Community:Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance
The Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance, NIWA for short, is a network of wikis and their associated websites which aims to chronicle all things Nintendo, supporting wikis independent of large corporate organizations.
History
NIWA began as an expansion of the concept of Bulbapedia's Encyclopaediae Pokémonis, shortly after administrators from Zelda Wiki.org contacted Archaic, Bulbagarden's head, about a possible affiliation. It was jointly decided, shortly thereafter, that rather than a simple affiliation, an entire network of Nintendo-based wikis could be begun, and Super Mario Wiki was asked to join as the third founding member.
After a little under a month of planning, NIWA was launched on February 14, 2010, coincidentally the fifth anniversary of the public launch of Bulbapedia.
Currently, there are 12 wikis which comprise NIWA: Zelda Wiki, Bulbapedia, Super Mario Wiki, Metroid Wiki, WiKirby, Wars Wiki, WikiBound, Smash Wiki, Pikipedia, Lylat Wiki, Strategy Wiki, and Donkey Kong Wiki.
Name
NIWA's name, an acronym of Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance, is also romanized Japanese for "garden", symbolizing the natural growth of the community around the fandoms that make it up. This is fitting, given Nintendo's Japanese origins, with romanization of Japanese being an important aspect of all three wikis that currently make up the network.