GuildWiki:Community portal/Leaving Wikia

Leaving Wikia?
GuildWiki is leaving Wikia because it seems that Wikia is heading 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.


 * In anticipation of the move, some users are asking our sysops to delete their personal pages from this wiki if/when the move occurs. If that interests you, please read the terms of usage for, then add the tag to your main userpage).

Why are we 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.
 * Wikia is being extremely reactionary in regards to wikis that move. While they initially said they would support communities' decisions about forking/moving, they have repeatedly clamped down on attempts to inform said communities of the move, claiming that it is "advertising a competitive site."  See this discussion at WikiSimpsons for an example.
 * As a wiki community, our efforts are better served by changes that we actually benefit from.
 * Recently, Wikia has been adding new features. Each change has required extra work to support or adapt to the wiki...or to disable. Some have even since been removed by Wikia (sometimes requiring additional work).
 * The new features have not generally been of value to this community.
 * The skin changes are only the most prominent of these types of changes; as GWW demonstrates, GWiki would work fine with Monobook as default skin from the start.

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.

So, it's just about the skin? C'mon!
No, the skin is only one symptom of a larger problem. Wikia's core purpose fits badly with GWiki's mission: we are a community dedicated to providing the best possible encyclopedic resource for Guild Wars (and enjoying our work to make it so). Wikia is moving away from being primarily an ad-supported wiki hosting site into a company that helps communities of all sizes organize, collaborate, and communicate. We will continue to have to work harder to be effective here than we would at some other host.

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.
 * Your Watchlist, if you use that feature, must be migrated manually. Open Special:Watchlist/raw on both wikis and copy it over.

Were other alternatives discussed?

 * Yes, we attempted to work things out with Wikia in an attempt to re-renegotiate the terms of our hosting. We weren't able to find anyone who accepted the premise that there was anything to discuss.
 * We considered something to do with the the official wiki. However, the consensus opinion is that the two wikis are sufficiently different to make it worth the effort to preserve this community and its brand.

Letter to Wikia
An open letter to Wikia was written by a member of our admin team. This letter expresses our specific concerns and issues with continuing to maintain GuildWiki under their jurisdiction. Users are invited to add their signatures in support of this on the letter itself.

This letter can be found here. A copy is being sent to the community management team at Wikia.

What hosting options are being considered?

 * General pros
 * User database could "reserve" usernames from Wikia, preventing other people from impersonating you (would likely run for only a couple months or so).
 * We could register a top-level domain name (www.guildwiki.com) to point to the new wiki. Some hosts will do this for free, others we'd have to do it ourselves (typically ~$10/year).  Technically, we could've had this all along, but it was never considered necessary.


 * General cons
 * The shared hosting options at Wikkii and ShoutWiki (but not Curse, see below) would have our wiki running on the same servers as other websites where we share storage/CPU/memory resources. It's also very likely that they would have the wiki and the database running on the same server; this usually isn't an optimum configuration for a database-driven site, especially one as popular as GuildWiki.


 * Wikkii
 * Pros
 * Single, small skyscraper ad
 * Claims to supports unlimited bandwidth/storage
 * Offers an "advanced" option where we get almost full control of wiki (FTP/cPanel, but no command line access)
 * Offers free domain name registration for "large" wikis (250+ daily visitors, we're averaging almost 500)
 * Cons
 * Might not support large wikis well ("unlimited" may not be truly unlimited)


 * ShoutWiki
 * Pros
 * No ads
 * Other wikis have already moved / are moving there (Darthipedia)
 * Cons
 * No ads (what sort of business model do they have that they can run with no advertising revenue? how long can they last like this?)
 * Unlike Wikkii, does not have an advanced option or free domain name registration


 * Curse.com
 * Pros
 * Single, small ad
 * Established gaming network, including wikis, forums, and databases
 * Guild Wars Guru, an official fansite forum, joined the network recently (affiliation might help us regain fansite status)
 * They are looking to expand their GW presence, gaining 2 wikis (us and PvX) would be a huge win for them
 * Would have almost full control of wiki (exact access unspecified, but no root privileges; PvX were told they'd be able to update their custom build/skill template extension as needed)
 * Recently moved to a new datacenter with very impressive specs and separate web/database/content servers (


 * Cons
 * We would have to display the Curse.com network footer (we have always had to display a footer with Wikia)
 * None of their current wikis are as big as GuildWiki, thus their capabilities are untested (but should be much better than the above options)


 * Private dedicated hosting
 * Pros
 * Full control over everything
 * Only run ads if we want/need to
 * Cons
 * Full control over everything (need volunteer sysadmins)
 * Not free
 * True dedicated hosting runs $70–90/month per server for the cheapest options; virtual private servers (VPS) start around $15 but run around $50 for what we'd need.
 * VPS is a compromise between shared hosting and a dedicated server: you still share a server with other sites, but you have certain amounts of storage/CPU/memory allocated specifically for you and you alone.
 * If we do this, we'll do it right and get the optimum 3-server configuration: web server, database server, and static content server.
 * Total cost would be at least $300/month for dedicated or around $150/month for VPS.
 * We could raise money by displaying ads (very rough estimate of ~$100/month from Google AdSense) or taking donations.
 * We could potentially share the cost with other wikis that are leaving.
 * We would almost certainly need to have enough formal organization to manage money from ads and donations.

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.

Screenshot gallery
Some examples of pages that would require work under Oasis.