Community:Zelda Wiki

 is an independent English-language wiki dedicated to. The site is a founding member of the Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance and the oldest active wiki for the Zelda franchise.

Founded by members of Zelda Universe, the wiki eventually became a collaboration between numerous Zelda fansites. In 2013, dropped this system in favor of self-governance, though Zelda Universe retained ownership of the domain and hosting. In 2017, Zelda Universe sold to. The wiki was transferred to Curse's wiki platform Gamepedia, which was in turn acquired by the following year. After spending four years on the Fandom platform, forked from Fandom to regain indepedendence. The site is currently owned by members of the staff and hosted by Prod, a longtime collaborator from.

History
The original Zelda Universe Wiki (ZUW) was created as an "act of boredom" in April 2005. Yami and Jess suggested the idea in the ZU chat room, where it was created and assembled. The ZUW was quickly filled with information, not only about The Legend of Zelda series, but also about Zelda Universe and its community. It was also to be used to host Zelda Universe's Zelda Encyclopedia. On an older version of ZU, the encyclopedia existed as a list of words from The Legend of Zelda series with short definitions; with the help of the ZUW, the Zelda Encyclopedia expanded and became much more detailed as well. The Zelda Universe Wiki served Zelda Universe for over a year, before it crashed during a server move.

In September 2006 the Wiki was moved to another new server, with a new philosophy and under a new name. The name initially chosen was The Zelda Effect (TZE), however this was quickly changed to Zelda Wiki.org (ZW.org). The site was run at the time by the wiki's admin team, as well as the masterminds, a group of webmasters from each accepted fansite.

Quality standards at are maintained through the Admin team, who ensure that every edit is checked (or "patrolled"). Patrolling began July 8, 2007 when revision 42608 was marked as patrolled. The practice of patrolling has continued ever since then.

On January 17, 2011, members of the wiki voted on a name change where it was decided that Zelda Wiki.org (ZW.org) would simply become Zelda Wiki (ZW).

was soon transferred to 's Gamepedia service on March 8, 2017, changing its domain to zelda.gamepedia.com and with many users having to migrate to Gamepedia accounts. On December 12, 2018, Gamepedia was acquired by Fandom, Inc. and went under common ownership with Zeldapedia. The latter merged with on June 15, 2019; two years later the wiki migrated its domain once again to zelda.fandom.com; that same year also saw the wiki switch to FandomDesktop as a skin.

On October 19, 2022, officially announced their departure from Fandom. Its staff created a fork to be hosted by ABXY, LLC. The fork was briefly named Zeldapedia until January 17, 2023, when the site went back to using the name Zelda Wiki.

Achievements

 * Currently contains  articles. To date,  active users have contributed on . (See also: Special:Statistics)

"Want to know anything about the Zelda franchise, anything at all? Just look it up on zeldawiki.org - an online Zelda encyclopedia."
 * The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy: I Link Therefore I Am, published by 'Open Court' in November 2008, mentions and recommends it a visit.

- pg. xiii


 * On August 14 2009, received LegendOfZelda.com's Pinnacle award, given to the overall best site for the last year.

"... it is impossible to deny the quality of writing and maintenance that Zelda Wiki maintains ... Not all articles are perfect, but that is the nature of all wikis – the imperfect is perfected, the scrawny are bolstered, and the quest is never ending ... It is a testament to the robustness of this community, this Zelda Online Community, that a project like the Zelda Wiki, which started as Zelda Universe’s own wiki, has evolved into a website that is truly worthy of this award."

- Xizor of LegendOfZelda.com

"If we've piqued your interest in further Zelda timeline discussion, there are loads of fansites out there expanding on some of the theories we've discussed here. Here are a few good starting points: www.zeldauniverse.net, www.zeldawiki.org, www.zeldainformer.com"
 * In issue 53 of the Official Nintendo Magazine UK and issue 16 of the Official Nintendo Magazine Australia and New Zealand, and two of its mastermind sites—Zelda Universe and ZeldaInformer—were referred to readers.

- Official Nintendo Magazine UK (page 099)

Partnerships

 * currently has a collaborative link with Zeldapendium, a German-language Legend of Zelda wiki. The partnership allows to provide relevant interwiki language links in the sidebar, using the   and   template.


 * has a long-standing affiliation with  StrategyWiki.org , a site offering strategy guide information in a wiki format. All of our game articles carry a link to the relevant guides at StrategyWiki.org, and individual strategy links within articles are facilitated using the StrategyWiki template.


 * In early 2010, formed a partnership with Bulbapedia and Super Mario Wiki, starting the Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance.

Former Masterminds
From 2006 to its removal in 2013, the following were at one point Masterminds for.

Contributor Banners
As a way to increase activity, some of the Mastermind sites offer 'Zelda Wiki Contributor' banners to members dedicated to both the forum and. The banner is not permanent, as users can be stripped of it if they are suspected of having edited articles for the sole purpose of obtaining a banner.

Zelda Universe began offering its banner on November 11, 2008. It has since been awarded to 11 people.