Celebrating Fifteen Years of Barney Wiki

SUPER-DEE-DUPER! We're celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of Barney Wiki all this year in 2023!

History

Barney Wiki

On October 18, 2004, Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley Starling founded WikiCities, a wiki hosting service that hosts wikis mainly on entertainment topics. It was later renamed to Wikia on March 27, 2006 before being renamed to Fandom in 2019. During the time Fandom was Wikia, Wikia had to approve of proposals for new wikis, rather than users simply creating a new wiki without permission. One of the wikis that was an approved proposal was based on the Barney the Dinosaur, which was simply titled Barney Wiki.

Barney Wiki was founded on September 9, 2008, the same day that the video The Best of Barney was released, which was a video commemorating Barney’s 20th Anniversary. Founded by Kazi22, it was one of the first 100,000 wikis on the platform. Since its founding, Barney Wiki has had over ten administrators, including longtime admins Huge barney fan and Drew, with the latter serving as the site's (longest) bureaucrat since October 7, 2009. In the mid-2010s, Barney Wiki was hit by several vandals with much cleaning up to do which resulted in much of the articles being locked indefinitely to prevent these vandals. A lot of the original admins of Barney Wiki became inactive and eventually new users to the site and community were promoted to further elevate the site. New admins included Luna, Andrew, Isaac Nelson and Miller.

In the Summer of 2019, Barney Wiki got its first Wiki Manager, which indicated that it was one of the biggest sites on the platform. Mandy was the manager of Barney Wiki until 2020 when Lostris took over, who spearheaded much of the articles to be unlocked as the wiki was now able to combat against them. Longtime editor and admin Miller was promoted to becoming the new wiki manager (now called Wiki Representative) on August 29, 2022.

Barney Wiki has continued to grow throughout the years, even being ranked in the top 550 wikis on the platform, beating out fandoms such as Marvel’s Spider-Man and Ratchet & Clank. Over the years, plenty of cast and crew from Barney have provided edits on the site.

In 2021, it was announced that a documentary based on Barney was to be released the following year, which was eventually revealed to be titled I Love You, You Hate Me. On December 1, 2021, a few users of Barney Wiki were reached out to by Matt McDonald, the archival producer of the documentary, for help. Despite other wikis being reached out to for this type of project and being credited, users and the site itself went unnoticed in the documentary. However, Barney Wiki was acknowledged and sourced by Distractify, an online publication and Internet media company, during the release and buzz of the documentary, solidifying it as a trusted source of Barney information. Distractify is one of the many online publications and internet companies that have sourced and acknowledged Barney Wiki within the first fifteen years. Barney Wiki has also been acknowledged by The Daily Beast, Vice and HuffPost.

Contributors

Notable Barney Alumni

Acknowledgements

Barney Wiki has been mentioned by various online publications throughout the years and while there's far too many to include in this post, here are a few notable acknowledgements:

Mentions

Linked

Celebration

Highlights

Community Connect

Barney at CC '23 — (Speak 'n Sing Jumbo) Barney at Community Connect 2023.

In honor of the fifteenth anniversary of Barney Wiki, Barney was spotted at Fandom's 2023 Community Connect! During the event, he was spotted with a few Fandom staff members, including Brandon Rhea, Vice President of Community and Perkins Miller, the CEO of Fandom! Lots of pictures were taken, as well as lots of hugs from various individuals!

Logo

In honor of the fifteenth anniversary, we have a new logo! Created by Miller and Isaac Nelson, the new logo is based on the upcoming Barney's World series that combines the old with the new! This new logo can be spotted on the home page of Barney Wiki when viewing the site in dark mode.

Involvement

We would love for you to celebrate with us! Share with us in the comments section on what your favorite article is on Barney Wiki or feel free to share why you love editing on the site!

Here are a few notable individuals involved with Barney who have shared Barney Wiki on social media:

Outside of Fandom

You can also be involved in the year long celebration by sharing this blog from Barney Wiki onto social media!