Timeline
- This page is a work in progress. Most dates are not filled in and important events may be missing.
Sagan 4 is an old project, and one may find that the history of the project itself and its community is just as interesting as the evolutionary history that it constructed. This page serves to document project and community history, the good and the bad, for newcomers interested in Sagan 4's past.
Closed Period (Sept 02 2006 - Nov 28 2006)
For the first four weeks, in both the game and literal senses, Sagan 4 was a closed, invite-only project. Each generation lasted only a single day, and each Week was a literal real-life week. Founders Hydromancerx, Huggkruka, Oviraptor, Krakow Sam, Yokto, and Rhodix were the only contributors. Many of Sagan 4's major groups of organisms were established during this time as well.
- Sept 02 2006: Week 1 began
- Sept 09 2006: Week 2 began
- Sept 16 2006: Week 3 began
- Sept 25 2006: Week 4 began
- Week 4 also contained Sagan 4's first rejected species made by an established member, a handful of motile tree plents created by Rhodix which were submitted in Generation 26.
- Sept 30 2006: Last new submission, Sagan 4 was considered to have concluded
Sagan 4 was suspended after Week 4, and its members moved on to work on another project, Fermi 5. However, Fermi 5 died by October 5th, and on November 28th, Sagan 4 was brought back.
Gamingsteve Period (Nov 28 2006 - April 24 2007)
Early on in Sagan 4's first revival, the process of submission was fairly similar to before, with each Generation being a real-life day and each Week being a real-life week. User:Flisch and User:Irinya joined on as official members while User:Nuclearchinchilla was introduced a guest artist.
- Nov 30 2006: Week 5 began
- Dec 06 2006: The planda and the pink pambu were submitted, sparking immediate controversy.
- Dec 09 2006: Week 6 began
- Dec 16 2006: Week 6 ended and Sagan 4 went on pause.
On December 21, Hydro opened a vote regarding whether Sagan 4 should continue then or after Christmas, and whether the generation system should be changed. Option D, resuming after Christmas with more time to work on species per generation, received the most votes.
- Dec 26: Sagan 4 resumed with Week 7. The original submission form was introduced (previously, submissions only consisted of a name, picture, and description), and generations were to last 2-3 days.
- Dec 28: Generations were changed to end at 8 species instead, and Weeks were officially defined as 7 generations long.
- Jan 20 2007: User:Biocat joined and made his first submission, the hookaptor.
- Jan 27: User:Russ1 joined and made his first submission, the gigaphant.
- Jan 29: Week 8 began
- Jan 30: User:Giant Blue Anteater (then known as Ichthyostega) joined with his first submission, the sea floater.
- Feb 07: Generation 50, a special generation dedicated to microbes, began. This was done because many species were feeding on microorganisms which had never been described up to that point.
- Feb 19-Mar 05: Sagan 4 had its first inexplicable dead period where there was no activity. Even after the dead period ended, activity was slow throughout much of March and early April.
- April 15: User:Powerferret joined with their first submission, the Gomphioculum Microscopica. Ferret had initially used the wrong submission format and posted in the wrong place and had to heavily edit their submission to be acceptable.
- April 24: Sagan 4 moved to its own website, marking the end of the Gamingsteve period.
Website Period (April 24 2007 - February 09 2017)
Nearly all dates for this time period are lost, as the original website and forum are gone.
According to accounts from old members and evidence in-universe with many new artists appearing around this time, the early website period saw Sagan 4 gain an influx of new members, which some older members saw as a bad thing. Although some Earth clones already existed in the form of phants and descendants of the sea floater before this point, weeks 9 and 10--the first weeks to take place on the website--saw the appearance of countless additional groups of Earth clones primarily made by newer members. Over a period of less than 8 months since Sagan 4 gained its own forum, most of its most infamous lineages were born and anti-Terran sentiment, an important factor shaping the events that followed, first began to truly rear its head.
- April 24 2007 (presumably): Week 9 began
- Unknown date: Week 10 began
- Unknown date: Week 11 began
- June 25 2007: This wiki was created
The original wiki logo - July 2007: Week 12 began
- Late July or Early August 2007: Week 13 began
- September 2007: Week 14 began
- During this time, earth clones were considered a major problem by the community, leading to the first lineage-wiping plague in Sagan 4 history: the Shrew Plague, which caused the extinction of most of the shrew lineage. This had somewhat mixed reception; though multiple members had supported the plague as they disliked shrews for their mammalian appearance, some considered it hypocritical given that nodents, another type of mammal clone, were given the free pass solely over a line in the norat's description describing its powerful immune system.
- November 2007: Week 15 began
- At the beginning of the Week, the gamma ray burst mass extinction event was announced. The generations leading up to the disaster consist primarily of dedicated "survivor" species created to save as many lineages as possible, making it the first widespread instance of metagaming in Sagan 4 history. In the generations that followed, some dedicated survivors of earth clone lineages such as the cavehog were also plagued to extinction.
(section incomplete)
Limbo Period (February 09 2017 - March 18 2020)
On February 9th, 2017, Hydromancerx announced that LadyM, who hosted the Sagan 4 forum and wiki up to that point, was leaving and that Sagan 4 would need a new home. In the months that followed, several bad things happened at once, ultimately resulting in the complete loss of the old forum and apparent loss of all wiki data past 2011 (which the community was led to believe was "corrupted" beyond repair). This was not at all helped by Mnidjm, who was managing the wiki's migration, seemingly going MIA. With Mnidjm's disappearance, another proposal was made to restart Sagan 4 at Generation 54 because this was the last generation to occur on Gamingsteve, the forum where Sagan 4 was originally hosted, which was still available at the time. This fell through as well because of many of the images being missing. Thus, Sagan 4 entered a period known to the community as the "limbo".
Beta Epoch
A "reboot" of Sagan 4 began in august of 2019. This reboot, which would later be known as the Beta Timeline, was proposed and spearheaded by Bufforpington. A map was created by raising the water levels in Week 1's map, and it was decided that the results of the first mass extinction event would be re-rolled. Unlike in Alpha, where the survivors were picked by the members at the time, in Beta the survivors were left entirely up to weighted RNG. Though this resulted in 15 surviving species rather than Alpha's 10, the results were skewed heavily in favor of microbes and binucleids, the latter of which were naturally more resistant to radiation. The ancestors of plents, anipedes, purple flora, and other iconic lineages went extinct, but amazingly Protosagania actually survived, as did lineages which were dead ends in Alpha such as the goliathpseudopodians. This resulted in a very different assemblage of starter organisms compared to Alpha.
Though intended to continue as Alpha had, Beta would soon take on a life of its own. Scientific plausibility became favored, and it even had a plague very soon after it started to remove a lineage of Earth clones. Though three new lineages of fauna evolved from cells during Beta Week 2 (Asterzoa, Lituslugs, and Charnlits), new fauna were also banned soon after. Extinction event information was kept secret, preventing designated survivors or other preparations from occurring. All of this actually led to Bufforpington leaving, as in his own words he could not adapt to the changes.
Beginnings of Alpha's Revival
In late 2019, Disgustedorite was googling saucebacks out of interest in the lineage and discovered that the backup wiki, with data up to Week 23, had gone back up. A failed attempt was made to contact Mnidjm about this, but nothing came of it and the website eventually went down. Hope for Alpha's revival died almost as soon as it had been revived.
It was then, however, that a much bigger discovery was made. Unsatisfied with what had just occurred, Disgustedorite continued digging and found two download links which had originally been posted by LadyM. The larger of the two was the Week 26 backup which had supposedly been too corrupted to recover data from. Disgustedorite did not have the tools or knowledge to open it, but Squidy, a non-member who created a species- and ecosystem-searching bot used in Beta, was able to open it. He provided proof of it containing data beyond the previous backup by posting an excerpt from the description of the Tamjack. Disgustedorite immediately made attempts to create a wiki to contain this data, but failed due to her lack of familiarity with using MediaWiki software.
In early 2020, Mnidjm returned. He was immediately informed of the week 26 backup existing and all species descriptions being fully intact in plain text. This kickstarted a successful attempt to revive Alpha, resulting in the creation of this wiki and the Sagan 4 Alpha forum. It was found that there was an open submission slot in Generation 160, so to make her membership in Alpha official, Disgustedorite filled it with the Opportunity Shrew--the first new submission of the revival. Members wanted to continue both Alpha and Beta, so despite fears that one would sap activity from the other both proceeded to continue, thus ending the limbo.
Revival Period (March 18 2020 - Present)
In early 2020, Sagan 4 Alpha was successfully recovered, and a new wiki was made on Miraheze.
Miraheze Epoch
The Miraheze era is a period distinguished by Sagan 4's wiki being hosted on Miraheze. During this time, many changes to the wiki were made and the robust set of features offered by the wiki farm--which had been unavailable for the previously self-hosted wiki--were put to use in vastly improving navigation and other features. Meanwhile, the community prospered, and old members began to return one by one.
July of 2020 saw the beginning of something unique to the post-revival Sagan 4: mass resurrection of species. It began with the return of Coolsteph Temperate Beach biota while repairing a clerical error on the Week 26 ecosystem page. As time went on, a project to record every single extinction date and cause began, which revealed that Sagan 4's history was absolutely filled with erroneous extinctions. Species revival became commonplace, as random species would be found to have been left off of the ecosystem page, mistakenly assumed replaced by a split, or even removed by mistake during ecosystem page reorganization, while just happening to be in one of the few biomes to not be lost by the current period.
On May 12, 2021, the "polar purge" was announced. It was effectively a minor extinction event set between weeks 26 and 27 which served to correct a past science error where ectotherms and uninsulated endotherms were allowed to be placed in polar biomes without justification. Its early announcement served to intentionally spark a wave of metagaming to save any unique organisms that would be affected, as the extinction was happening for meta reasons rather than being a regular game event.
Week 27 began on July 31st, 2022, marking a "soft reboot" where many mechanics were completely redesigned, including an updated biome system and several new types of group submission.
On June 15th, 2023, Miraheze announced that it would be shutting down, causing a mass migration of various communities to other wiki farms. Though Miraheze was saved by an influx of volunteers less than a week later, Sagan 4 followed through with its migration over concerns about whether the new volunteers would actually last long term.
Subdominion Epoch
Sagan 4 migrated to WikiTide in the days following the announcement that Miraheze would be shutting down. During the process, in anticipation of potentially having to move wiki farms or forum hosts in the future, subdomains of sagan4.org were created and set as custom domains for various parts of the Sagan 4 project, including the forum and all four wikis. This resulted in the unification of the entirety of Sagan 4 under sagan4.org.