Willemstan's Recovery from the March Incident
This article was last updated on: January 2nd 2023
A partial screenshot of the ARCHIVES directory of System IV in August 2021.
"So in short, the wrath of WCS and Charlie's parental figure made one final blow. Charlie had to delete 22 articles, but we have backups of them that I will continue to update. We may one day be able to return them to the website, but that is months in the future at the very least. The WCS administration is actively snooping through Willemstan.com like a racoon through trash, so I will be working with Charlie to upgrade the security soon."
- Ian Hampton the deletion of 22 Willemstan Wiki articles (actually 25 total), 03/22/2021.
Lore
The March Incident was a devastating event for Willemstan. The Silly Goose YouTube Channel had around 80 videos set to private, and the channel was now well known to the WCS administration. The Willemstan Wiki was subjected to a purge, in which 25 articles had to be pulled off System IV. This included some of the most entertaining articles, such as Willemstan - IT Men Skirmishes, WHS Robotics Team, and all of the articles on school staff. Furthermore, all of System IV was taken offline for a permissions overhaul. This included the Willemstan Wiki, which was put under a total lockdown. With Willemstan now under the close eye of both school authorities and parental figures, it was more of a Humpty Dumpty type situation.
For a long time, how Willemstan would recover was unclear. While the purged content was archived during the March Incident, there was limited access to it (if any at all) by members of Willemstan, and there was no telling when the purged content would see the light of day again. Eventually, Charlie and Ian agreed to restore some limited content during 2021, but a vast majority of the censored Willemstan Wiki articles did not make their return until after graduation. Following this, recovery from the March Incident has been declared completed, and there are no plans to bring back any of the remaining censored content anytime soon.
Archival of Removed Content
Following the initial meetings with Mr. Armour, access to the Silly Channel was restricted. This meant that the videos set to private were not accessible to all of Willemstan. As a result, on March 14th of 2021, Charlie Nolan downloaded most of the hidden videos and re-uploaded them to System IV, in a new hidden directory called "ARCHIVES". That same day, most of System IV was brought back online, with improved security and hidden from the public view.
On March 16th of 2021, Charlie decided to turn Willemstan.com back online as well. The password protection system was expanded to cover most articles. Unfortunately, Charlie made a few oversights, and did not password protect all of the incriminating articles. This included the First r/Williamston Raid article, which the WHS administration read and was not pleased about. As a result, Charlie was dragged back into Mr. Armour's office, where he discussed his displeasure with how Mr. Freeman was portrayed in that article. He specifically mentioned Andrew Meyer's satirical comment about Mr. Freeman being a "radical islamic terrorist", and the Mike Freeman with a Gun Image. As a result, Charlie's dad cracked down on Willemstan.com, mandating the deletion of almost all articles that mentioned school staff or past computer fuckery incidents, even those the school was already aware of. As a result of this purge, Ian Hampton maintained a backup of the Willemstan Wiki on his computer, where he continued to update the "deleted" articles.
Restoration of System IV & Willemstan.com
As previously mentioned, System IV was brought back online on March 14th of 2021. While System IV had been previously viewable (but not editable) to anyone, this was no longer the case following its restoration. The administration had not discovered System IV itself and we intend to keep it that way. As a result, the log-in information is now needed to both view and contribute to System IV. This information is publicly accessible to all citizens of Willemstan.
Following Charlie's meeting with Mr. Armour, Willemstan.com was shut down once again. After the purge was completed on March 21st of 2021, Willemstan.com was brought back online the same day. However, log-in information was changed within a matter of days, so that only Charlie, Ian, and Sean could access the website. This was because they wanted to password protect all of the articles, and Ian wanted to make a new log-in system for the website. The later never ended up happening. On July 3rd of 2021, Ian announced that the Willemstan Wiki was "back in full functionality", and once again viewable to the citizens, even though the new log-in information had actually been shared with the citizens during the previous month already.
Restoration of Silly Goose
The videos set to private during the March Incident are still in that condition. The only exception to that is the masterful "throwing an onion into a toilet at school" video, which was originally uploaded to the channel back in 2019. On May 12th of 2021, Charlie decided to set the video back to the public, violating the terms Willemstan "agreed" to in the March Incident. The video title and thumbnail was changed in order to conceal it from the administration.
We aren't sure when the rest of the videos will return to public view, if ever. The fact is, Silly Goose is permanently compromised given the fact that Mr. Armour and other staff members know about it. Hypothetically, we could un-private all of the videos after we graduate, but the school may still be able to make a stink afterwords. We strongly suspect the March Incident was responsible for the termination of other WHS content on YouTube from other channels, so it is not unreasonable to assume the school could go after Silly Goose a second time.
Charlie announcing the return of the onion video in #notifications on May 12th of 2021.
Restoration of the Willemstan Wiki
The Willemstan Wiki returned to full-functionality on July 3rd of 2021. However, the 25 removed articles remained off System IV. While we could have put all the articles back online at anytime, we weren't too confident in our password protection system. Willemstan caught a lucky break with the WHS administration failing to breach the password protection system. Furthermore, several parental figures would not have approved. In the end, the approach taken was to keep the articles archived until the class of 2022 graduated, and maybe bring a handful back before then on a case-by-case basis. On August 27th 2021, Ian re-uploaded the Cody article back to System IV, making it the first of the 25 casualties to return to the website. On September 20th 2021, the "System I", "System II", and "System III" articles were put back online. On October 6th 2021, the WHS Robotics Team article returned to the website, but with extensive changes. Alongside this, an announcement was made in the wiki blog. On December 17th 2021, the articles "First Raid on r/Williamston" and "Mrs. Baldwin" returned to System IV.
Following the graduation of the class of 2022 from Williamston High School, Ian began re-uploading the more "flavorful" articles back to Willemstan.com. At this point, they had been in hibernation for so long that most of them had to be extensively re-written in order to be up to date. On July 28th, the articles "March Incident", "Non-Academic Activities in WHS Robotics", and "Mr. Weber" returned. On August 9th, the "Live Camera Feed", "Live Camera Feed: Season Two", and "Willemstan Twitter Accounts" articles were restored as well. On September 11th, articles "Anti-Delp Propaganda", "Willemstan - IT Men Skirmishes", "Mr. Freeman", "Mr. Keith", and "Damage to School Computers" were restored. These were the last of the articles that were censored aside from staff member articles.
Ian has declared the restoration of the Willemstan Wiki complete, and has declared that the wiki will operate under a new policy of only adding articles on staff members that are no longer employed at the district. While these articles are all password protected, Ian does not have much confidence in the wiki password protection. It is possible that the staff articles will be added back someday, but only if wiki security is greatly improved, which is a task that neither Charlie nor Ian want to undertake.
Ian Hampton's final announcement in #wiki-updates regarding restored wiki articles.