I've gotten back into being consistent in working on the Kodocha wiki.

I worked on it most around June/July last year, and fell off due to ArtFight needing more of my time/attention. Then when ArtFight was over, it was around the time people were talking about the shortcomings of Fandom (i.e. the for profit company that is the provider for many wikis, including the Kodocha wiki), so I took some time to think on my options.

It's complicated, because I don't like the company, but imo the service they provide is a necessity in today's landscape. This could be a journal all it's own, so I'm gonna keep it brief and just say: alternatives to fandom wikia are still finding their footing, and aren't a viable option for extremely niche works that already have a fandom wikia. In my specific case, the Kodocha wiki has only had one editor besides me in the last year, and they've only edited a few small things (including jokey edits I've had to revert. lol). We don't have the resources to move.
I've toyed with the idea of making a neocities mirror of the Kodocha wiki when it's at a more content rich point (because yeah, using Fandom Wiki can be ROUGH) but we'll see how it goes. I'd need to make sure too that doing such isn't against Fandom's TOS or something, because I'm unwilling to risk getting my account banned or something.

Anyways tho, the reason I wanted to write this journal was just to encourage people to think about these things. I know for years I didn't think of the realities of these things, the reality that when I went on a wiki to get a reference of a character: someone uploaded that image. The reality that if an image wasn't there that I thought ought to, I could add it. OR the reality that when I couldn't recall what episode had a certain moment, sometime took the time to write down the play by play of what happened in the episode. Yes I always knew that wikis were made by people's contributions, but I didn't think of how that actually manifested.

What that reality for me at the moment is, is making pages for every chapter of the manga Kodocha. I started it last year and was able to make 16 pages before falling off (again, thanks to Artfight, oh which btw I'm not participating in this year), and in this last month I've brought that number up to 29 total. I'm trying to do one chapter a day, and there's 51 chapters in all, hopefully I'll continue being motivated enough this time to get through all of them!
In between now and last year, I had a time around March where I worked on the Wiki again, but that time I spent my energy working on cataloging the Opening/Endings, and overall soundtrack of the anime, in addition to changing episode titles to the official ones (given the second season wasn't officially translated into English until 2022, a previous editor had made all the episode pages based on a fan translation).

OH the other thing I'm doing is making edits of the original color pages, but with English text. Complicatedly, Kodocha was released with some pages in color when it was serialized in Ribon magazine, but said pages where converted to black and white when published in book form. Therefore when Kodocha was released in English, the color pages were all presented in black and white.
In 2003, a kanzenban edition of Kodocha was released in Japan, which retains the color pages, and is obviously more accessible than buying every copy of Ribon that Kodocha was initially published in. Either way, the color pages have no official english version, so I've been editing the text from the tokyopop english release onto the color version of pages.

I hope that in time this part will become obsolete thanks to a new printing of Kodocha. Which btw, Kodocha has been out of print since 2006. Shueisha holds the rights to Kodocha (in Japan), but licensed the series out to TokyoPop in 2002, allowing an English version to be made. In 2006, Shueisha refused to renew Tokyopop's license due to them acquiring Viz Media, a competitor to Tokyopop.... but they never republished Kodocha in english under Viz (nor did any other publisher).
I fill out Seven Seas Entertainment's survey form every month in hopes they'll do a new Kodocha print. Seven Seas saved Marmalade boy from an identical fate (literally being licensed to Tokyopop in 2001, refused a new license in 2006 for the same reason, out of print since 2006, but put back into print in English in 2023 thanks to Seven Seas!) so I hope so much that they do the same with Kodocha.