Draft:Miraheze

Miraheze is a not-for-profit open-source wiki hosting service, founded in July 2015 and run by a group of expert volunteers. Miraheze uses MediaWiki, the open-source wiki software used by Wikipedia, and hosts over 5,000 wikis. It relies on donations for funding and does not impose advertisements on the wikis it hosts.

History
Miraheze was founded in July 2015 by John Lewis and Ferran Tufan and within a couple of weeks, they drafted the support of several volunteers from another wiki farm, Orain. The goal was to create a community-led wiki farm based on the Wikimedia model of community governance where the community is consulted in all decision making. At the time, Lewis was volunteering for the Wikimedia Foundation and deploying two servers there named after stars Mira and Heze and suggested the name Miraheze for the new wiki farm. Miraheze opened wikis to the public on 3 August 2015.

In November 2019, Miraheze became a registered not-for-profit organization in the United Kingdom as Miraheze Limited.

On 6 January 2024, Miraheze Limited handed control of Miraheze to the US-based WikiTide Foundation, a charity created and operated by then-former Miraheze volunteers in response to incidents that happened in June 2023.

Administration
Miraheze is community-led, wikis are autonomous, and the users are consulted in all decision-making. Stewards manage the community aspects and day-to-day admin tasks, while the technical staff focus on the backend.

Users can request for creation of wikis, which are then reviewed by volunteer users known as 'wiki creators'. Wikis can be either public or private, provided that they comply with the site's content policy. Miraheze operates without advertising and relies on community support.

Miraheze allows wiki bureaucrats to choose to implement or remove various MediaWiki extensions, as well as choose the licensing status of their wiki. They also allow wiki owners to put a custom domain to their wikis. Wikis hosted on Miraheze can also use images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.

Technology
Miraheze uses Phabricator in order for volunteer users to collaborate on the source code of the site, as well as for users to request and propose new features to be added.

Miraheze also develops its own extensions that allow communities to operate wikis with minimal oversight from Miraheze staff. For example, ManageWiki is a special MediaWiki extension developed for Miraheze that allows bureaucrats to modify their wiki's settings; from basic changes like setting the logo and enabling extensions, to more complex changes such as creating user groups and customizing every action a given group of users can (not) do.

Wikis
Since 2021, Miraheze has become home to wikis closed by Fandom, deemed to violate their community creation policy. This included wikis for the Monster Girl Encyclopedia, Monster Girl Quest, Agent Aika and Polandball, among others. They have also become home to various long standing LGBT+ wikis forcefully merged into one and purged of many articles by Fandom, such as the LGBTA Wiki and EZGender Wiki.

A student-led wiki for Northeastern University students called Huskypedia was started in 2022 on Miraheze in face of dissatisfaction with existing online resources of student information provided by the university.

Miraheze is used by the University of Hildesheim as an educational tool and is used by wikis such as Rosetta Code.