GuildWiki:Community portal/Leaving Wikia

Leaving Wikia?
GuildWiki is considering leaving Wikia because it seems that Wikia is moving in a new direction that makes it harder for this wiki to be a great Guild Wars resource and a fun place to hang out. If you'd like to contribute to deciding the future of this wiki, please join the conversation.

Why are we considering moving?
Wikia has renegotiated the terms under which GWiki has lived at this site, largely defeating the advantages of being hosted here.


 * Wikia's new skin (to be forced on us 3 November 2010) will require a redesign of core functionality:
 * It shrinks the width to a fixed 680 pixels, forcing us to redesign hundreds of articles and tables.
 * The updated Terms of Use remove our ability to fully customize our design by forbidding us from altering/removing any "features" of the new skin.
 * See: this IRC conversation
 * See: Community support's blog on the move
 * See: summary of the upcoming changes (neutral tone)
 * Wikia's new skin continues a trend of increased ads; when GuildWiki first moved to Wikia, Jimmy Wales (Wikia co-founder) and Gil Penchina (CEO) insisted that they intended for us to have fewer ads.
 * In the same communication, they promised GWiki that they would a) never force a skin on us, and b) report regularly on profitability (sharing any such profits with the community). Commitment b) has never been kept, and commitment a) is currently being broken with the imperative new skin.
 * Every few months, Wikia adds a new feature to their site that we have to either support, ask to have disabled, or adapt the wiki to, often without tangible benefit to us; some are later removed by Wikia, some are not. As a wiki community, our efforts are better served to only be confronted by change that we actually benefit from. The skin changes are the most prominent example of this; as gww demonstartes, we'd have been fine with simply keeping Monobook as default skin.

Wait, this cannot be so bad. Are other wikis this upset?
Yes. Including PvX, WoWWiki, Dungeons and Dragons Wiki, and the Anti-Wikia Alliance.

Seriously? Isn't this just about people being resistant to change?
Wikia's changes will force us to redesign hundreds of articles, tables, templates, and layouts. Even if Wikia offered us developer support to automate the process (which they aren't), we would still need to manually adjust nearly every affected page. Further, these changes will also limit our flexibility in making this wiki as effective as possible.

In the end, these changes impose a great burden and yet offer little (if any) benefit to this wiki, its readers, or the community of unpaid volunteers who make it possible.

What is Wikia's timeline for implementing the new skin?

 * October 6, 2010: All logged in users will be able to “switch on” the new look for themselves on any wiki they visit.
 * October 20, 2010: All users will see the new look on every wiki.
 * Logged in users will have the temporary option of viewing and editing wikis in Monaco.


 * November 3, 2010: The option to use Monaco will be removed.

What does a move mean to the average player/reader here?

 * You would have to change bookmarks to the new site.
 * We hope we would be able to leave a site announcement at this site (any existing content here would remain).
 * Your Wikia username will be "reserved" at the new wiki for a certain period. When registering at the new wiki, you will need to provide the same password that you use on Wikia in order to register the same username.  (You can change the password after registering.)
 * All content and history will be migrated. (Thankfully, Wikia does make regular backups, although we have never had to test how easy it is to use them.)

Is moving the only alternative?
No, GWiki will attempt to discuss the current situation with Wikia in an attempt to re-renegotiate the terms of our hosting.

What hosting sites are being considered and why?

 * Referata
 * Supports SMW (something GWiki uses)
 * might not support large wikis
 * Wikii
 * Small ad banner.
 * Supports large bandwidth/storage.
 * Allows us to choose a domain name.
 * con: needs volunteers for tech support
 * ShoutWiki
 * Looks like a fairly stable site
 * Many established wikis are moving to it
 * technical issues are still unclear
 * Curse.com
 * Hosts many gaming resources
 * Acquired GWGuru, an official fansite &mdash; being affiliated might help in regaining fansite status
 * They might actually be happy to be affiliated with us, our high visitor counts, and massive content.
 * We might get free GW2 beta keys
 * unclear: might need volunteers for tech support
 * Renting our own server and running GWiki from there (i.e. from a server-farm rather a wiki-farm). Perhaps sharing the costs with another Wikia wiki that is moving.
 * supports what we want it to
 * we get our own domain name
 * no ads unless we decide we want/need them
 * con: we need to raise money ourselves (less than you think)
 * con: needs volunteers for tech support

Who is deciding this? Do I get any say?
Ultimately, our admins and bureaucrats are going to make the final call because they have to do most of the heavy lifting (whether we remain or move). However, as with any other Big Decision for GWiki, everyone has a say. Add your thoughts to this page or pop an email to someone posting here so that we be sure to take your views into account.