BrickWiki

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BrickWiki
Six 1×2 LEGO plate bricks stacked to form the shape of a 2×2 brick. Each plate is a different color: white, yellow, red, black, green, and blue.
The logo of BrickWiki, designed by Jamie Bliss and Tim Gould
Screenshot
The Main Page of a MediaWiki website, featuring an index of major article categories.
BrickWiki Main Page on January 14, 2017
Type of site
Online encyclopedia
Available inEnglish
Country of originUnited States
OwnerTed Godwin (since 2012)
Created by
  • Venkatesh Srinivas
  • Jamie Bliss
URL
CommercialNo
RegistrationOptional
Users1,094 registered users
LaunchedJune 25, 2005; 20 years ago (2005-06-25)
DiscontinuedNovember 2019; 6 years ago (2019-11)
Current statusOffline (partial read-only archive from 2021–2024)
Content license
GNU FDL 1.2

BrickWiki was a wiki-based online encyclopedia for topics related to LEGO.


BrickWiki was the first wiki dedicated to LEGO topics; however, the site never gained the same popularity as Brickipedia, a competing LEGO wiki launched one year later. In comparison to Brickipedia, BrickWiki focused less on individual LEGO products and more on the culture and communities surrounding LEGO and various building techniques.

History

Venkatesh Srinivas, an electrical engineering student at Johns Hopkins University,[1] proposed the creation of a LEGO wiki in a LUGNET message on June 8, 2005. Srinivas described his plan as an "electronic warehouse" of LEGO knowledge, containing information about the LEGO company, products, and community.[2] The idea originally came from LUGNET user Jamie "Astronouth7303" Bliss.[B 1][B 2] Srinivas originally suggested naming the site "LegoWiki"; due to concerns about using the LEGO trademark, other names were discussed in the thread, including "LUWiki" (LEGO User's Wiki),[3] "LWiki", and "BrickWiki".[4][5] Srinivas changed the site's name to BrickWiki, and the site was launched on June 25, 2005.[6]

BrickWiki originally used a zapto.org URL before becoming available at brickwiki.org in October 2005.[7][8][9]

The site was originally hosted by the Johns Hopkins Association for Computing Machinery,[B 1] which Srinivas was a member of.[10]

Srinivas planned for BrickWiki to be a multilingual wiki once he found translators, though no other language versions of the wiki besides English were ever opened.[4]

The wiki's logo was created by Jamie Bliss in July 2005. Bliss originally planned to design a logo utilizing a red 2x2 brick. Inspired by Wikipedia's "puzzle globe" logo, Bliss instead split the brick into six 1x2 plates, each a different color. The design was created in MLCad and converted with L3P to a POV-Ray file.[B 3] Tim Gould further updated the logo in September, re-rendering it with more detailed lighting and reflection and adding "BW" on the tops of the studs.[B 4][B 5]

Near the end of July 2009, BrickWiki went offline for several weeks until August 20.[11][12] Ted "Tedward" Godwin, one of site's administrators, attempted to contact Srinivas about it, but received no reply.[13] The site went down again in May 2010,[14] this time remaining offline for nearly two years. Srinivas had been planning to move the site to a new server shortly before this;[15] the start of the second outage coincided with his graduation from Johns Hopkins University.[1] In a September 2010 Eurobricks post, Godwin expressed frustration that BrickWiki had "died thanks to the neglect of one person."[16]

Srinivas found a backup of BrickWiki in early 2012 and restored the site with editing disabled.[B 1] Godwin and another administrator, Larry "Lar" Pieniazek,[B 6] planned to move the site onto a new server with help from Brian "ALittleSlow" Alano and Jeramy Spurgeon (who were both made administrators as well).[B 7] BrickWiki was made officially operational again on May 8, 2012,[B 8] now hosted by Spurgeon's company Site Orchard.[B 1] In October 2012, the brickwiki.org domain name expired after Srinivas failed to renew it and users were unable to contact him about transferring it;[B 9] as a result, BrickWiki's URL was changed to brickwiki.info on November 20, 2012.[B 10][17]

On February 7, 2017, Godwin announced that BrickWiki would shut down on March 25.[B 11] He cited the lack of progress made in the previous two years as part of the reason, stating that "clearly facts and history are not what the people want". Godwin announced a "possible reprieve" the next day that would give the project a new start, though later said that the situation was "out of [his] hands".[B 12] BrickWiki remained open (albeit with little activity) well past its announced shutdown, staying online until some point between 15 and 24 November 2019 before finally going offline due to server issues.[18][B 13] The site returned online in early 2021,[B 14] but in read-only mode and with many pages missing due to data loss.[citation needed] The brickwiki.info domain expired on 20 November 2024.[19] The brickwiki.org domain, which had previously been turned into a redirect to brickwiki.info,[B 15] was also restored as a partial archive in March 2022, and is still online.[20][B 16]

Articles

Screenshot of BrickWiki's article on Michigan LEGO Users Group, one of its many articles about fan communities

Ted Godward claimed in 2010 that Brickipedia, in comparison to BrickWiki, lacked proper categorization and articles for many basic concepts, and that BrickWiki had better quality despite having fewer articles and a smaller community.[16]

References

  1. ↑ a b The Johns Hopkins University Commencement 2010. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University. May 27, 2010. p. 92.
  2. ↑ Srinivas, Venkatesh (8 June 2005). "Legowiki". LUGNET. Newsgroup: lugnet.general. Archived from the original on 16 July 2024. Retrieved 1 November 2025.
  3. ↑ Jamie, Bliss (11 June 2005). "Re: Legowiki". LUGNET. Newsgroup: lugnet.general. Archived from the original on 16 July 2024. Retrieved 6 November 2025.
  4. ↑ a b Srinivas, Venkatesh (11 June 2005). "Re: Legowiki". LUGNET. Newsgroup: lugnet.general. Archived from the original on 18 July 2024. Retrieved 1 November 2025.
  5. ↑ Srinivas, Venkatesh (13 June 2005). "Re: Legowiki". LUGNET. Newsgroup: lugnet.general. Archived from the original on 16 July 2024. Retrieved 1 November 2025.
  6. ↑ Srinivas, Venkatesh (25 June 2005). "Brickwiki". LUGNET. Newsgroup: lugnet.general. Archived from the original on 16 July 2024. Retrieved 1 November 2025.
  7. ↑ Bliss, Jamie (8 July 2005). "BrickWiki (formerly LegoWiki) has moved". LUGNET. Newsgroup: lugnet.general. Archived from the original on 16 July 2024. Retrieved 7 November 2025.
  8. ↑ Pieniazek, Larry (13 October 2005). "Re: Scanning HOWTO". LUGNET. Newsgroup: lugnet.inst. Archived from the original on 7 November 2025. Retrieved 7 November 2025. Perhaps a link in the as yet unwritten "scanning instructions" article on Brickwiki (now at a spiffy new URL: www.brickwiki.org) ??
  9. ↑ Gould, Tim (16 October 2005). "Re: 'Virtual' Preservation Project for CKS". LUGNET. Newsgroup: lugnet.inst. Archived from the original on 3 October 2024. Retrieved 7 November 2025.
  10. ↑ "Members". JHU ACM. Archived from the original on 2005-11-08.
  11. ↑ desultor (August 11, 2009). "What's with Brickwiki?". Eurobricks. Archived from the original on July 17, 2024. Retrieved July 17, 2024.
  12. ↑ Godwin, Ted (August 20, 2009). "Looks like we are back online". Eurobricks (comment on topic "What's with Brickwiki?"). Archived from the original on July 17, 2024. Retrieved July 17, 2024.
  13. ↑ Godwin, Ted (August 12, 2009). "Holy mother of... somebody actually read the blog?!?! I guess I better start posting again". Eurobricks (comment on topic "What's with Brickwiki?"). Archived from the original on July 17, 2024. Retrieved July 17, 2024.
  14. ↑ MetroiD (May 26, 2010). "Please excuse me for reviving such an old thread, but Brickwiki hasn't been operational for the last week or so". Eurobricks (comment on topic "What's with Brickwiki?"). Archived from the original on July 17, 2024. Retrieved July 17, 2024.
  15. ↑ Godwin, Ted (September 8, 2010). "No idea". Eurobricks (comment on topic "What's with Brickwiki?"). Archived from the original on July 17, 2024. Retrieved November 8, 2025. Once again the 'owner' has gone silent. This time just as we were preparing to move the site to a new server to avoid such outages in the future.
  16. ↑ a b Godwin, Ted (September 8, 2010). "And yet it still has no categorization and lacks articles on the most basic concepts". Eurobricks (comment on topic "What's with Brickwiki?"). Archived from the original on July 17, 2024. Retrieved July 17, 2024.
  17. ↑ "brickwiki.info". Whois. October 25, 2023. Archived from the original on 4 November 2024. Retrieved 4 November 2024. Registered On: 2012-11-20 – Expires On: 2024-11-20
  18. ↑ "Brickwiki". WikiApiary. Archived from the original on 19 July 2024. Retrieved 18 July 2024. Last updated: 2019-11-15 12:51:51
  19. ↑ "brickwiki.info". Whois. January 2, 2025. Archived from the original on 7 January 2025. Retrieved 7 January 2025.
  20. ↑ "brickwiki.org". Whois. February 10, 2025. Archived from the original on 17 February 2025. Retrieved 8 November 2025. Registered On: 2022-03-12 – Expires On: 2026-03-12

BrickWiki pages

  1. ↑ a b c d Godwin, Ted; Alano, Brian; Srinivas, Venkatesh (26 May 2012). "Brickwiki:History of Brickwiki". BrickWiki (Project page). Archived from the original on 8 January 2017.
  2. ↑ Bliss, Jamie (31 December 2005). "User:Astronouth7303". BrickWiki (User page). Archived from the original on 8 December 2008. Oh, yeah. And I originally thought of it, but Venkatesh got to post it. And he owns the server. I'm not complaining. He gives me free hosting for my site.
  3. ↑ Bliss, Jamie (17 July 2005). "Brickwiki:Creating the logo". BrickWiki (Project page). Page not archived; contents can be found in XML dump. Off-site recreation available here.
  4. ↑ Gould, Tim; Srinivas, Venkatesh; Pieniazek, Larry (29 September 2005). "File:BrickWikiLowOrth.png". BrickWiki (File page). Archived from the original on 16 April 2016.
  5. ↑ Srinivas, Venkatesh; Pieniazek, Larry; Gould, Tim (29 September 2005). "New Image vs. Old Image". BrickWiki (Talk page discussion). Archived from the original on 25 March 2016.
  6. ↑ Pieniazek, Larry (6 April 2008). "User:Lar". BrickWiki (User page). Archived from the original on 8 December 2008.
  7. ↑ Alano, Brian (13 February 2013). "Brickwiki:Administrators". BrickWiki (Project page). Archived from the original on 7 January 2017.
  8. ↑ "Main Page – News". BrickWiki. May 8, 2012. Archived from the original on 17 June 2012. BrickWiki is back online.
  9. ↑ Alano, Brian; Pieniazek, Larry; Godwin, Ted (21 December 2012) [20 September 2012]. "User talk:Lar § Domain Name Registration". BrickWiki (User talk page discussion). Archived from the original on 10 October 2014.
  10. ↑ "Main Page – News". BrickWiki. November 20, 2012. Archived from the original on 6 February 2016. BrickWiki has a new URL: www.brickwiki.info.
  11. ↑ "Main Page – News". BrickWiki. February 7, 2017. Archived from the original on 21 March 2017. BW is shutting down. If you have material you wish to save please do so before March 25th. On that date www.brickwiki.info will be shut down.
  12. ↑ Godwin, Ted; Bombarde, Claude (12 June 2017) [7 February 2017]. "Shutting down, March 24, 2017". BrickWiki (Talk page discussion). Archived from the original on 14 December 2017.
  13. ↑ "404 Not Found". BrickWiki. Archived from the original on 24 November 2019.
  14. ↑ "Home Page". BrickWiki.info. Archived from the original on 2 March 2021.
  15. ↑ "The brickwiki.org website has moved". BrickWiki/Domainsafe. Archived from the original on 21 January 2013.
  16. ↑ "Main Page". BrickWiki.org. Archived from the original on 1 October 2022.
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