The WikiDot Blackout of 2022, also known as The Great WikiDot Outage of 2022, was an interruption in WikiDot services beginning on May 19, 2022. It was the longest WikiDot outage known to date and arrested all activity on all major containment fiction platforms for its duration, as well as third-party applications, such as the WikiDot notification service.^[1]https://archive.ph/NbBQB

The occurrence was notable, in that a majority of containment fiction sites reply upon WikiDot.

The arrested containment fiction sites and communities included but were not limited to:

• The SCP Foundation Wiki
• The RPC Authority Wiki
• The Backrooms Wiki
• Liminal Archives
• O5 Command

An official announcement from the SCP INT Discord server states that the outage was the action of a lone hacker from Belarus.^[2]https://discord.com/channels/170860185328418816/449184256451805184/978720683645370478

Timeline

On the morning of May 19, 2022, all WikiDot sites featured an error message that read the following:^[3]https://web.archive.org/web/20220519154658/https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/new-pages-feed

Please try again

Please try again – there was a problem fetching the page you requested. Most probably you can just click Reload or Ctrl-R and the page will show as you expected.

If you are seeing a lot of these errors, Wikidot may be under stress.

Thanks for visiting this site, and if you’re one of our
1 000 000 users, for using wikidot.com for your social web project.

A post was made to the official WikiDot Twitter around 8AM CST confirming this as a server-wide issue and that the team was working on a solution. A post had not been made to this Twitter since October 10, 2018, and had largely been interpreted as abandoned by many.^[4]https://archive.ph/ty3nf#selection-821.6-842.0 Approximately two hours later, another Tweet from the WikiDot team updated the situation saying that the damage was more extensive than previously thought, but that no data loss had occurred, and that up-to-date backups were available. The next updates, also about two hours later, informed users that the site’s servers had been hacked and this would take more than 24 hours to fix:^[5]https://archive.ph/ty3nf#selection-411.0-411.267

Wikidot has been hit by hackers and all traces lead to Russian Federation. The data seem intact, but hackers left quite a mess. We need to scan literally everything to make sure Wikidot is secure before re-enabling it… It will take a while… Will keep you posted!

Nearly twelve hours after the initial announcement, the WikiDot team updated the situation once again, but did not provide any more information on the nature of the attacks, or if they were confirmed to be Russian in origin:^[6]https://archive.ph/ty3nf#selection-147.0-147.228

“I think we now have a clear picture what happened yesterday. It’s not as bad, but the cleaning will definitely take longer than expected. We’ll need to restore some data from backups too to make sure we start with clean systems.”

During this time, any WikiDot site redirected to feature the following message:^[7]https://archive.ph/ty3nf

On 19th May, 2022 Wikidot servers have been hit by hackers.

All traces lead to Russian Federation.

Because we did not know how the hackers got into our servers nor how much of our infrastructure had been compromised, we had to move very carefuly.

At the time of this writing we have regained access to all our resources and we are gaining ground, but we still need to examine all servers and configuration before re-enabling Wikidot.

All the data (files and database) is intact and no data loss has occured.

Thank you for your patience and we humbly ask for some more. It’s been a very difficult day for us and it’s far from over, so keep your fingers crossed!

I will keep you posted on this page.

Michal and Wikidot Team

The WikiDot community rallied support for the developers. Estimates of the WikiDot’s Twitter follower count increased as a result of this incident anywhere from 700 to over 3,000 new followers. WikiDot’s Tweet announcing the hack received over 1,000 likes, 316 retweets, and 116 quote retweets in its first 24 hours.^[8]https://twitter.com/wikidot/status/1527328951625867284?cxt=HHwWqICjjdzllLIqAAAA, https://archive.ph/QHgOt

Numerous individuals questioned the claim of Russian hackers.^[9]https://twitter.com/TuftoSCP/status/1527334246137749522?cxt=HHwWpICjpfOZl7IqAAAA, https://archive.ph/5Lvjg, … Continue reading^[10]https://twitter.com/woedenaz/status/1527343457978949633, https://web.archive.org/web/20220520143027/https://twitter.com/woedenaz/status/152734345797894963^[11]https://twitter.com/irrthopat/status/1527341346985431042^[12]https://twitter.com/CCofEndicott/status/1527409590001971200^[13]https://twitter.com/Bojnik434/status/1527405496512262145^[14]https://twitter.com/BonnieBoestar/status/1527522883307810816^[15]https://twitter.com/WATESUB/status/1527344361163280389^[16]https://twitter.com/pepegy420/status/1527402980370153472 Individuals questioned the reliability of IP tracing, given VPN usage, as well as the motives available to Russian operatives in the attack.

On May 23rd, a new message was posted to the WikiDot Twitter:^[17]https://archive.ph/d63eF

“Good news everyone! After a busy weekend we are going to bring Wikidot back online later today! We’ll have to disable search and email notifications, but we’ll keep working on restoring them too!”

This was met with celebration by the community. However, May 23rd concluded without any restoration to the WikiDot platform. A follow-up message was released that stated an unexpected error had occurred with data restoration, the team citing inconsistencies. The post reassured the community and delayed the re-start to the next day, Tuesday May 24th.^[18]https://archive.ph/AjFxA

On May 24th, the developer team at WikiDot released the following statement:

“Really good news: we have finally nailed a bug that prevented our database from working correctly. It was most likely an upstream issue with database indexes and was not related to the hack. Anyway, we’re launching Wikidot in a few hours after we run the final checks!”

The WikiDot platform was restored approximately 3 hours later.^[19]https://archive.ph/LudAR The SCP Wiki temporarily paused new pages in order to assess the damage and ensure data recovery and general site stability.^[20]https://archive.ph/GkXEM Article publication was reopened shortly after, on May 25th.

Impact

The WikiDot outage reiterated to the containment fiction community the need to find independent platform. Members of the community encouraged one another to create back-ups of their articles and data.^[21]https://archive.ph/d3wit^[22]https://archive.ph/4WwNu^[23]https://archive.ph/QRqnc^[24]https://archive.ph/o5e0g Others criticized the instability and outdated technology with which WikiDot operated, and/or the distance of the main dev team.^[25]https://archive.ph/WELD8^[26]https://archive.ph/Wspms^[27]https://archive.ph/cfAP4^[28]https://archive.ph/0BhV8

Members of the various containment fiction communities, those both on and off WikiDot, handled the outage with relative calmness and humor. Numerous memes were created for the occasion and spread through Twitter, which acted as a communications refuge for community members during the event.^[29]https://archive.ph/OKGqz^[30]https://archive.ph/iyESH^[31]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6Dm37skPwA^[32]https://archive.ph/7DiXA^[33]https://archive.ph/XB8fx^[34]https://archive.ph/OX65D^[35]https://archive.ph/ZoJcz^[36]https://archive.ph/I9lTs^[37]https://archive.ph/OmEWV^[38]https://archive.ph/qOEyX^[39]https://archive.ph/v1XCq^[40]https://archive.ph/x7hDO^[41]https://archive.ph/ptgtU^[42]https://archive.ph/K4qD7^[43]https://archive.ph/Fyowi^[44]https://archive.ph/Mn3f4^[45]https://archive.ph/7Zdqh^[46]https://archive.ph/9ameB^[47]https://archive.ph/n4lsF^[48]https://archive.ph/WCEDb^[49]https://archive.ph/CWzdD^[50]https://archive.ph/XL1Yp

Controversy

On May 24th, rumors began circulating amid containment fiction communities that members from both Russia and Belarus were unable to access WikiDot. They instead reported a message that denied service to Russia and Belarus on the basis of increased abuse and hacking attempts on the part of the Russian Federation in recent months.^[51]https://archive.ph/JFRaJ The SCP-RU official Twitter reported the same message.^[52]https://archive.ph/U5fOj

This was confirmed by an official post to the WikiDot Twitter shortly thereafter:^[53]https://archive.ph/m8Kkm

Following the recent hacking events, increasing wave of abuse from Russia, state-level disinformation, in light of war in Ukraine and disrespect of human rights and sovereignty, we decided to close access to Wikidot from Russia and Belarus territory.

This action was met with criticism, ridicule, and vocal community backlash.^[54]https://archive.ph/m8Kkm^[55]https://archive.ph/s5Zka^[56]https://archive.ph/sVJ3r^[57]https://archive.ph/pciSE^[58]https://archive.ph/2GXvn^[59]https://archive.ph/LeFUQ^[60]https://archive.ph/VPxiv^[61]https://archive.ph/hxpNf^[62]https://archive.ph/voJ0C^[63]https://archive.ph/sWa1a^[64]https://archive.ph/wkk8V A Twitter survey suggested a ~60% disapproval rate for WikiDot’s decision, ~25% unsure, and ~19 percent in favor.^[65]https://archive.ph/kQ31i Defenses of the decision stated that it put pressure on the citizens of Russia to be displeased with their government.^[66]https://archive.ph/m8Kkm

As a result, SCP-RU quickly established a re-direct to their URL, as a temporary measure.^[67]https://web.archive.org/web/20220604134819/https://scpfoundation.net/^[68]https://archive.ph/AMikO However, this is a static site, and is read-only. Via their Twitter account, the SCP-RU administration canceled an in-progress contest due to the sanction.^[69]https://archive.ph/oZWAY They established donations via a fundraising platform to support migration to their own platform.^[70]https://archive.ph/Ur2cv^[71]https://boosty.to/scpfanpage

At the time of writing, no resolution has been reached between SCP and WikiDot in regards to the cessation of service to Russia and Belarus.

-EN released a statement about the event and geoban on the June edition of their Site News:^[72]https://archive.ph/ZIlfg

SCP-INT and our representatives are working on a request to Wikidot’s administration to remove the geoblock; in these trying times, we ask once again our userbase to stand with SCP-RU.

A statement has been released by the international community as well, via their Discord:^[73]https://discord.com/channels/170860185328418816/449184256451805184/978720683645370478

A screenshot of the announcement, from the SCP INT Discords server.

Regarding the recent Wikidot outage, a user from Belarus has been claiming responsibility for hacking the platform. INT staff have been in contact with the user, and there is circumstantial evidence which corroborates his claims. If the claims prove to be true, we will discuss significant disciplinary action towards the user. We do not condone or approve his illegal actions, and ask the community not to speculate on the event, as it could quickly result in the spread of misinformation.

Additionally, we are actively communicating with Wikidot to remove the geoblock currently placed on Russian and Belarusian users, and restore functionality to all branches. We are strongly opposed to Wikidot’s new geoblock policy, as the measure does nothing to prevent security incidents of this nature in future, while definitely harming the legitimate participants of our project.

Thanks everyone for your understanding and support in dealing with all this.

Criticism

In addition to copious criticism being leveled at WikIDot, as above, fewer critics have noted that there has been substantially less publicity or public support in and from the English-speaking world for the Russian branch’s existence and continuation, as compared to its prior support, despite the existential threat the -RU’s existence on WikiDot being actual in 2022, as opposed to merely theoretical, as it had been in the past.^[74]https://archive.ph/s1xTb#selection-655.0-655.38 In contrast to the -EN-led #StandwithSCPRU, which raised over $160,000 in defensive legal support of SCP-RU, no official campaign from the -EN branch existed for -RU as of late 2022, nor were any status updates on negotiations with WikiDot given by -EN representatives, or indications given that the prior #StandWithSCPRU funds would be allocated to assist the situation. There was no evident announcement or commentary in general regarding the geoban on Russia & Belarus from official, popular social media outlets, such as the SCP Wiki Twitter account. A post exists on r/SCP questioning the situation, which is not official in capacity, and received a relatively mild amount of engagement from the community.^[75]https://archive.ph/hsYmg In the comment thread for this post, a moderator of r/SCP repeated the aforementioned -INT statement.^[76]https://www.reddit.com/r/SCP/comments/uxzaq7/comment/ia14l4d/ This criticism was partially allayed by the SCP Wiki’s official update on the situation in their October 2022 edition of the Site News.^[77] The main -EN SCP Wiki frontpage links to the independent -RU branch website.^[77]https://web.archive.org/web/20221116003750/https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/

In the October 2022 version of the SCP Wiki Site News, an update is given regarding -RU’s migration fo platform independence.

RU Migration & Independence

After the geo-ban, the leadership of the Russian branch reinvigorated and repurposed a long-held GitHub for developing an independent platform.^[78]https://github.com/SCPru/RuFoundation^[79]https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/news-10-2022#toc12 The migration attempt was given a fundraiser via the Booty fundraising platform.^[80]https://boosty.to/scpfanpage^[81]https://archive.ph/7MQ8B The fundraising site reuses the memetically popular #StandWithSCPRU (see #StandwithSCPRU).

The fundraiser states:

The SCP Foundation site has long been based on the Wikidot platform, but its many problems and feedback difficulties have long made it clear that more reliable solutions should be sought whenever possible.

The development of the new platform has been underway for some time now by people working on it in their spare time, but recent events are forcing us to speed up the move.

In this regard, the administration of the Russian branch begins raising funds to pay for the work of technical specialists.

The status update of http://scpfoundation.net/ can be tracked in the reporting posts below (headers with the fundraising week number).

At the moment, the priority is the ability to read the content on the site. If you encounter incorrect display of the material, you can note this in the comments to any entry.

IMPORTANT!

Work on the site will be carried out regardless of the funds raised, but financial assistance will significantly speed up the process and potentially improve the result.

An update on this page on May 25, 2022 announced the Russian branch as WikiDot-independent^[82]https://archive.ph/7MQ8B#selection-2285.0-2291.8 making -RU the first branch to achieve digital independence, surpassing -EN’s Project Foundation and WikiJump engine.^[83]https://github.com/scpwiki/wikijump^[84]https://www.conficmagazine.com/post/project-foundation-forever At that time, the new -RU platform had baseline rendering functionalities, with most articles properly parsed/formatted, and active article editing and version history. Limitations included the inability to compare prior versions of a page, and some modules remained unsupported.

As of early November 2022, the fundraiser had raised over 222,000 rubles (>$3,600) with an increase of 10,800 rubles ($177) in the week 23.^[85]https://archive.ph/rHVhe#selection-4641.0-4641.7 A technical update fixed tags, re-enabled sorting of pages, e.g. by rating, and enabled compatibility with a Cerberus.aic bot.^[86] 

The site is function and routinely features new SCP-RUs and translations of -EN articles. A list of current issues can be seen on their GitHub.^[86]https://github.com/SCPru/RuFoundation/issues The platform and its code are open source.^[87]https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/news-10-2022#toc12