Minecraft Discontinued Features Wiki:History

This page is to discuss the development and history of the discontinued feature community. Our community traces its roots to PuffingFishHQ's Unobtained series and so while people certainly did collect discontinued features beforehand we consider those times "Pre-History" and are found on a separate page.

History

Beginning of Discontinued Features (until May 2020)

On June 2, 2019, a user by the name of SpawnChunks created a page on the Technical Minecraft Wiki called "List of Discontinued Features"., who also shared it on the Prototech Discord server . This is the first known use of the term "discontinued feature". When later asked, SpawnChunks said he had heard discontinued blocks/items/mobs/block formations from RaysWorks and on the Official Minecraft Wiki and so simplified it to Discontinued Features when creating the wiki title.

On November 5, 2019, a YouTuber by the name of PuffingFishHQ released a video titled Getting a Spawner & End Portal Frame in vanilla Minecraft Survival!!! | Unobtained Episode 1, which introduced the idea of collecting discontinued items (referred to as unobtainable in the video). The idea was to update a world through specific versions which have specific circumstances making the collection of "unobtainable" items possible. The idea stemmed from seeing old gameplay and wanting to have that nostalgia but to make it interesting enough to entertain a modern audience. Due to that, the idea for the series sat dormant for quite some time until Puff got the idea to collect discontinued items from End Portal Frame page on the Minecraft Wiki. The series continued for 13 episodes (videos) until the series had ended. Thanks to the shoutout to the series by a YouTuber by the name of RaysWorks, the 13 episodes blew up and resulted in season 2, which had much more research.

A post made on PuffingFishHQ's Channel called many users who would later become a pivotal role in the search for more bugs and discontinued features. Many Minecraft players joined the hunt and the first major document was created on google docs. However, maintaining organization on google Docs proved to be difficult. A discord user and YouTuber by the name of Bluecrab2 had an idea to create a wiki for the unobtainable Bayugoon first supported the idea 10 seconds after the initial posting..Bixy, llyr, and PuffingFishHQ also joined in discussion about the optimal organization of this proposed wiki soon after, arriving at the compromise to organize by feature type and version. After the discussion, bluecrab2 sent a Miraheze request to create the wiki that was promptly approved at 17:16 UTC that day. and so the Minecraft Discontinued Features Wiki was founded on May 5, 2020.

Early development (May 2020 - September 2020)

The wiki started as a Java-oriented wiki, and so the first wiki's page is a main page for the Java Edition discontinued features. This was followed by Java Edition:Bedrock (Item), Java Edition:Green Shrub, Java Edition:Silk Touch Shears, Java Edition:Barrier (Block) and Java Edition:Infinity and Mending Book/Bow.. These pages were created by some of the first users to join the wiki, such as Bluecrab2MC and Bayugoon

nasko222 joined PuffingFishHQ's server approximately around May 28, 2020. He introduced the concept of using a new type of version, the April Fools' version. This was initially controversial, as these versions were only meant as jokes and not to be exploited. However, they are Mojang versions and so were generally accepted. This set in an explosion of discoveries that progressed from the earliest to the most recent. Starting at 2.0, the Battle Sign, Wool Headed Mob, and Fools' Coal were found. It was discovered that 15w14a could be updated by naming the world "AF15 Existence". In 1.RV-Pre1, Powered Black Glazed Terracotta was found. In 3D Shareware v1.34, Potion of Luck, Multishot 2-12, Uncraftable Potion, Uncraftable Tipped Arrow, Open Barrel, and God Horse were found after upgrading was found possible with the name "shareware". The largest number of discoveries were found in 20w14∞, the April Fools' snapshot that came out earlier that year, after Sl1mJ1m discovered the worlds could be updated by changing level.dat to special_level.dat. All these discoveries took place in a matter of a few days around May 30 - June 2, creating lots of excitement about all the new possibilities within the community. PuffingFishHQ decided not to use any of the new April Fools' versions, especially considering his series had already passed several of the April Fools' versions by that point. PuffingFishHQ did post a video about nasko222's world during the craze though. Less obvious discontinued features, such as, phantom tipped arrows and Untamed Llama with Carpet would trickle in the following days.

On June 22, 2020, a discussion created was on the main page's talk page to choose an icon for the wiki. The poll was meant to be a wiki-style consensus rather than a poll but upon receiving no comments by the due date of June 30, 2020, a poll was created to decide the winner. Bluecrab2 had submitted 8 options for logos that were just vanilla textures. PuffingFishHQ submitted a missing texture with a yellow barrier on top of it. Finally, SlushFiend submitted the "Ultra Discontinued Block" on June 23, 2020. The original submitted icon: . Slushfiend's design won overwhelmingly and continues to be the wiki's icon with some minor corrections.

Sl1mJ1m came up with the idea for a voice chat call to edit the wiki together on September 9, 2020. Sl1mJ1m named this event "WMEDA" for Wiki Marathon Extravaganza Day of Awesomeness. The first WMEDA was held on September 12, 2020 and was a huge success: 276 Edits and 35 New Pages. The first two WMEDAs were held on PuffingFishHQ's server and it has since become a monthly event on the MCDF Discord. For more information on WMEDA history see Project:WMEDA/Archives.

Separation from PuffingFishHQ and new wiki direction (September 2020 - November 2021)

This section is a work in progress. 

Please help in the creation of this article by expanding or improving it.
To do: Lacks info about Bedrock DF Wiki merger

Up until this point, all discontinued feature discussions had happened on PuffingFishHQ's server. User:Bayugoon had pushed for a separate Discontinued Feature Wiki Discord for some time to be split from the PuffingFishHQ Discord. On September 26, 2020, he posted a StrawPoll to the #unobtained-wiki channel to ask the question: "Should the discontinued wiki move to its own discord?". bluecrab2 delayed the end of the poll till September 28, 2020, and voted against the poll but stated he would create the server if the vote won. The vote won 11 - 2 (85% - 15%) and bluecrab2 did make the separate Discord for the wiki on September 30, 2020.

On September 30, the MEE6 bot was added to the Discord. The next day, on October 1, the Discord invite link was added to the wiki's main page. Although, bluecrab2 had not expected anyone to find it there. Freedom_MC was the first to find the link there. Next Bayugoon and then Sl1mJ1m found it on the same day. After that, Freedom_MC posted the invite link onto PuffingFishHQ's Discord server on October 2, leading to LivingComputer, John119, scam.net, mate_amargo, FavoritoHJS, WyvernElement, Marpace, and Wax Axes joining that day.

Originally, bluecrab2 was the only administrator on the Minecraft Discontinued Features Wiki Discord server and had no role for this position. On 17 October 2020 user Kream pinged everyone in the #non-minecraft channel because permissions had been improperly set up. Seven minutes after this message was sent, bluecrab2 created the mod role and private #mods channel. Bayugoon and Sl1mJ1m became the first two mods and bluecrab2 also gave himself the same mod role.

The original name of our Discord was "MC Discontinued Features Wiki". Since the Discord was exclusively wiki focused, the #announcements channel often was filled with minor changes to the wiki (for example, including every time Template:Present was updated). However, within a month it became clear members were joining who were interested in discontinued features but not in editing the wiki. For this reason, a poll was held on November 7, 2020 to change the Discord name to just "MC Discontinued Features". The poll was supportive of the name change (14 - 1) and so the name was officially changed on November 10, 2020. The Discord retains a large section dedicated to the wiki but the broadened scope has helped the Discord become the spot for coordinating all things discontinued features related.

On 8 September 2021 PuffingFish deleted most channels on his Discord, only leaving the announcements, history, and wiki channels. This removed a substantial number of messages relating to discontinued features and without any backup, lots of history was lost. PuffingFish later apologized for the deletion. The wiki channel on PuffingFishHQ's Discord Server and all the channels in the Discontinued Feature Discord server was backed up soon after this to prevent any further loss of history.

Wiki Move

For many years, there have been various proposals to move the wiki to self-host. This was mainly due to problems wiki's host, Miraheze, was running into every so often, such as the notorious failure of the database cluster "db141", which resulted in a 2 month-long attempt to recover the disc's data.

In June 2023, many of the prominent Miraheze technical and community volunteers left the site, citing an unjustified action by the Trust & Safety team. This left 2 people in charge of the entire technical infrastructure, with discs being "on the verge of failure" and as no solution was in sight, on June 15, 2023, Miraheze released a statement stating they were going to shutdown it's services.

Not soon after the MCDF wiki admins released their own statement stating they were planning on moving to a new host to combat this issue. And while the new Miraheze management reversed the decision to shutdown, the wiki admins of MCDF decided to continue on their plan to move hosts. Thanks to one admin having a direct contact to one of the wiki.gg staff, the wiki.gg approved the wiki on June 17, 2023 and created it on June 20, 2023.

A poll about our future subdomain was created on the Discord server on June 18, 2023, with the result being changing it from "mcdiscontinued" to just "mcdf". After some time dedicated to customizing the new wiki, the wiki.gg wiki was officially launched on July 4, 2023.