Amaranth Legacy:History
More actions
Throughout our decade-long history, Amaranth Legacy has changed its face, members, style, core thesis, and even our place of writing.
SpaceEngine era
On May 28, 2015, a humble Fandom user by the name of morbiusgreen created a Fandom wiki called SpaceEngine Wiki. The premise was simple: find an object in SpaceEngine and write about it. (SpaceEngine is a outer space simulation program.) Nearly 4,000 objects from SpaceEngine were catalogued and given lore.
These pages are preserved in Borealis Universe. morbiusgreen never intended for the community to become something else, but evolve it did. He stepped down as project lead in 2020. The current leadership then took charge, but there was still a lot of change that would need to take place before the humble SpaceEngine Wiki could become something truly great.
Full fiction
In 2021, the site took an unprecedented step: anyone could upload whatever they wanted so long as it took place in the same universe as the wider SpaceEngine wiki. That is to say, the wiki moved beyond SpaceEngine. However, very soon after, Local Universe emerged, a fully fictional group of about a dozen galaxies about the same size as the Local Group from our universe.
This period saw the emergence of "proto-Scopes." Namely Ambrosia (the Local Universe version) and Aylothn, in addition to some lesser known attempts. These early attempts at Scopes were controversial. Many felt that moving away from a single unified vision for the project would stifle creativity, like galaxies being left isolated as the universe expanded. Many feared that allowing for different settings would undermine the community. They were ignored.
Tripartite site
The first three Scopes, strictly speaking, were Imagindarium's Creation, Cosmoria, and Galvyria. The earliest proto-Scopes were largely abandoned by this point, leaving just three in which everyone wrote. This was a low-point in site activity, as many users created their own fandoms, such as The Minmus Derp who created Worldbuilding Workshop and George who created Endless Horizons. Without SpaceEngine to unify the site, insisting on a shared universe caused the site to hemorrhage users.
Self-hosted website era
On May 6, 2023, shortly after she joined, Tess started up our self-hosted website for the first time. Originally, it was available at amaranth-legacy.wiki, with it moving to amaranth-legacy.community later on.
Initially, the website was primitive and poorly themed, as seen in the screenshot. (We used to use the Vector skin, but switched over to Citizen in 2024.) In addition, Tess had little experience in system administration. Fortunately, she picked up the skills in a short amount of time.
In the beginning, website activity was low, primarily due to community activity, but also due to the poor loading times. In addition, Tess was busy with life for a period of several months.
However, with the advent of loading time improvements, background styling, mobile support, and other features, the website started to pick up traffic.
- Comparison of the Fandom and the self-hosted website
-
Fandom
-
Self-hosted website
Scope era
On September 3, 2024, the Scope system was devised and proposed by Skorne. It is clear that the Scope system, while causing contention at the time, was the pivotal idea which saved the community from death.
For some time, members had been focusing on other projects and activities. The Scope system was intended to help bring the community back together and boost member engagement. In retrospect, it was the clear direction that the community was heading in for years.