Writers

Writers
This is the official group for HF Writers that work on HF News, HF Wiki, and HF Docs.
Status:	Active
Type:	Site
Owner:	Omniscient
Leaders	iHydra • Nuworld • Viral Dragon
Past Leaders	itylernallen • D3xus • Sir • Ethereal •

Introduction

The Hack Forums Writ3rs usergroup currently consists of 2 subforums hosting the Wiki team and the News team. The News team is lead by iHydra while the Wiki team is lead by neeuQ and Viral Dragon.

History

Before the group was even brought to the public's attention, there was discussion on the idea for an official Hack Forums Wiki, between the owner Omniscient and the user itylernallen over various instant messaging platforms, as Omniscient did not have enough time to work on the Wiki himself. In early 2011, Omniscient posted a thread asking members about their opinion on having an official Hack Forums Wiki, which was greeted largely with positive feedback. This resulted in itylernallen being granted leadership of the Hack Forums Wiki Team.

Around this time, the incident known as the Hostile Takeover of the News (which can be found here), resulted in Omniscient adding Sir to the Writ3rs team as the third and final member, in order to draft and publish the weekly HF News articles. Soon after, itylerallen received permission to officially add the Wiki team to the Writ3rs usergroup on the 9th of November 2011, as there had been relatively no progress made on the Wiki in this time period. The News team was added shortly after.

The Wiki team initially faced hosting issues regarding the Wiki, which temporarily delayed the publishing of articles. Soon after, itylernallen left his position as leader of Writ3rs, and the group in general, leaving the Wiki team without official leadership. Viral Dragon appointed himself as the temporary leader of the Wiki team so that articles could continue to be created and ended up hosting the Wiki on his own servers to avoid any potential issues. He was formerly added as a leader on the 12th of March, 2012.

On the 7th of March 2012, Omniscient produced a new rule which demanded that all members of the Writ3rs are at least a part of the Ub3r group and not regular or L33t members, in order to preserve the quality and representation of the group.

The two groups initially shared a single subforum, with discrepancies made by prefixes in the thread titles. This resulted in clutter and difficulty finding Wiki articles or News segments.To alleviate the strain on the single section, two sub-sections were created for each respective team on the 9th of July, 2013. The two sections of the group currently run independently of each other, with one section focusing on articles being written for the Wiki and the other for the weekly news articles, which are produced to inform users of the happenings around the forum.

In early December 2012, Viral Dragon took a break from the group due to hospitalization, leaving Ethereal and D3xus in charge of the Wiki team in his absence. He returned to the group unofficially in mid June 2013 and took control of the Wiki team again officially in July of that same year. His health interfered in his activity throughout 2014, and in December he formally passed leadership of the Wiki Team to Ethereal, after announcing that most of the work on the Wiki was complete. The Wiki saw its official launch on the 10th of March 2015.

Shortly following the release of the Wiki, after increased tension between the News and Wiki Teams in the Writ3rs group, Sir and others within the News Team released an unofficial Hack Forums W1K1 to counter the official Wiki. They cited the lack of content and what they considered overall failure of the Wiki project as their reason to launch the W1K1. As a result, Sir lost leadership of the News Team and his account was closed. His permanent closure left the future of the News Team uncertain, until iHydra was appointed leadership by Omniscient on the 19th March 2015.

Current Status

The Wiki Team continues to maintain the Hack Forums Wiki, while the News Team publishes the HF News weekly.