Moegirlpedia,[a] commonly shortened as Mengbai,[b] is a Chinese wiki encyclopedia launched in October 11, 2010, and features anime, comics, and video games, commonly abbreviated in China as ACG, and mainly contains female characters, moe anthropomorphism works, and Chinese authors' original works.[4][5][6]

Moegirlpedia
Moegirlpedia Chinese logoMoegirlpedia English logo, written in Hachi Maru Pop
Website logo in Chinese (top) and English (bottom)
Main page of the English Moegirlpedia
Native name
萌娘百科
Type of site
Online encyclopedia
Available inChinese (primary), English, Japanese
Country of originChina
OwnerHangzhou Mengpai Network Co., Ltd[1]
Founder(s)Baskice
URL
CommercialNo
RegistrationNo; registration required to edit
Users
  • Users: 1,073,223 (As of 2 October 2024)
  • Active users: 1,351 (As of 2 October 2024)
Launched11 October 2010; 14 years ago (2010-10-11)
Current statusactive
Content license

History

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Moegirlpedia was launched on October 11, 2010, initially named Green Dam Girl Wiki (Chinese: 绿坝娘wiki), later renamed Little Cute Chinese Girl Encyclopedia (Chinese: 中华萌娘小百科), and then simplified to Moegirlpedia on May 1, 2011.

By 2015, it reached more than 10,000 articles;[7] in 2016, the number of articles in Moegirlpedia reached about 20,000; in 2019, the number of articles in Moegirlpedia reached about 40,000;[8] by the beginning of 2020, Moegirlpedia had collected about 60,000 articles, with more than 1,400 active editors;[9] and by August 2020, the number of articles has reached 70,000, with more than 2,000 active editors.[10] At the same time, Moegirlpedia also opened accounts on major social media platforms, and by 2019, it has garnered 450,000 followers on Weibo.[11]

On July 19, 2020, Moegirlpedia moved its servers from the United States[12] to Mainland China,[13] where it is subject to censorship by the government of China.

During the twelfth anniversary of the site in 2022, Moegirlpedia shut down for repairs and resumed operations on October 31, with an announcement that it would be stepping up its censorship of sensitive content.[14] On February 15, 2023, Moegirlpedia began placing advertisements on the site once again.[15] On September 11, 2023, Moegirlpedia launched its ad-free membership.[16] On March 29, 2024, Moegirlpedia launched its content review system, similar to Baidu Baike, where edited content is being reviewed before being fully visible.[17]

Content

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The entire content of Moegirlpedia is written in a moe context,[18] and it is a "public encyclopedia that anyone can edit freely", providing a platform for editing and publishing anime and other moe-themed works.[19] There are three versions of Moegirlpedia: Chinese, English and Japanese. Moegirlpedia's Chinese text content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 China (by-nc-sa 3.0 CN) license, allowing it to be modified and reused for non-commercial purposes as long as the original authors are attributed and the license is not substantially changed, while the English and Japanese text content is published under Creative Commons-Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license.

Moegirlpedia defines as "an encyclopedia of everything can be moe", and mainly includes ACG characters, works, and terms with a preference for female characters, moe anthropomorphic works, and original works by Chinese-speaking authors[20] as well as a large number of entries on second gen-related terms,[21][22] including more than a hundred Moe stereotypes,[23] and more than two hundred Moe points terms are classified into seven categories: body, appearance, mental, relationship, spiritual, behavior, and expressions. Most of the nearly a hundred Moe personalities included have more than five character entries as examples. The articles are not only illustrated, but also have strikethroughs and blacked-out text to increase the sense of humor, and also include some unencyclopedic comments.[24]

Moegirlpedia articles appear in the form of "Moe",[25] for example, the emoticon "_(:з"∠)_", which symbolizes lying on the floor and signifies a lack of motivation, has been anthropomorphized as "May Disease Emoticon Lady", a long-haired girl in a sundress.[26] In the "Science" category, there are "Moe Confucius' Analects", "Moe Sun Zi's Art of War", and "The Cute Schrodinger's Cat", including "Moegirls" of the Periodic Table of the Elements, as well as "Moegirls" of China, Japan, and the United States.[25] Chen Rui, the founder of Hangzhou Mengpai, the company that operates Moegirlpedia, said, "We are just using a new, more Moe-fied package to make it better understood and more in line with the young people's own preferences and aesthetics."[27]

In the early days, Moegirlpedia only included female characters and girly characters, but later it also opened up to male characters and anime terms.[28][29]

On April 8, 2014, when Microsoft announced that it was discontinuing maintenance of Windows XP, Moegirlpedia posted on its homepage, "XP-tan, thank you! And goodbye..." as a farewell to the operating system's anthropomorphized product, XP-tan.[30] After the popularity of the illustrated character "Danxia" in the 2019 Hunan Education Publishing House high school geography textbook, Moegirlpedia included Danxia in just seven days, setting a record for the fastest inclusion.[31]

Controversies

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Moecoin controversy

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In early 2018, Baskice, the founder of Moegirlpedia, launched a virtual currency called "Moecoin" in Moegirlpedia, with Seikasha, International Otaku Expo Association (IOEA) and Silver Cross Society appearing on the list of partners in the white paper. On March 12, 2018, the CEOs of Seikasha, the International Otaku Expo Association, and SCS issued statements denying their involvement with Moecoin, by that time the project had already raised Moecoins with a total value of approximately CNY 2.55 million, while Moegirlpedia released an announcement on June 3 claiming that what had been exposed was a mirror site of the same name. On March 29, 2019, the project team announced that the Moecoins were currently in a state of stagnation, and therefore decided to start refunding the coins, by which time the value of the Moecoins on the account was less than CNY 300,000, currently in a state of stagnation, and thus decided to start refunding the coins from circulation.[32]

Censorship

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On October 12, 2022, Moegirlpedia's parent company, Hangzhou Mengpai Network Co. Ltd., was scrutinized by the public security authorities for content violating Cybersecurity Law of the People's Republic of China.[33] On the next day, Moegirlpedia announced[34] on Bilibili that the website was temporarily inaccessible due to technical reasons, and there were reports that it was related to the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party,[35][36] and that it resumed operations on October 31st, with restrictions on editing, and announced that it would follow the requirements of China's regulatory authorities to "strengthen the examination of political, pornographic, and violent content", and that more than 524 articles had been rectified and 194 non-compliant accounts have been removed.[36] The removal includes Tokyo Ghoul, 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre and enjo kōsai.

The editing restriction was lifted between November 18 and 26 and the blocked keyword database underwent several subsequent improvements. Historical reversions of entries that have not been reviewed are also not viewable.[37] Around May 2023, Moegirlpedia imposed sitewide semi-protection, and new registered users were required to manually request permission from administrators to edit. On March 29, 2024, Moegirlpedia launched content review system to review all content except discussion boards for compliance, and the content submitted by editors is being reviewed before they are made public, and plans were made to remove sitewide semi-protection and blocked keyword database from the site.[38]

Notes

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  1. ^ Chinese: 萌娘百科; pinyin: Méngniáng Bǎikē; Japanese: 萌えっ娘百科事典; rōmaji: Moe-emusume hyakkajiten; lit. 'Cute Girl Encyclopedia'
  2. ^ Chinese: 萌百; pinyin: Méngbǎi

References

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  1. ^ "Moegirlpedia:About - Moegirlpedia". en.moegirl.org.cn.
  2. ^ "萌娘百科:著作权信息". 萌娘百科. Archived from the original on September 27, 2023. Retrieved May 3, 2023.
  3. ^ "Moegirlpedia:Copyrights". Moegirlpedia. Archived from the original on May 29, 2023. Retrieved May 3, 2023.
  4. ^ Liang, Shiyou (February 2023). 動漫遊戲研究的新時代與發展性:ACG文化國際學術研討會暨巴哈姆特論文獎十週年紀念論文集 [New Era and Development of Anime and Game Research: Proceedings of the International Symposium on ACG Culture and the 10th Anniversary of the Bahamut Prize for Essays] (in Traditional Chinese). AinoscoPress. pp. 251–269. ISBN 978-9864372034.
  5. ^ The WeChat Ethnography - (from media in the era of knowledge production and cultural practice) (in Chinese). China Social Science Publishing House. 2017. ISBN 9787520311175.
  6. ^ Burgess, Jean (2018). The SAGE Handbook of Social Media. Sage Publishing. ISBN 9781526486875.
  7. ^ 文春梅 (July 2015). "从"乌托邦"到"有托邦"——ACGN文化批评". 美与时代(下) (in Chinese (China)). doi:10.16129/j.cnki.mysdx.2015.07.011.
  8. ^ 谭雪芳 (June 2016). 虚拟异托邦 关于新媒体动漫、网络传播和青年亚文化的研究 (in Chinese (China)). 广西师范大学出版社. p. 209. ISBN 9787549580033.
  9. ^ 金晓魁 (April 2020). "Text Gamer-research on Practice of Text Reproduction of Two-dimensional Based on ASMV". Shenzhen University (in Chinese (China)): 20. doi:10.27321/d.cnki.gszdu.2020.001112.
  10. ^ "萬物皆可萌的百科全書". PCStation: 電腦1週 (in Chinese (Hong Kong)) (1031): 40. August 7, 2020.
  11. ^ 齐铮; 王庆 (March 2019). 虚实相生的新空间:动画场景设计研究 (in Chinese (China)). 北京工业大学出版社. p. 43. ISBN 9787563961795.
  12. ^ Japanese Idols Go to China: Cultural Adaptation and Nationalism. Lexington Books. 2022. pp. 161–162. ISBN 9781793608185.
  13. ^ "萌娘百科:公告/关于萌娘百科切入境内的告知(2020.07.19) - 萌娘百科_万物皆可萌的百科全书". zh.moegirl.org.cn. Retrieved April 2, 2024.
  14. ^ 聯合新聞網. "禁維尼64等用語!中國「萌娘百科」12歲生日遭整改 大量條目河蟹用「♯」取代". udn遊戲角落 (in Chinese). Retrieved May 29, 2024.
  15. ^ "萌娘百科:公告/关于萌娘百科站内广告的说明(2023.02.15)". 萌娘百科 (in Chinese). Archived from the original on March 24, 2023. Retrieved March 24, 2023.
  16. ^ "萌娘百科:公告/关于萌娘百科会员服务的试行说明(2023.09.11)". 萌娘百科 (in Chinese). Archived from the original on February 18, 2024. Retrieved February 18, 2024.
  17. ^ "萌娘百科:公告/关于内容审核系统实装的公告(2024.03.22)". 萌娘百科 (in Chinese). Archived from the original on March 23, 2024. Retrieved March 23, 2024.
  18. ^ "Study on Online Anthropomorphic Comics in China - CNKI". kns.cnki.net. Retrieved May 28, 2024.
  19. ^ "二次元生产力:宅文化下的互联网创新". GeekPark. Retrieved May 28, 2024.
  20. ^ Aimo (May 16, 2013). "看那节操漫天飞坠 萌娘百科手机App体验-太平洋电脑网". pcedu.pconline.com.cn. Retrieved May 28, 2024.
  21. ^ "【独家】废柴 二次元 暴恐动漫与中二病". Sohu. August 26, 2022. Archived from the original on August 26, 2022. Retrieved May 31, 2024.
  22. ^ "萌娘百科是什么意思? 关于萌娘百科的介绍-中华网河南". January 31, 2023. Archived from the original on January 31, 2023. Retrieved May 29, 2024.
  23. ^ "殺・必・死!中華娯楽週報 第11回:コレを使えればあなたも「中華宅」!楽しい中国語ネットスラング第1弾". December 20, 2021. Archived from the original on December 20, 2021. Retrieved May 31, 2024.
  24. ^ 齐铮; 王庆 (March 2019). 虚实相生的新空间:动画场景设计研究 (A new space where reality and reality are together: research on animation scene design) (in Chinese (China)). 北京工业大学出版社. p. 43. ISBN 9787563961795.
  25. ^ a b "今日早报". March 4, 2016. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved July 1, 2024.
  26. ^ "か、かわえええええ!! やる気が出ないポーズの顔文字「_(:з」∠)_」が中国で萌えキャラに擬人化". ねとらぼ (in Japanese). Retrieved July 1, 2024.
  27. ^ "《中国话》 第6集 能言善道". January 31, 2023. Archived from the original on January 31, 2023. Retrieved July 1, 2024.
  28. ^ 蒋原伦,张柠, ed. (November 2019). Media Criticism (Ninth Series) (in Chinese (China)). 广西师范大学出版社. p. 6. ISBN 9787559823489.
  29. ^ 金晓魁 (April 2020). "Text Gamer-research on Practice of Text Reproduction of Two-dimensional Based on ASMV". Shenzhen University (in Chinese (China)): 20. doi:10.27321/d.cnki.gszdu.2020.001112.
  30. ^ "XP娘一路好走 我們會想念妳的". August 19, 2018. Archived from the original on August 19, 2018. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  31. ^ "地理教科书里的纸片人,一跃成为了二次元偶像". www.yystv.cn. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  32. ^ "【链路头条】数字货币诈骗蔓延,饥渴的二次元世界". July 17, 2021. Archived from the original on July 17, 2021. Retrieved May 31, 2024.
  33. ^ "行政处罚结果信息公开". October 31, 2022. Archived from the original on October 31, 2022. Retrieved May 30, 2024.
  34. ^ "动态-哔哩哔哩". October 31, 2022. Archived from the original on October 31, 2022. Retrieved May 30, 2024.
  35. ^ 聯合新聞網. "禁維尼64等用語!中國「萌娘百科」12歲生日遭整改 大量條目河蟹用「♯」取代". udn遊戲角落 (in Chinese). Retrieved May 29, 2024.
  36. ^ a b "禁「習」用「♯」代替!中國「萌娘百科」遭整改 大量內容被和諧 - Yahoo奇摩遊戲電競". November 10, 2022. Archived from the original on November 10, 2022. Retrieved May 29, 2024.
  37. ^ "萌娘百科:公告/【置顶】关于全面恢复萌娘百科编辑功能的公告(2022.11.26) - 萌娘百科 万物皆可萌的百科全书". December 12, 2022. Archived from the original on December 12, 2022. Retrieved May 29, 2024.
  38. ^ "萌娘百科:公告/关于内容审核系统实装的公告(2024.03.22)". 萌娘百科 (in Chinese). Archived from the original on March 23, 2024. Retrieved March 23, 2024.
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