Myeolgal Wiki (1)

A brand-new tab had appeared on the gallery interface.

Naturally, the gallery users swarmed over in droves to check it out. Contrary to expectations, however, hardly anyone was posting informational articles.

Until now, every feature had been pre-built by the system, leaving the users to simply consume and utilize what was provided. Handing them an entirely blank slate and expecting them to build something from scratch was uncharted territory.

“Unstructured assignments with no topic are always the most annoying,” I muttered.

At this rate, far from taking off, the whole tab was going to sink into obscurity. I needed to prime the pump and drive engagement.

After pondering for a moment, I hammered out a sample entry.

It was basic information about El-Ladh that practically anyone in this world knew. Exercising my Head Moderator privileges, I had generated an unregistered IP to pose as an ordinary user taking the initiative. It was bare-bones, but the community immediately showed keen interest in the inaugural document.

Still, this wasn't enough momentum. Time to pour a little gasoline on the spark.

No sooner had my edit gone live ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠than a retaliatory topic was uploaded. As expected, the target was humanity.

Left unchecked, the entire wiki would inevitably degenerate into a slanderous mud-wrestling match driven ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠purely by racial spite.

“If that happens, there’s no point in having Myeolgal Wiki in the first place.”

It would just be the daily gallery shitposts migrating over to a wiki format. True to the grand tradition of forum moderators past, I quietly opened the editor and brought down the hammer.

Who was I? The reigning deity of divide-and-conquer baitcraft.

Inevitably, the elves turned their fiery outrage directly toward me. Right on cue, I gave them a measured, matter-of-fact response.

“Hook, line, and sinker,” I chuckled.

The predictable reply had arrived.

With that, my tutorial was complete.

Official announcements? Terms of service? Nobody ever read boring walls of text like that. Far better to stir up a little outrage and demonstrate how things worked while having some fun.

Right on cue, someone put the lesson into practice.

The beauty of an open-edit wiki: if anyone can write, anyone can revise. Yet no sooner had the elves breathed a sigh of relief than the drawbacks section was overhauled once more.

This time, the wording was far more vicious than my initial draft.

The elves flew into another collective frenzy. This edit was noticeably more venomous than the human overview had been, yet no warning was issued. There was, of course, an ironclad reason for that.

The editor behind that revision was none other than 137.7.32—the Divine Tree herself.

Similar sites had existed back on Earth. Their persistent headaches were the roadblocks preventing subjects from correcting their own information, along with the unchecked spread of malicious fabrications. Here, however, every edit was permanently stamped with the contributor’s username.

Such complaints were bound to surface, but I had already prepared a solution. While putting the finishing touches on it, Myeolgal Wiki underwent rapid, frenetic updates across every conceivable subject.

The topics closest to people's day-to-day survival generated the most immediate engagement. With nearly the entire active gallery population congregating in one place, modification requests and dispute reports began cascading in by the hundreds within hours of launch.

The problem was simple: against this tidal wave of feedback, I was only one man. Granted, I had unpaid indentured servants—the Assistant Moderators—at my disposal.

“Even for me, dumping this on them is a bit much.”

The Paddaks already volunteered their time managing the boards in exchange for meager rations of canned tuna and daily sundries. Saddling them with continuous wiki moderation would cross the line from standard exploitation into outright mutiny.

“Man... Isn’t there a devoted candidate willing to work for free, acting with absolute fairness and tireless dedication to process edit requests every single second of the day?”

Given the sheer volume of traffic, even recruiting dozens of moderators would leave the staff stretched thin. Just as I sighed in exasperation, the ideal recruit presented herself.

The spiritual forebear of Myeolgal Wiki—the literal tree behind namu-wiki. The Divine Tree herself stepped forward to volunteer as full-time administrator.

One day had passed since the launch of the Myeolgal Wiki tab.

The feature was enjoying explosive popularity. Active user traffic refused to dip below tens of thousands at any given moment, and articles were expanded around the clock. Previously, writing and publishing books had been the exclusive privilege of scholars and the ruling class. The realization that anyone could now record and broadcast knowledge had struck a profound chord with the masses.

This massive influx of users naturally led to the crowdsourcing of shared crises.

For the plague prevention section in particular, editing priority had been granted to the Gallery Doctors. Whenever misinformation was posted, it was promptly corrected and locked down, dramatically increasing public awareness and preventative measures across the continent.

None of this would have been possible without the World Tree's fanatical devotion to wiki editing.

Having existed since ancient times, the World Tree had spent centuries smothered beneath suffocating boredom. After discovering the gallery and now Myeolgal Wiki, she had fallen completely down the rabbit hole of obsessive editing. Being a transcendent plant rather than a human, she required neither meals nor sleep. Her life was no longer divided between eating, sleeping, and browsing; it was pure, unbroken, around-the-clock wiki patrol.

The introduction of video uploads further propelled the wiki's explosive growth.

Some users became so enthralled that they clicked random articles just to watch whatever video was embedded in a state of pure trance. Because video functionality wasn't limited to the wiki and could also be shared on the main board, lurkers steadily abandoned their silence to share footage of their own.

Threads began proliferating everywhere: breathtaking vistas of bubbling volcanic ranges, clips documenting rat extermination in human basements, and simple, uncut footage of archers crafting longbows.

Best of all, high-stakes battle scenes and intricate tutorials that were impossible to convey through brief, choppy GIFs could now be appreciated in their full, flowing length. Once novelty wore off, people might eventually drift back to quick-loading images, but for now, the engagement was through the roof.

“It’s fun. Have a drink on that,” I grinned, leaning back in my bunker chair as I watched the forum bustle with unprecedented energy.

Yet as with any community, a crowd brought diversity, and diversity inevitably bred dissent.

Stripped of its cynical packaging, the core complaint was valid: what tangible reward did contributors receive for enriching the wiki? Tying raw Dango directly to article edits was out of the question. Doing so would immediately incentivize bad actors to farm low-effort garbage, mutilating the project’s original purpose beyond recognition.

“Still, I do want to slip a little something into the hands of the folks doing the heavy lifting...”

Something not overly lucrative, yet compelling enough to stoke genuine enthusiasm. Fortunately, I had already formulated an idea while assigning the World Tree her administrative duties. Before interest could flag, I posted a fresh announcement.

“Well, that ought to serve as a decent little incentive.”

I had curated a lineup of modern Earth delicacies strictly absent from the general Head Moderator Marketplace. I figured it would create a pleasant buzz and nudge a few hesitant researchers into writing.

Exactly one hour after the announcement went live, Myeolgal Wiki’s servers detonated under a record-shattering stampede of concurrent traffic.