What Is Wikiciv?
Wikiciv is a publicly editable wiki manual for building civilization from scratch. It runs on MediaWiki — the same software behind Wikipedia — and its stated purpose is to collect practical knowledge for restarting basic technologies and infrastructure. As of the site's main page, it holds 329 articles. It is a reference and collaboration project, not a course, product, or service with a defined curriculum.
What the site actually is
The main page describes Wikiciv as "the wiki manual for building civilization from scratch that anyone can edit." Two things follow from that:
- Anyone can edit. Content is contributed and revised by volunteers, so quality and depth vary by article.
- It is a wiki, not a finished textbook. Many entries are stubs or outlines rather than complete guides.
The project frames itself with a quotation from Isaac Asimov's Foundation, describing a "delicate moment in history" — a framing that signals its scope is deliberately broad and long-term.
What topics it covers
The main page groups content into three areas:
| Area | Example topics |
|---|---|
| Food and health | Agriculture and horticulture, food preservation, hunting/fishing/foraging, livestock, medicine and healthcare, soap production and hygiene, water management |
| Crafts and techniques | Carpentry (forestry, woodworking), glass production, leatherwork, light/candles/lamps, metalwork (ore, forge, charcoal), pottery, stonework, textiles (weaving, sewing) |
| Concepts | Energetics (energy production and storage), games and entertainment, literacy and numeracy, measuring and calibration, orientation and transport, politics and economics, social sciences and philosophy, writing and communication |
Featured articles on the main page include Charcoal, Fire, and Water — each with a short definitional summary. For example, the charcoal entry describes it as a lightweight black carbon residue produced by heating wood or other plant and animal material in minimal oxygen.
How complete is it?
Not very, in places. The main page maintains an explicit "Articles that need expanding" list, which includes both foundational items and more advanced ones:
- Basic materials and tools: Adhesive, bellows, bow drill, hand drill, hammer, cement, lime concrete, paper, pottery, pump
- Metals and chemistry: Bloomery furnace, pig iron, copper-doped zeolite, boric acid, cyanide, nitric acid, potassium nitrate, phosphorus
- Energy and industry: Biomass, coal, combined cycle plant, generator, energetics, petroleum, oil
- Other: Acetone, canning, crops, fiberglass, graphite, nylon, methanol, methane gas
The presence of this list is itself useful information: it tells you where the gaps are if you want to contribute, and it warns you not to assume any given topic is covered in depth.
Who it is for
- Readers researching low-technology or off-grid methods — useful as a starting point and a map of topics, with the caveat that individual articles may be incomplete.
- Contributors — the "anyone can edit" model and the explicit expansion list make it straightforward to find work that needs doing.
- Anyone expecting a finished survival manual — this is not that. It is a work in progress organized as an encyclopedia-style wiki.
Practical notes
- The site is in English and uses MediaWiki, so navigation follows the familiar wiki pattern: search, page history, and edit links.
- The main page displays a current date and article count, so you can gauge activity at a glance.
- Because content is community-edited, verify anything safety-critical (medicine, chemistry, structural work) against additional sources before relying on it.