The Weather Channel Wiki (2024)

The Weather Channel Wiki is an online encyclopedia ran through the free wiki platform Fandom. It is the oldest known independent documentation project related to The Weather Channel, including its programming, personalities, music, and fandom, having been founded in 2008, although it has strayed heavily from its original topic throughout its history and, in terms of new content, remains relatively inactive today.

History

The Weather Channel Wiki was established on Fandom, then called Wikia, on August 8, 2008, by TWC fandom user TheRolyPoly.^[1] The number of pages expanded exponentially from the beginning, with the first major pages relating to The Weather Channel but many pages in the following months drifting away from that subject, with many of the wiki's radio and television station pages being added even during this early stage.

Despite this lack of focus, much TWC content that was removed from Wikipedia for notability reasons over the next few years was able to survive because of its reposting on The Weather Channel Wiki, where the content could survive freely with as much detail as users desired. The freedom made available through an independent wiki was also utilized to record various projects and events in the channel's fandom as well, including the SilverStar 8 project and TWC Fan Forums Broadcasting, archiving unusual insights into the TWC fandom at its arguable peak around 2008 to 2010 that may not have survived elsewhere.

By June 2010, less than two years after the founding of the wiki, almost four-fifths of the current 725 articles had been written.^[2] Since the time of exponential growth at the turn of the decade, the wiki has remained largely stagnant, with there having been a period of little to no page growth from 2014, when the wiki surpassed 680 articles^[3], to early 2020, when the wiki reached the 690 article mark.^[4] The wiki has seen a small amount of growth since, with 35 new articles since that point.

Standards and content

Much like The Weather Channel itself throughout the years, The Weather Channel Wiki has had a history of straying from its original purpose which continues to the present. Of the 725 current pages on the wiki, only roughly around a fifth of them have a direct connection to the network, with many more having to do with other television stations, radio stations, television programs, or even fan-made content completely unrelated to The Weather Channel.^[5] Consistent quality standards for writing and formatting are virtually nonexistent on many pages, and while many samples of content and images uploaded to the site are useful, there are plenty of others that either have nothing to do with the network or are unusual examples of fan-made content. The site has also been the target of repeated vandalism over the years, with some edits still remaining in place. Examples of vandalism have even struck the wiki's front page within short time periods, including the name of the wiki being replaced with "The Dick Wiki," the entire front page being moved to a page "The tv station Wiki" (sic), and an image of Mario being plastered at the top within the course of a week in October 2022.^[6] A few years earlier, a vandalism incident involving the entire front page managed to evade reversion for two months between January and March 2016.^[7]

The Weather Channel Wiki has also had a ludicrously significant p*rnography problem. From as early as June 2016 to November 2020, for example, the article for television station WHIO-TV was vandalized with bizarre p*rnographic write-ups, with the edits often lasting months at a time with no reversion.^[8] The incident eventually led to a representative of the station discovering the page and attempting to involve Fandom support staff.^[9] The page was eventually vandalized again with images that were presumably p*rnographic, an edit that remains to this day even though the images have since been deleted. To this day, some p*rnographic images uploaded to the site are still freely viewable.

See also

• The Weather Channel fandom

References