What is this?
This is the Canon Contest 2024 aka Canonicon! This is the first community contest of 2024, and the focus of this contest is the wiki's various canons, different interpretations of the Backrooms' lore and themes.
While the canons have been instrumental in the development of the wiki's current Backrooms universe, nearly all of them are sadly inactive at this stage and are no longer maintained. This contest will see each team revitalize an old canon and bring it back to the Backrooms forefront!
How do I enter?
This contest is a team contest. To start, you need to form a team with at least one other person. You can accept more people into your team until the posting period begins but you have to stay within the maximum number of 5 people! Every member has to post a page or they are kicked off of the team!
Everybody on your team has to have already posted a page on the site that has survived with a positive rating for 24 hours.
Contact a staff member to apply for a team. If you don't hear a response, you can contact more than one, but don't spam. Include in your message:
- A team name (optional)
- The canon you want to develop
- A small blurb detailing your intentions for the canon and introducing yourselves
- The members of the team
Canons are given to teams on a first-come-first-serve basis, so choose carefully! If you see a team has already taken the canon you really wanted to work on, maybe ask them if you can join or choose a different canon.
Teams will only begin to be accepted 24h into the writing period, so when this page is 24 hours old.
If you own a canon, feel free to participate, but don't join the team for your own canon.
If any abuse happens within teams during the contest, don't wait until the end of the writing period to let the staff team know so we can sort it out with time to spare for you to participate in the contest!
How do I post?
When you assemble your team and apply for it with staff, we will create for you a block on this canon page. When a user from the team posts a page for the contest, it'll automatically show up on the list.
To post a page for the contest, make a page and give it the tag canonicon2024. Please don't make any pages with this tag until the contest's posting period starts, or you'll be disqualified from the contest!
You don't need a greenlight to post for the contest. When the posting period begins, we'll add a new posting password, canonicon. That won't work until the posting period, and any sneaky use of this password to post pages outside of the contest without proper posting procedure will be met with disciplinary action!
Other Rules
- Your team can submit as many articles as you'd like, but each team member must submit at least one as the primary author, i.e. the person who actually posts the page to the site. Collaborations still count towards this, but only for the person who posted the page.
- The score of each article will be based purely on their rating at the end of the voting period.
- Editing your articles after they are posted is allowed, if needed.
- Any attempts to give yourself an unfair advantage will result in disqualification. What counts as this will be decided by staff on a case-by-case basis. If you aren't sure if something counts as this, please ask staff.
- All entries must be posted during the designated "Posting Period". Any articles posted before or after this period will not count as entries in the contest.
- Please set the parent page of your article to this page for the duration of the contest by going to + Options > Parent on your page. Staff will remove the parent after the voting period has ended.
- If a canon allows for canon-crossing you may do it, but your team's pages should very much remain focused on the canon.
- The winning team's members will each get to pick an article in the April feature cycle. An additional feature may be added if there are 5 members in the team. If there are less than 4 members, the remaining features will be chosen as normal.
- The team's score is the average rating of the top-rated 50% of their articles. If there is an uneven number of articles, it'll tend towards including more than 50%, not less.
Allowed Canons
These are the canons you're allowed to form your team around for the contest. This includes all of the canons from the canons hub except for the Pantheon canon as it has a large base of contributors and does not need reviving. It also includes some other canons that are not yet large enough to be added to the canons hub.
- BLACK!KNIGHTS is about entities known as the Black Knights.
- Blackout is about the electricity in the Backrooms shutting down. (See also: AVOID ARTIFICIAL LIGHT)
- The Council is about a council of gamblers and revolves around Level 777.
- Children of the Void is about the titular group.
- Decay is about a phenomenon known as decay eroding the Backrooms.
- Desolation is an alternate version of the Backrooms with a limited scope and a focus on liminal horror.
- Industrialization is about a group known as Backrooms Robotics industrializing the Backrooms, the challenges they face, and retaliation from other groups.
- Pitfalls is a deeper layer below the main Backrooms, shrouded in darkness.
- Simulation is one user's backstory for the Backrooms and focuses on humanity.
- Terror Hotel is about the staff and other horrifying features of Level 5.
- UN!MASKED is about a group known as the Masked Maidens.
Contest Dates
Jan 29th 2024
Assemble your teams, this is the Writing Period!
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Mar 4th 2024
You can start to post your pages, or keep writing.
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Mar 18th 2024
All pages must be posted by this date. Voting continues.
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Mar 25th 2024
The voting is concluded and the winners announced!
- Jan 29th - Mar 3rd (5 weeks) — The Writing Period: During this time, no articles may be posted, but you should work on writing and perfecting your articles.
- Mar 4th - Mar 17th (2 weeks) — The Posting Period: During this time, all articles submitted for the contest will be posted. You may still work on writing during this period.
- Mar 18th - Mar 24th (1 week) — The Voting Period: During this time, no more articles may be posted. This period exists so that articles that are added later can still rack up points.
- Mar 25th — End of the contest: Winners will be announced. The winners' articles of choice will be featured in the home page on March 1st as the features of the month of November.
All contest dates are based on "Anywhere on Earth", meaning that if the Posting Period is active in any time zone, posting is allowed.