I'm Lemon, head admin of Dota 2 Wiki. For the last 9 years, I've been keeping the wiki updated (with much help from /u/Bu3nyy and others). But I haven't played Dota for many years now, and simply don't have time to keep doing this. So I'm retiring.

Luckily, over the last few years Buny has taken over game mechanics updates, while I still update the hats, events, lore, TI, and generally anything that's not gameplay mechanics. So after I leave, the cosmetics database will stop being updated. Pages for events like Aghanim's Labyrinth will no longer be made, at least not by me.

Buny has said he will keep updating game mechanics for the time being, so don't worry if you only care about hero balance changes. But if anyone wants to help with the other stuff, read on:

The Cosmetics Database

The cosmetics database is currently 100% up to date (12,294 articles). I've made a page for every single hat and HUD item in the game, except for a few temporary event items. All hats have previews in the form of videos, gifs, or screenshots. All significant customizations (effects, animations, icons, sounds, styles) have been checked and listed on the wiki.

This has taken well over 1000 hours over the years, even with a Python script. Arcanas and complicated treasures can take 3~4 hours, even with my familiar routine/setup. Each summer's TI cosmetics take up to 100 hours. Because of the time needed, I don't really expect anyone to keep updating the hat database. And tbh, no one else has really shown an interest in doing it since the game came out.

If you want to try and update it, just look at any similar page and copy the templates, then fill in each parameter. General information on every item is found in items_game.txt (the schema). To find the full customizations list for making tables, check the schema & the file in Dota Workshop Tools (the in-game displays are sometimes incomplete or incorrect). Icons and sounds are extracted from .pak files. Basic knowledge of Mediawiki markup is nice. Exact spelling of everything is required or things will break. Use the source editor, visual edits suck.

Programs I use:

• ValveResourceViewer to extract game files (schema, icons, etc)
• Dota Workshop Tools to check custom animations lists & capture some effects/models
• Notepad++ to parse patch notes/mass find & replace
• OBS Studio to record videos
• Adobe After Effects & Premiere to edit/crop videos
• Photoshop for animated gifs/screenies

Event Pages

Event pages like The International, Diretide or The Underhollow are not hard to make, they just require time and good organization of information. I try to use as many tables as possible, new headings whenever necessary, and short sentences in point form so things are understandable at a glance.

If you make a page for a future event, don't write long rambling paragraphs that nobody will read. Extract icons from game files so it doesn't look like a wall of plain text, then arrange as much info in tables as you can.

The Lore Database

The lore database has about 650 articles, and represents maybe 10% of Dota 2's lore. The idea was to make a wiki page for every character, god, place, species, artifact, concept — every tiny little thing that's mentioned even once in hero biographies, hat flavor text, comics, trailers, event lore, Underlords, Artifact, etc. This was a HUGE fantasy project and I basically gave up after a few hundred hours.

I've gone over most of the older hero bios/voice lines/item flavor texts, but never started on the comics, Underlords cards, let alone the upcoming anime. Adding references after every sentence and writing the same info on multiple related pages turned to be super tedious, so I don't expect people to do it that seriously (but it would be nice).

If you want to help complete it, try to look at the way the existing pages are done, and just copy the page & fill in the blanks. The templates are simple and easy to use. Reference tags are strongly recommended and work just like the ones on Wikipedia.

Others

Miscellaneous work on articles like Patches, Versions, Dota Plus, Shards, Chat Wheel, Medals, Trophies, Emoticons, etc. List here. Most of these don't require big frequent updates and should be easy for anyone to do, just change or add a few things to the existing tables.

Goodbye

It's been a great 9 years with the Dota 2 community, and I've had many tense 90-min matches where I really had to go pee but couldn't let down my team so I just used an old yogurt bucket under my bed while waiting to respawn. There was also much in-game flaming over my unorthodox jungle Sniper strategy (uwu), but that's okay, i forgive you all <3

/u/Bu3nyy is now the head admin in charge of Dota 2 Wiki. I've transferred everything over to him. Please direct all future complaints to the Bunbun.

Thanks everybody. Goodbye.