Hurricane Wiki:What is hurricanes.wikia?

hurricanes.wikia is a guide to tropical cyclones that anyone can edit. The word "guide" is meant quite literally: it is not an encyclopedia like Wikipedia is. This wiki was initially launched as an encyclopedia, but relaunched as a guide to complement articles on Wikipedia with useful content that would not meet its policies or guidelines.

Original launch
The first Hurricane Wiki was initially launched in May 2006 by Galaxy001 as a smaller encyclopedia project nicknamed Cyclopedia. The aim of the original Hurricane Wiki was to be a comprehensive encyclopedia on tropical cyclones. Several users joined and a few articles were written, but a few of them were copied and pasted from Wikipedia articles on the same subject. Despite solving the resulting GFDL attribution problems, the project was slowly abandoned.

Relaunch
Although the Hurricane Wiki had previously been noticed by Wikipedia users, particularly on its tropical cyclone WikiProject, none came over to help build it, and the Hurricane Wiki was largely superseded by Wikipedia. However, disputes arose there over the use of article talk pages on Wikipedia as discussion fora. Since Wikipedia policy prohibited that particular use if it contributed little to article-building, Coredesat and Nilfanion came up with the idea of establishing a forum here, since many of the users "chatting" on Wikipedia were used to MediaWiki.

In addition, a more practical use for the Hurricane Wiki was drawn up – the wiki would be changed into a guide on various concepts related to tropical cyclones that could not adequately be covered on Wikipedia according to its guidelines. As a result, all but one of the articles in the original wiki were deleted and the wiki was relaunched as hurricanes.wikia in April 2007.

What hurricanes.wikia is

 * A guide: the wiki covers various things ranging from products issued by various agencies, to hurricane protection tips.
 * Within reason, a discussion forum: the forum namespace contains several pages for discussing various tropical topics and tropical cyclone seasons worldwide.
 * A community: this is a place for people interested in the tropics to get together and help build the guide, discuss the tropics and the seasons, and have some fun.

What hurricanes.wikia is not

 * An encyclopedia. Articles documenting tropical cyclones or tropical cyclone seasons do not belong here; that is what Wikipedia is for. Furthermore, hurricanes.wikia is also not a Wikipedia mirror. Any and all content borrowed from Wikipedia must have an attribution template transcluded on it, as is required under the GNU Free Documentation License. Also, limited original research is allowed on articles here.
 * A battleground. Users should follow the conduct policy - solve any and all disputes in a civil manner, without resorting to personal attacks, and always assume good faith.
 * A chat room. Off-topic discussion - that is, discussion unrelated to the scope of the project - should be taken elsewhere.
 * A spam repository. Spam will not be tolerated, and all spam will be deleted without delay.