be cited for every quote copied from it. Though they were put off by his abrasiveness, the admins attempted to reason with him, citing that they needed a page on the Combat Robot Hall of Fame, admitting that they shouldn’t have copied the descriptions of the robots, and offering to get rid of them but keep the list of robots up. However, Run Amok was not willing to compromise, stating that any mention at all of the Combat Robot Hall of Fame was a copyright violation, continuing to wipe Hall of Fame page and post harsh messages. Though TG sympathized for Run Amok’s plight, he could not overlook his unacceptable conduct, and was forced to block him. Run Amok responded by coming to the site as an IP. He was quickly recognized, and the IP was blocked. He tried again with another IP, who was also blocked. This was the last heard from Run Amok. He did not appear on the wiki again, however because of the incident, Team Run Amok no longer accepts questions about Robot Wars on the “Ask Aaron” page.

Though the experience with Run Amok had been stressful, he did have a point about citations. Christophee posted a new announcement to the community, stating that all quotes taken from a still-active website were to be properly cited. He also asked users to assist in finding pages where such quotes were posted, and add citations to them. Though few articles were affected by this change, it was a significant wake-up call to the community, and another advance towards professionalism.

January
2010 began on an exciting note for the Robot Wars Wiki; RA2 posted the Grand Final of the replica tournament on 4th January, in which by X-Terminator, captained by Christophee, managed a dominant victory over Delldog, built and captained by Thyrus.

6th of January saw the arrival of another new user, Deadboutliza. Though he proved to be an eager contributor, he rubbed the admins the wrong way. He professed to submitting multitudes of inane Robot Wars questions to Ask Aaron, as a “claim to fame,” and was oblivious towards the irritation such questions caused the Joergers. He also gave the impression of selfishness, writing on his page that he “NEEDED” to know more about Robot Wars, and insisting his write-ups were “good enough” even when told otherwise.

After TG restored the sitenotice about editing guidelines, Deadboutliza gradually began to show improvement; he removed several inflammatory sections on his userpage, and began listening to feedback, earning his first badge, for editing Rosie the Riveter, on January 19th.

However, things quickly went sour again, as Deadboutliza began making more and more careless mistakes. When confronted, he began protesting the rules instead of improving himself. Fed up, TG gave him one last ultimatum, telling him to shape up, and stop talking about conspiracy theories. Christophee added that his edits had become sloppy, and not worthy of badges until they were fixed. Deadboutliza continued to whine about badges, and TG, at the end of his rope, blocked him.

The final event of January was not restricted to the Wikia. TG once more made contact with WJ Dijkstra of Gravity, and WJ was surprised that no one had offered to provide the remaining series of Dutch Robot Wars. He offered to convert them to digital version and make them available for viewing. In thanks, RA2 created the first roboteer page, WJ Dijkstra.