User blog:Kirbyddd/Finally delivered on one of my big promises...

So... I joined this wiki end of 2015 and made good headway. Wrote a couple of articles, reworked a couple of pages, contributed to overall editing. Then I kind of stopped after starting a big project that I never got through. (I haven't hung it up for good, by the way!)  Since then, I've still been a pretty vocal member of our little community (actually, my rambling comments and blogs probably account for half of the posts on the wiki), but I haven't really made any more meaningful contributions. Still, I talk big, acting like I still contribute as much as I did for those few months.

Well, I've finally put my money where my mouth is and done something big. I'm now happy to present to you my first real contribution in two years:

I've been working on creating a counterpart to this wiki, based on Arawi Keiichi's new manga, CITY. The place now has 40 articles, though all except a handful of them are just basic summaries. Now onto the bigger part:  Some of you might remember when I was talking about a newsletter I was writing a while back... Well, It's done, and it's pretty big. I've prepared a kind of "State of the Wiki Address" that gives a summary of what's been done to date, what can be worked on now, and what to look forward to in the future. Pretty much everything you need to know to get an overview of the wiki, and when I say everything you need to know, I mean everything. It's a massive 3000 word newsletter announcing the official opening of the CITY Wiki to the world. Pretty much anyone who reads this will be set up for editing on the wiki.

There is one drawback to this. There isn't really anything that can be edited right now. There are a few pages that could use work, but the majority of the pages are placeholders for characters I that I can confirm exist, but have little to no other information on. Because of this, I won't be immediately linking to the CITY Wiki on other sites (which I'm planning to do in the future), but the newsletter will play an important role regardless. Luckily, the English translation of CITY has been announced for March 2018, so the wait won't be too long. Between now and then, I'm going to be finishing up the various technical pages like policies and tutorials that are required on wikis, then we'll be all set for the English release. Around that time, I'll set up a welcome page for new users, intoducing them to the wiki, linking to some tutorials for brand new editors, and using the newsletter as the central hub of discussion for the wiki's new community. I'll then officially announce the opening of the Wiki in a few different places (and likely make a fool of myself in the process).

The community on the CITY Wiki is likely to be small, similar to this place, but there is one main difference. Nichijou was already pretty far into its run when this wiki was created, and the English manga wasn't even released until the series was over. CITY is brand new, just completing its first year of serialization, and the English translation will quickly catch up to the Japanese version, which is only on Volume 3. That's almost a third of Nichijou's run, but CITY puts out a chapter every week compared to Nichijou's once a month, and unless it starts to take hiatuses, the manga's current momentum indicates it will be a volume heavy series (last I checked, the chapters are now in the 40s and still introducing new characters). This means that the CITY Wiki will continue to grow for many years as the series progresses, meaning much more potential for community growth. In addition, it seems Arawi Keiichi finally beginning to work on boosting his publicity in Japan (CITY seems to be getting some buzz, and it has gotten a full cover on the magazine multiple times), and with Vertical now regularly publishing his work (implying good profits), he will likely gain a bit of a following in the West as well. All that said, Arawi doesn't look like he'll be breaking out of his "cult following" status in the West anytime soon, unless he starts to put out some really astounding work (which isn't out of the question is you look at what he's doing now).

So... I invite you all to check out the Newsletter, and have a look around the wiki. In a few short months, it will hopefully be a bustling center of activity. I mentioned this earlier, but I'm specifically designing the CITY Wiki to link back and forth with the Nichijou Wiki, kind of creating a dual wiki system. Hopefully the activity in the CITY Wiki will spill over to here, since there is still plenty to work on here. Speaking of which, I know this is the tenth time I've said it, but I will eventually finish what I started here, and hopefully make some interesting additions to this place.

Here's to a new era of Arawi Keiichi's work!

