Forum:Wiki Relocation

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Unfortunately continued growth and bandwidth/overhead demands are requiring we move to a new host again. Most of the larger gaming wikis have faced this same transition point in their history where the costs to operate become prohibitive and they have moved to the professional wiki hosting site Wikia.com. Wikia was founded by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley, Chairman Emeritus and Advisory Board chair respectively of the Wikimedia Foundation which is responsible for both Wikipedia and Mediawiki (the wiki software that we use to run this site). I will try to list as openly as I can the pros and cons of this move below and we will only reach a final decision once everyone has had an opportunity to weigh in, this wiki was made by players of Asheron's Call for the benefit of other players and our primary goal is to ensure the long term availability of the hard work and countless hours of the many contributors. We recognize that the wiki's popularity rests firmly on how useful and broad the wiki has become because of their work. valign=top Pros Cons Hosting would be provided free, meaning the longterm viability of the wiki would no longer be dependent on forces we may not be able to control. Time spent contributing to the wiki would not be in danger of being lost or unavailable. Editorial control will remain with us, we will continue to decide what the wiki will be and what it won't be. We would share the same host as the largest wikis for games like World of Warcraft, Guildwars, Diablo, Everquest II, Final Fantasy and nongame wikis like Lostpedia, Wookieepedia and others. Mediawiki software upgrades, weekly backups, outages, etc are all handled by a full time team of engineers employed by Wikia and we would no longer be dependent on one or two people that aren't always available. Wikia will not own the content, it will remain under the Creative Commons open license which means people are free to use submitted data on their own sites or build upon it as they see fit. Unlike other corporately owned fansites (as well as all private sites that I have personally contacted in the past) that severely restrict how information on their sites can be used, the wiki ethos is to make information as widely and as conveniently available as possible. Towards this end Wikia makes weekly data dumps that contain all the wiki's pages. This dump is readily downloadable. This was a goal we have always had ourselves but due to the complexity of remote administration and the size of the dumps it hasn't been practical for us to do. This also protects the data by allowing multiple copies across many people and locations, rather than in just one or two places as is now the case. Wikia engineers have created lots of widgets and templates that can be used to improve the site so players can focus on game content instead of spending that time on wiki plumbing. A lack of advertising is a common complaint by players that wish Turbine could devote more resources to game exposure. Because of our size we will benefit from visibility on Wikia which will mean Asheron's Call will gain visibility, which hopefully might get some players to return that otherwise wouldn't have. While Wikia will have ads, because of the increased costs of running the wiki ads would almost certainly be required going forward no matter what we do. However there would be no guarantee they would cover our costs and we would also require players to take time to administrate this. Wikia on the other hand would handle all aspects of this on our behalf. While the style/layout of the wiki as it currently exists can be maintained by adjusting personal preferences (using the monobook skin), it will not be the default skin. Users that do not change their skin preference or users that are not logged in will see pages that differ in appearance. Usernames are wikia wide, not just specific to our wiki, as a result there is the possibility some users won't be able to use the exact same name after the move. Ads will appear on most pages (the number of ads are reduced when logged in and on pages other than the main page). We will not have direct control over what ads appear, though there is a mechanism to report inappropriate ads. Players will not be the final arbiter of what material remains on the wiki. Wikia reserves the right to remove information for any reason. However the history of the other large gaming wikis shows that this has little to no real world impact. Wikia is a for profit entity, which means that if ad revenue is greater than the costs to host the wiki, those profits go to Wikia shareholders. Many popular services operate in the same way, like Google Search, Gmail, IGN, Warcry CoD, Hulu, Broadcast Television and Radio, etc. The ads allow the companies to offer services for free to the endusers. With the move to Wikia there is the potential for a fork (the creation of another wiki using the same base material but with each wiki then taking their own path with their own set of contributors). Technically this is possible already, however the potential increases if there are people that are unhappy with the move. We would like to allow time for any of our contributors or readers who might have concerns to be able to voice them now so they can be addressed to their satisfaction before a move is made. --Tlosk  talk  contr 23:56, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

We've been very fortunate to have our current free hosting (Thanks Mav!), but I don't think we're going to find a better solution than Wikia. Wikia provides exactly what we need, and since they host other gaming wikis with much larger communities, we shouldn't have to worry about capacity. I understand that advertising is necessary, but blinking, flashing, animated advertisements are so distracting that I either block them, or don't visit those sites anymore. I see there is one such ad on the main page of the lotro wiki, though the other four ads aren't a problem. It's reassuring that they do make site content available for download -- so much effort has been put into the wiki already that I'd hate to see it lost. I already have an account at Wikia. If we moved there, can my ACC Wiki account/username/contributions be merged/associated with my existing Wikia account? By the way, it might be worth starting a thread on the Turbine forums, to hear what people there think. --Widgeon 09:45, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

If there are two accounts with the same name, then email addresses are compared. If they match, that name is set as one account. If there are two accounts and the email addresses don't match, then a prefix would be added to the new (merging) account. If you have accounts of the same name on ACCWiki and on Wikia, make sure your email address is the same on both accounts. To do this, go to your preferences page, make sure the "email" field is correct, and authenticate your email by clicking the link in the email sent to you. If you have accounts of different names on ACCWiki and Wikia, and you would like them merged, there will be a talk page where you can request they be merged into a single account. (If the emails don't match and someone ends up with a prefixed name, it will be possible to merge them after the fact after verifying both accounts belong to the same person, or a name change to a nonprefixed, unique name if desired if you don't own the wikia account of the same name). --Tlosk  talk  contr 20:02, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, that answers my question. I've updated my email address, and that's all I should need to do. --Widgeon 22:27, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I'd never thought of the fact that wikia advertises their other wikis. That is a real nice benefit. However, on the point about user names- if names are universal, that means anyone from any wikia wiki can edit any other wiki? That sounds like it has the potential for harassment. Has this ever been an issue? Also, you said we remain in editorial control. Do we still keep the ability to ban/block bad users, or is that something wikia does? --An Adventurer 16:19, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Any registered user with Wikia would be able to login to edit our wiki, as we could theirs. All of our admins will still be able to block any user from our wiki, also Wikia staff can put in place a global block for users that are vandalizing/spamming more than one wiki. Looking through the Special:BlockList for several of the larger wikis they don't have large numbers of blocks per month so it doesn't seem that vandalism/spamming is much of an issue. Also on a related side note, we didn't move our old chat forums during the last hosting relocation because of the spam problems and server overhead concerns, but we can have a true forum again if we wish after the move. --Tlosk  talk  contr 20:02, 6 September 2009 (UTC)