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What is Place Atlas Initiative?
Place Atlas Initiative is a volunteer group that documents the collaborative pixel canvases known as r/place. Its stated approach is "Documenting as it is, not as we want" — an archival mindset, not a curation or ranking one. The group hosts atlas projects for multiple r/place editions (2017, 2022, 2023), a related r/place Wiki, and affiliated efforts such as The Final Clean and the 2022 r/place Catalog.
What the atlases actually do
Each atlas maps the finished canvas: which community drew which area, what the artwork depicted, and the stories behind alliances, raids and overwrites. That makes the projects useful in three concrete ways:
- Finding your own corner. If you placed pixels for a subreddit in 2022, the atlas is where you check how your section was labelled and whether the entry matches what you remember.
- Research and journalism. Writers, students and data-visualisation hobbyists use the atlases as a reference for community coordination on Reddit.
- Preservation. Reddit's live canvas is temporary; the atlases keep a described, annotated version after the event ends.
Who it is for
Historians of internet culture, r/place participants, and moderators of communities that organised pixel art. It is less useful if you want live canvas data, tooling to draw on a current event, or a general Reddit history resource — the scope is specifically r/place and closely related archives.
How the work is organised
The team splits into archival, development and wiki groups, with a project leader. That division matters practically: corrections to a label go through wiki and archival contributors, while site bugs belong with the development side. If you spot an error in an atlas entry, checking the wiki first is usually the faster route, since the wiki often holds the discussion behind a label.
A note on reliability
Because entries are community-written, treat any single label as a claim rather than a fact — cross-check against the wiki page or the community's own records. The atlas is strongest on broad geography and well-known artworks, and thinner on small, short-lived drawings that were overwritten before anyone documented them.
For a quick start, open the atlas for the edition you care about and search for the subreddit or the coordinates you remember; if the entry looks wrong, the wiki is the place to compare notes.
How can I access the r/place Atlas for a specific year like 2017, 2022, or 2023?
The Place Atlas Initiative publishes separate atlases for each major r/place event, so you reach a specific year through its own project page rather than one combined viewer. Start at the initiative's site, Place Atlas Initiative, and choose the year you want from the Projects list: the 2017 atlas (continued), the 2022 atlas, or the 2023 atlas.
What each year covers
| Year | Where it lives | Practical use |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Listed as "continued," with a separate legacy version under Affiliated Projects | Comparing the original canvas with later community annotations |
| 2022 | Its own atlas project | The largest, most heavily documented canvas, useful for pixel-by-pixel lookups |
| 2023 | Its own atlas project | Research on the most recent canvas before the initiative's 2023 snapshot |
Two related resources sit alongside the atlases: the r/place Wiki and, under Affiliated Projects, The Final Clean and the 2022 r/place Catalog. The Catalog is the one to check when you want a structured listing of 2022 artworks rather than an interactive map.
A concrete way to use it
Suppose you are writing about a specific 2022 artwork and need its coordinates, creator, and description. Open the 2022 atlas, locate the region on the canvas, and read the entry attached to that area; then cross-check the same piece in the 2022 Catalog if you need a second listing. For a 2017 comparison, do the same on the 2017 atlas and note that the legacy version under Affiliated Projects may differ in coverage or annotation style.
If you are unsure which year to open, decide from the event: 2017 for the original experiment, 2022 for the expanded canvas most people mean when they say "the r/place Atlas," and 2023 for the most recent event. Each project page is the authoritative entry point for its own year.
What is the difference between the Place Atlas Initiative's projects and its affiliated projects?
The Place Atlas Initiative separates work it runs directly from outside projects it chooses to recognize. Its own projects are the r/place Atlases and the r/place Wiki; the affiliated list points to efforts like the legacy 2017 Atlas, The Final Clean, and the 2022 r/place Catalog, which the Initiative acknowledges but does not present as its own. In practice, the main distinction is editorial responsibility: the Initiative's team organizes, documents and maintains its own projects, while affiliated projects remain under other people's stewardship.
How to read the two lists
- Projects — the Initiative's active, continuing documentation work. The 2017 Atlas is marked as continued, alongside the 2022 and 2023 Atlases and the r/place Wiki.
- Affiliated Projects — related resources that sit outside that direct line, including the legacy 2017 Atlas, The Final Clean and the 2022 r/place Catalog.
What that means if you use the site
If you want the Initiative's current documentation, start with its own projects. If you need an older or complementary resource, the affiliated list is where to look, but expect a different maintainer and possibly different methods or coverage.
The Initiative's stated approach, "Documenting as it is, not as we want," is a useful decision criterion: prefer the project whose documentation matches that aim for your question, whether it is the current Atlases, the Wiki, or an affiliated catalog. For a concrete case, someone researching a 2022 canvas region would begin with the Initiative's 2022 Atlas and then check the affiliated 2022 Catalog for a second, independently maintained view.
Who is on the Place Atlas Initiative team and what roles do they have?
The Place Atlas Initiative names its team by project area rather than by formal job title. The site lists four groups:
| Role | People listed |
|---|---|
| Project Leader | TCOOfficiall (Stefano Haagmans) |
| Archival Team | AnonymousRandPerson, tycho (electric-blue), Nick12 (Nico Abram), m654zy |
| Development Team | Hans5958 (Hans5958_), prosto_sanja (Alex Tsernoh), mxdanger |
| Wiki Team | Aeywoo (xXLInkster17Xx), Nick12, pax, Artillect, axollyon, Crzka (Cappy Ishihara), CodeDev, dntk (treeway7), Eurobat, FuriousChocolate, geekahedron, samurai_crusader (Jim Milton), Noah (NoahS04), Saya (sayaduck), Sodapone, dreamingkills (tea), Zurke |
A few practical notes for reading this roster. Nick12 appears in both the Archival and Wiki teams, so the groups overlap rather than being strictly separate departments. The Project Leader role is a single named person, which suggests coordination and representation duties sit with one individual, while the archival, development and wiki work is distributed across larger groups.
If you need to attribute or credit work, the safest approach is to name the specific team rather than the whole initiative, since a person's involvement may be limited to one area. If you are looking for a contact about a particular dataset, tool or wiki page, start with the team whose remit matches that output, and check the project pages linked from Place Atlas Initiative for any more current listing, since team membership can change over time.
How can I contribute to the r/place Atlas or the r/place Wiki?
The Place Atlas Initiative's own site lists both the r/place Atlases and the r/place Wiki as active projects, with a named team split into archival, development and wiki work. That structure is the best guide to how you can help: contributions are organised by project and by skill, rather than through a single general form.
Ways to help, by project
- The r/place Atlases (2017, 2022, 2023). These are the annotated maps of the canvas. Useful contributions include identifying unnamed artwork, correcting a label, supplying the origin or community behind a piece, and pointing out entries that were misread. If you were part of a community that drew something on the canvas, you are often the best source for what it was and why it existed.
- The r/place Wiki. This is written documentation rather than map annotation — articles on artworks, communities, events and the wider history of each canvas. Writing, copy-editing, adding references and filling gaps in existing articles all fit here.
- Archival work. The initiative keeps a dedicated archival team, which tells you that preserving screenshots, timelapses, threads and other primary material is treated as its own job. If you saved captures during an event, that material has value even if you never write a word of prose.
- Development. The site lists a separate development team, so technical work — tooling, the site itself, data handling for the atlases — is a distinct track from research or writing.
How to start
Go to the initiative's site and look at the project you actually care about, then find how that specific project takes contributions — the Atlases, the Wiki and the affiliated projects each have their own communities and channels. A short, specific offer works better than a general one: name the artwork or article, say what is wrong or missing, and give your source. If you have no source, say so plainly and describe what you remember or witnessed; that is still useful for a wiki editor to weigh.
Choosing where to put your effort
| If you… | Start with |
|---|---|
| Know a specific artwork and its community | The relevant year's Atlas |
| Enjoy writing and citing | The r/place Wiki |
| Saved screenshots or recordings | Archival work |
| Can build or maintain tools | Development |
The trade-off is depth versus reach. Fixing one label on an Atlas is quick and immediately visible; writing a wiki article takes longer but captures context an annotation cannot hold. Doing both for the same artwork — a corrected map entry plus a short article — is usually the most valuable single contribution a knowledgeable participant can make.
What is the purpose of The Final Clean and The 2022 r/place Catalog?
The Final Clean and The 2022 r/place Catalog are affiliated projects listed by the Place Atlas Initiative, a group that hosts r/place Atlas projects and related documentation. Both sit alongside the main Atlas work rather than replacing it: the Initiative describes its approach as documenting the canvas “as it is, not as we want,” which is a useful way to understand why these side projects exist.
The Final Clean
The name suggests a cleanup or finalised version of r/place documentation. In practice, a project like this is usually for people who want a tidier reference than a live, constantly edited atlas: a resolved or consolidated view of the canvas after the event, rather than an in-progress record. That makes it most useful for readers who care about the end state of a canvas, not the editing history.
The 2022 r/place Catalog
A catalog is typically an index or organised listing rather than a map. For r/place, that likely means a structured way to browse or locate entries from the 2022 event, which helps when you know roughly what you are looking for but not where it sits in a larger Atlas. It complements the 2022 r/place Atlas, which is the Initiative's main project for that year.
How to choose between them
- If you want the finished, cleaned-up record of a canvas, start with The Final Clean.
- If you want to browse or look up 2022 entries in an organised way, start with The 2022 r/place Catalog.
- If you want the Atlas itself, the Initiative lists the 2017, 2022 and 2023 Atlases plus the r/place Wiki as its core projects.
A practical next step: open the Initiative's projects list and note which entries are marked as affiliated versus core. Affiliated projects are often smaller in scope, so treat them as companions to the Atlas rather than substitutes. The r/place Wiki at Place Atlas Initiative is the natural starting point for cross-checking what each project covers.
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