LPedia

LPedia
General Information
Founded:	20 February 2005
Officers
Key People:	See LP Historical Preservation Committee
Contact
Website:	Website
Social Media
Twitter:	Twitter

LPedia is a collaborative digital archive and document repository dedicated to preserving the history and records of the Libertarian Party in the United States. Under the management of the LP Historical Preservation Committee, LPedia has evolved from its initial focus on party history to become the largest online collection of Libertarian Party information, documentation, and historical records. Beyond encyclopedic articles, LPedia maintains an extensive archive of official party documents, including governing documents, committee minutes, membership reports, resolutions, and state party records. By 2025, LPedia hosts over 6,000 articles and more than 11,000 uploaded files, serving as both a historical encyclopedia and a comprehensive repository of party documentation.

Early Contributors and Content

LPedia's earliest article, created on February 20, 2005, focused on the Libertarian Party itself. In the following months, a small but dedicated group of contributors began building the site's foundation. Notable early contributors included D. Frank Robinson, Alex Peak (known as Allixpeeke), and others who helped establish the initial framework of articles. Peak, who created the first state-specific template (Template:Maryland) on October 15, 2005, would continue contributing to the project periodically through 2021.

The early months saw rapid development of core content, with articles being created about key party figures and organizations:

• Party leaders (Michael Dixon)
• Presidential candidates (John Hospers, Roger MacBride)
• State party organizations (New York Libertarian Party, Libertarian Party of Michigan)

Foundation and Technical Framework (2005 - 2006)

LPedia was initially established using MediaWiki 1.3, an early version of the popular wiki software platform used by Wikipedia. While file uploads were permitted, later MediaWiki developments would highlight certain limitations of the early platform. By 2006, when newer versions of MediaWiki had introduced enhanced features, LPedia administrators developed various technical workarounds to maintain functionality while remaining on version 1.3.

Growth and Technical Evolution (2006 - 2013)

By mid-2006, LPedia faced overwhelming spam attacks and maintenance challenges. A small team of volunteers, with Shane Corey (LPAdmin) providing server-level support and James Gholston (Strangelv) focusing on content management, worked to combat these issues. As the challenges grew, additional administrators were recruited to help manage the increasing workload.

The anti-spam efforts evolved from manual cleanup to increasingly sophisticated automated tools. The first major development came in July 2007 with BWABOM (Bulk-Wiki-Attacker-Block-O-Mat), a client-side tool that streamlined the process of blocking malicious accounts across multiple wikis. By 2011, this evolved into the more sophisticated WHUMP (Wiki Handler for Unwanted and Malefactorous Posts), which could automatically detect and remove spam and ban the accounts or IP addresses of the offending poster.

During this period, LPedia also addressed copyright compliance issues with content that had been copied from Wikipedia without proper attribution or license compatibility. Major cleanup efforts occurred in November 2008, May 2015, and early 2017, with the initial 2008 effort addressing the most readily identifiable issues.

Crisis and Challenge Period (2013 - 2016)

A temporary inconvenience, akin to a temporary government program.

The spam attacks reached a critical point by mid-2013. Despite sophisticated countermeasures like WHUMP, which assigned point values to detect and remove malicious content, the volume of attacks became overwhelming. The situation came to a head in June 2013, when James Gholston, LPedia's primary administrator, was forced to disable new account creation entirely. Gholston reported running anti-spam scripts from a notebook computer in a motel room, trying to keep pace with attacks that could generate multiple false accounts per minute.

WHUMP's scoring system provided a stark illustration of the escalating challenge. While a score of 100 points was sufficient to trigger automatic deletion and banning, some attacks reached astronomical levels, with one attacker scoring 73,321 points. Throughout this period, the wiki maintained a somewhat humorous "high score table" tracking these incidents, though the system eventually lost the ability to post new scores.

During this time, LPedia's content statistics showed interesting patterns. The number of legitimate articles fluctuated between approximately 740 and 850, while the number of uploaded files remained static at 113, reflecting the restrictions placed on the site to combat abuse. Other administrators were granted privileges primarily to assist with content moderation and spam control, but Gholston remained the principal technical administrator managing the anti-spam infrastructure.

Major Transition (Late 2016 - Early 2017)

In late 2016, Ken Moellman raised an alarm about potential data loss during a planned server migration. This crisis brought Bonnie Scott back to LPedia, this time focusing on backend database maintenance rather than content contribution. Scott spent several months performing crucial database cleanup, removing accumulated spam entries and repairing structural issues that had developed over years of continuous attacks. It was also at this time that Caryn Ann Harlos assembled the LP Historical Preservation Committee, which was assigned control of LPedia.

Current Era (2017 - Present)

The establishment of the LP Historical Preservation Committee in 2017 and headed by Caryn Ann Harlos marked a new phase of development for LPedia. The statistics reflect this transformation: from approximately 850 articles in 2016, the collection grew to over 6,000 articles and more than 11,000 uploaded files by early 2025. These developments are connected to the LP Historical Preservation Committee and the recovery and scanning of important artifacts such as the original Statement of Principles draft and LP News #1 from 1971.

The site transitioned from allowing anonymous edits to a vetted contributor system, requiring potential editors to complete an application. While this created additional barriers to participation, it definitively addressed the spam issues that had previously plagued the site. Under this new system, LPedia has expanded its role beyond a historical wiki to become a comprehensive document repository, housing everything from committee minutes and membership reports to state party records and governing documents.

PD	This article is ineligible for copyright in the United States as posted and is therefore public domain. Copyrightable edits made with this tag kept in place are released to the public domain and also under the Creative Commons Zero license.