Forum:Gamepedia and Fandom

If you haven't heard the news, Fandom (Wikia) has purchased Curse Media from Twitch. Curse Media owns Gamepedia, and therefore Wowpedia is on the way back to Wikia.

We don't know what all this entails, as they've only just made the announcement, but we wanted to make sure you're aware too. There are discussions going on behind the scenes about what that means for the community of editors and the great resource we've put together over the past eight years.

As soon as we get more information, we'll make sure to pass it along to you, but for now, that's the news. -- k_d3 20:13, 12 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Guess that's the two last years of my life down the drain Xporc (talk) 20:18, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Also https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/the-future-of-wowpedia/45879 -- (•) 20:27, 12 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Frankly, I do not believe it bodes well for the Wowpedia/Gamepedia community that there was no plan ahead of time. That is not a dig at Gamepedia staff, just the fact that the money-movers probably cannot see past the established content, updated for free by community members, ripe for advertisement clicks.  The only way I am sticking around is if the WoWWiki design in its entirety is nuked from orbit and never allowed to taint all the work and reputation of Wowpedia. Aliok (talk) 03:49, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I am done with editing Wowpedia until Fandom straight-up tells us what is going to happen to Wowpedia. Fandom/Wikia can kiss my over-sized tuchus. Aliok (talk) 03:47, 2 January 2019 (UTC)


 * I'm willing to wait until we have more information available, but my skepticism is quite high given past history. -- Alayea (talk / contrib) 04:24, 13 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Aw, dammit. I remember when we moved from WoWWiki a long time ago, the website itself wasn't too bad yet.  Sometimes I'll check it out to see the differences in information or pictures, and it is just a bloated mess now.  What a shame.  [[Image:VraulIconTINY.gif]]  Vraul Jawrip  (talk &middot; contr) 05:54, 13 December 2018 (UTC)


 * There were some unprofessional comments at the Wowwiki announcement. I honestly don't think there could be a worse move than going back to Wikia/Fandom. I don't believe they support their editors properly at all. Techhead7890 (talk) 04:29, 14 December 2018 (UTC) (parts struck at 0500)


 * Yeah. He called for civility while taunting us.— 04:55, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I thought so, I'm not sure any more, it might have been a lapse in judgement. The 'crat who posted it actually wrote a much more conciliatory post on the official forums, so I guess I ought to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it is rather irksome. Techhead7890 (talk) 05:00, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Ugh, Fandyllic continues to justify his little "joke" that Wowpedia is his "wayward child" and dismissed me as some kind of random wandering idiot. He clearly isn't a pleasant person to work with, lording over his castle over there. Oh well, I've never really found wikia admins to be much help anyway. Techhead7890 (talk) 05:21, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Fandyllic is believing all of our hard work belongs to him just because he made "25,000" edits on the site a decade ago, as if that was supposed to be any impressive. Well, bad news because I made 100.000 edits since joining two years ago, and that's only me. Any person with a brain can compare wowpedia and wowwiki about the coverage of recent WoW material and see that we are not wayward child, but that wowwiki is the drunk and jobless uncle living in a ruined shack Xporc (talk) 08:21, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Haha, well, I feel like I shouldn't badmouth him too much however I feel about him, especially with the merge likely coming -- but I'm glad I'm not the only one who's seen his bad side. I've not been around Wowpedia as much as I would have liked, but for what it's worth Xporc, I've found you guys way friendlier :) Techhead7890 (talk) 08:52, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Wowpedia's reactions ".. fuck."
 * Wowwiki's reactions "haha, this is going to be fun, we'll get to steal all their content." (comment thread) -- MyMindWontQuiet 09:05, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I hate that he's so damn smug about it. If we're forced into a merger and...that guy is given any power, then I, for one, will be done. I'm kind of hoping that Wikia looks at us, then looks at them, and then tosses them aside, but somehow I doubt it. Perhaps the fact that back when Blizzard used to link to a wiki, they linked to us and not them will be a point in our favor, but Wikia is about as accomodating as a prison. --[[Image:IconSmall_Deathwing.gif]] Joshmaul, Loremaster of Chaos (Leave a Message) 18:01, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
 * The guy is due congratulations for admitting his site is substandard. You guys forked off once before, there's no reason you can't do so again. While the guys at Curse have obviously done a grand job thus far, the ideal would be migrating to a volunteer-run not-for-profit farm. The problem, of course, a large one (bar Wikimedia but Gamepedia is not under the scope of their project goal) does not really exist. Miraheze is a thing and has excellent support but it is quite small, and the whole Orain incident brings security into question. Wikia, whether this is a cover-up or not and they are keeping quiet to prevent backlash, themselves seem to be unsure of how the acquisition will pan out, whether there'll be a merge or not, etc. (even if there is no merge it may be best for the community to explore alternatives) If the proposed course of action is dire enough, I'm sure a fork will pop up somewhere in no time. I'll stay tuned. Gcx0 (talk) 19:45, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
 * "Smug" might be a euphemism.
 * > gloats and laughs at Wowpedia unprovoked
 * > "let's steal all their content"
 * > "Wowpedia better be civil" -- MyMindWontQuiet 20:04, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Oh hell naw! I can't imagine working on Wikia. It's chaos :-( Mordecay (talk) 21:01, 14 December 2018 (UTC)


 * I happened to read over the old post from eight years back when we left Wikia in the first place, and I find myself appreciating the irony of complaining about going to Curse (jumping from one corporate overlord to another, as Pcj put it) back then when they ended up being a hell of a lot better to us than Wikia. Kinda makes a fellow wonder what all the fuss was about, considering we've gone full circle. (Or, in the immortal words of - among others - Bugs Bunny, "Was this trip really necessary?") Anyone know any other corporate overlords who aren't being bought up by bigger ones like it's a fire sale? --[[Image:IconSmall_Deathwing.gif]] Joshmaul, Loremaster of Chaos (Leave a Message) 03:45, 15 December 2018 (UTC)


 * If Wowpedia is merged back into WoWWiki or forced to use the Fandom / Wikia format, I'm out. We forked for this very reason nearly a decade ago, and Fandom has only become a worse platform in the intervening years. I know that I'm not a massively active contributor these days, but I absolutely will not contribute to WoWWiki, and I hope that the powers that be are searching for viable alternatives. Amaranth Sparrow (talk) 17:43, 15 December 2018 (UTC)


 * I am actually a Wikia user, but I do often visit Gamepedia's wikis for information, and I couldn't help but join the conversation. Nothing has been officially announced yet regarding the post-buyout cooperation between the two wikifarms, but I believe that a forced merger with Wowwiki is unlikely. Wikia normally permits the existence of many different competing wikis about the same topic on their platform and would only join them if the users of both agree. I admit that the change in the page layout is a possibility, but so is the two platforms operating independently, only borrowing things they like from each other. You are of course welcome to fork, if you wish, but I would advise waiting at least until the plan has been revealed. Vengirni (talk) 09:47, 16 December 2018 (UTC)


 * My biggest concern about both a merger and a fork is that I've been working on a project that's been making extensive use of page history, in order to see how things have changed over the years, especially in ways that just wouldn't be worth making a separate page for... The thought that all of that information might be lost makes me feel physically ill... Ladubois05 (talk) 20:56, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm curious, could you please tell more about this project? Xporc (talk) 16:44, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Looking at Wikia past events, to understand what is coming
I've just registered here to give some past experiences and facts about Wikia, that hopefully would give more information to get the best decision:


 * Uncyclopedia was bought, and for many years it was the only wiki that had a special treatment regarding skins: Every other wiki was forced into using their corporate skin (Monaco at first, Oasis next), except Uncyclopedia and sister-language projects. Until May of this year, where wikia decided to ditch Monobook entirely from personal preferences and also as the default skin of Uncyclopedia.
 * One of the reasons of ditching Monobook was GDPR, which Monobook has no issues with. But the real reason was Wikia didn't want to invest in maintaining that skin, and to develop something where EU users can give consent to access their preferences about cookies and other tracking technologies.
 * Wikia has phased out many of their own-developed extensions, and more are coming. As with Monobook, they don't want to invest in their own extensions. They're using an old version of MediaWiki (1.19), heavily modified, and backporting some of the features, but they don't want to invest in upgrading the software.
 * Wikia is going to change all domains from wikia.com to fandom.com to complete its rebranding, even if it's going to hurt SEO of the wikis (at least initially). Their branding is the top priority of Wikia. I also remember when they disable the ability to change the document title (the text displayed on the tab/window title on the browser) to prevent users from removing the "Fandom powered by Wikia" part of it.

With all this background, it's very unlikely that Wikia will support the current skin used by Wowpedia or your MediaWiki extensions. Initially all would remain the same. However, when one company acquires another that has the same focus, they try to merge the technology to reduce maintenance costs. Maintaining 2 different MediaWiki codebase and infrastructure doesn't look reasonable for a company like Wikia. I have no doubt that Gamepedia wikis will be merged into Wikia infrastructure, meaning an effective downgrade for you, both in features and the ability to make decisions, although anything has been decided yet. Of course, this is just my guess, but if you think another scenario is possible while wikia still earning enough money to profit from this, feel free to convince me otherwise.

I know this situation is horrible. Best of luck and feel free to contact me in case you need assistance in hosting your wiki yourselves. Ciencia Al Poder (talk) 18:10, 16 December 2018 (UTC) (PD: Yes, I'm the site owner of wikidex.net)


 * Thank you, I found it an enlightening read. :) -- Alayea (talk / contrib) 19:10, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Wikia doing Wikia things ? Color me surprised ! There have been many comments on this subject, and events related to it in the previous months, and it's almost sad to see that they have not changed a bit, even within the span of an entire decade, . -- MyMindWontQuiet 19:22, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Well-written. Thanks for the informative write-up. Serenus (talk) 14:14, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Forking
So ... I believe it's on everyone's mind. Like eight years ago, it's time to discuss the possibility of going solo again. I know this has already been linked earlier, but here is the old discussion about this: Forum:Should WoWWiki leave Wikia?

Basically FANDOM hasn't done anything bad (yet?), and the Gamepedia staff has asked us to give them a chance, but it's unlikely things are really going to improve. FANDOM now has a quasi-monopoly on things hobby wiki-related, and they have never shown any willingness to discuss or improve themselves in the past years, which is why even a few weeks ago several FANDOM wikis were still running away and trying to join Gamepedia.

So yeah, things could actually turn out great, but it wouldn't be bad to investigate potential other options here. It seems the wowpedia userbase doesn't have a chance of splitting, considering almost everyone here seems wary of FANDOM, but it could potentially lead to us losing the wowpedia name and having a long time before the community & Blizzard itself would consider our eventual new wiki as the best one. That would be the price of freedom, I guess.

For now nothing drastic happened, it's all about mid and long-term hypotheses, but please discuss how you feel about the question. I'm all for giving chances but having several options is always better than being imposed one. Xporc (talk) 13:56, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
 * For those curious, we already have the extract. Gamepedia was kind enough to give it to us without too much hassle. And they're working on making sure we can continue to get extracts as needed. -- (•) 14:49, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Personally, I'm completely fine with the idea of forking if the community decides that that is the best option, even if it means potentially losing the Wowpedia name and reputation and having to start over from scratch in regards to earning the larger fanbase's trust. In general I'll probably just stick with the community wherever it decides to go, even if the destination ends up being one I disagree with. I definitely think we should wait until we get some more concrete details from FANDOM's side before we do anything drastic, though. -- 15:42, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I'd prefer not being part of FANDOM. PeterWind (talk) 16:24, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm fine with forking too. But I agree with the others and think we should wait a bit to see if anything bad actually happens. What is at stake here is the "Wowpedia" name, if we leave, then we will lose it, so we need a good reason to leave, and for now we don't since nothing bad has happened. We already have an extract/copy of the database and are able to leave at any moment, so if Wikia does try to roll over us (highly likely), then we'll just fork. There's harm in leaving, but none in waiting.
 * In the mean time we can try to think of other options. The only two, main options I can think of would be joining the ZAM network (which comes with its own potential issues (and advantages) but it's probably the only alternative to Curse and Wikia) - that is Wowhead, Hearthpwn, etc. - or self-funding (like the Transformers wiki, though I'm not sure how well they are doing now). -- MyMindWontQuiet 16:57, 16 December 2018 (UTC)


 * I'm all for waiting and seeing, but discussing other options is still good to do so that we'll have something to fall back on rather than being spur of the moment. (We also have to consider that, like the last time, other wikis are watching us to see where this all goes.) -- Alayea (talk / contrib) 19:08, 16 December 2018 (UTC)


 * I have a suggestion: what if we considered a move to ShoutWiki instead? A lot of ex-Fandom wikias moved there, and they seem to still be going strong. Wowpedia actually is on ShoutWiki's Anti-Wikia Alliance list and is the second largest site on that list, after Yugioh. Both Yugioh and Runescape (3rd largest) are self-hosted, so perhaps we could go that route as well but I assume it's a difficult process since we didn't do that after first leaving Fandom.


 * I don't think we should be worrying at all about losing name value. Wowpedia quickly made a better name for itself after leaving Wowwiki, and a new site will do the same before long. --ShadowShade81413 (talk) 19:51, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
 * That list is dated; Wowpedia is much larger than that now. (And Yugipedia produces an error currently, which does not inspire confidence). -- (•) 20:15, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I use Shoutwiki to host a small wiki for my D&D campaign, and while they've been mostly alright I'm fairly certain that they have nowhere near the bandwidth and infrastructure needed for something of our size. We would also be sharing a user list with all of their wikis, significantly increasing the incidences of spam. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 20:18, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
 * No, Shoutwiki has never and will never be an option. Wish them the best though. -- (•) 20:19, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Can you explain the specifics why? From what I gather (but could be wrong), Shoutwiki does not have nearly the degree of malware/viruses and ad problems that returning to Fandom would bring. --ShadowShade81413 (talk) 22:16, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
 * We're too large. At this point it's better to go another way. -- (•) 12:30, 17 December 2018 (UTC)


 * And Yugipedia produces an error currently, which does not inspire confidence —@Pcj
 * Hi, I'm one of the administrators on Yugipedia (and was one on the Yugioh Wiki before the fork); I just wanted to point out that while the main page does often show an error, it only does so for logged-out users, and doesn't usually reflect the status of the rest of the wiki: you should be able to get a live page by directly visiting it, or by using some redirecting special page such as Special:Random, and because one of the issues here is that the error page is being cached by the server, you can avoid seeing it by registering an account and being logged in. Of course, we know none of this is ideal, and have an idea of how to fix it, it's just taking some time.
 * If anyone here has questions about our own experience with forking to a self-hosted wiki, I can try to answer them, though I ask that you please ping me since I probably won't be following this page very closely. Dinoguy1000 (talk) 21:09, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

&larr;

It's been 96 hours since we got the news that we've been sold down the river. Hopefully everyone's gotten over the shock and we can start making plans.

At this instant it's too early to say "we're forking right now and here's the new domain", but it's clearly in the cards. In order to not play that hand, what assurances are we looking for from Fandom? From Gamepedia? Past experience proves that Wikia/Fandom's word is generally not worth the paper it's written on, so who do we trust to actually keep the promises that are made? Sure, there's been a leadership shakeup over there recently, but communities within the past two weeks just forked over to Gamepedia to get away from that environment. Not a sign of confidence.

Curse staff have been giving the impression that they'll be in charge post-acquisition, but who acquires a competing product/team and installs them above their own employees and says "hey, you're in charge now"? That's gotta be demoralizing for the Fandom employees, and even less of a sign of confidence that things are in a good place. The VCs funding Fandom clearly don't mind throwing money around, but they're going to want a return on their investment at some point and we all know what that means for ad quantity/quality...

Should we pull the trigger on the fork, is it worth hitching ourselves to another provider? We're in a much better place now and the cost of hosting/bandwidth/etc is a relatively known quantity. I said on the forums that this has been a passion project of mine for eight years, so I'm not opposed to putting my money where my mouth is... at least to get us started.

I'd like to direct this conversation to see if we can answer my first question: what assurances do we want? Ultimately that's what this forking decision comes down to. Can Fandom/Gamepedia give us what we want? -- k_d3 19:32, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
 * For starters:
 * I think we need to watch ad placement closely, while even with Curse it slowly crept up over the years it was nothing like Wikia did. We need to make sure that we don't start seeing Wikia-level of ads.
 * We do not want to merge with WoWWiki. That would not be acceptable in any way. Nor should their administrators have any automatic rights here.
 * We do not want to downgrade MediaWiki versions to meet the rest of Wikia. Vanilla MW with minor forks as Gamepedia has done in the past.
 * We do not want the Oasis skin or really any other skin besides what we have already.
 * We do not want the "Wikia bloat" - that is all the WikiActivity, discussions, and other useless stuff.
 * -- (•) 20:27, 16 December 2018 (UTC)


 * I'd like to see all or nearly all (any exceptions must be identified and agreed on) corresponding articles and their revision histories on Wowpedia overwrite all of those on Wowwiki. Fandyllic already admitted "Wowpedia is superior to WoWWiki in most ways that count". --ShadowShade81413 (talk) 22:16, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I second Pcj's list in its entirety. If they want us, let them take us just as we are. No exceptions, no "we can do SOME of that". All or nothing. --[[Image:IconSmall_Deathwing.gif]] Joshmaul, Loremaster of Chaos (Leave a Message) 02:28, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I second it too. No layout or skin change, no crappy dropdown autoplay videos that follow you all around the page, no cancerous Wikia-style ads, we need to remain exactly as we are, no matter what. Either they accept that, or they don't, in which case we'll go our own way. -- MyMindWontQuiet 17:39, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I second that as well. 18:57, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm in agreement with Pcj as well.--X59 (talk) 19:36, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Amen to that, pcj! Mordecay (talk) 19:49, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Absolutely. The information here is much more professional and up-to-date.  The images are better.  The format is simple but pleasing.  Last but not least, it's just so much nicer to have quick-loading pages that don't involve blowing out your speakers with a thousand Tide or movie ads that mess up every page's format.  [[Image:VraulIconTINY.gif]]  Vraul Jawrip  (talk &middot; contr) 01:04, 20 December 2018 (UTC)


 * The simplest thing to want is just the ability to move (rather than fork) the wiki should a (super-)majority of admins/active editors decide they want to do this. This would send a relatively strong message that the hosts are relatively confident in their ability to deliver a positive experience for everyone involved.
 * Failing that, some decision power over the skins/extensions used on the wiki would be nice. The wowwiki split happened as a more or less direct consequence of forcing a default skin change, and there's no particular desire to repeat that. I don't think "everything must stay exactly as it is right now!" is necessarily the right answer here: there's room for improvements, and we really just want to avoid a few specific bad design decisions.
 * While the banner for this thread promised I'd "see what this [acquisition] means for Wowpedia", the honest answer seems to be "nobody knows yet". It seems somewhat early to jump ship, draw specific red lines, or debate which of Wowpedia and Wowwiki is getting deleted. For all that's been announced, all of Fandom might well be moving on gamepedia's tech stack while we continue with no significant changes -- so maybe don't panic just yet.
 * Of course, if someone credible is offering to cover our hosting costs and hire actual developers (or involve the community) to work on things we care about, that would be a proposition worth considering, even if nothing changed regarding Gamepedia. I'd argue that many of the things pcj wants above are problematic even before the acquisition: the current ad delivery tech continues to be obnoxious, some of the Gamepedia-managed extensions have issues (EmbedVideo is basically unusable without JS), the skin is (barely) held together by a thousand temporary band-aid css fixes (with each MW update introducing more mis-styled UI; the mobile experience is just generally meh), and there's plenty of Gamepedia-bloat (UserProfile pages, "Pro" tags around usernames, achievements, wikipoints, etc). — foxlit (talk) 19:08, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Thought it'd be of interest to you lot what's happening over at my home wiki with Codex Gamicus and Encyclopedia Gamia,. This may set a certain precedence on how to handle conflicts between Gamepedia and Fandom wikis, and how both services will coexist. Though I doubt a similar action would act out nearly as smoothly with WoWWiki/WoWPedia, considering both have active competing communities, and have been separated for years as opposed to 4 and a half months, it certainly gives an insight into how things stand. Gcx0 (talk) 21:30, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

It sounds too bad for me. When I left wikia another guy replaced me as admin of the spanish wiki. I check the wiki occasionally just to be sure the original content from wowpedia isn't plagiarized in wikia and I found the wiki is totally messed up. I don't want to defend my point of view with the guy in charge in a kind of male fight taking into account probably he'll keep the main admin credentials. I'm in shock right now. Don't know what to do, just wait or keep updating the wiki. Petrovic (talk) 08:52, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Have you considered trying to go the Patreon way like Wow Insider, now Blizzard Watch did ? Maybe launch a Kickstarter to have an idea of people's interest and willingness to pay ? So, basically, for anyone who don't know Blizzard Watch, they were on the AOL network back when they were called Wow Insider. At one point they launched a kickstarter in order to break free of AOL and start hosting their own website. Now they are using Patreon to generate monthly revenue. The standard version of the website has ads, but if you donate anything on Patreon (can be like 1$ a month, maybe less, I'm not sure how much lower it can get), then you can login with your Patreon account and you don't have any ad. As far as I know, they have managed to keep the site running thanks to Patreon monthly donations and pay some kind of salaries to their writers. In the case of Wowpedia, we don't even need that much, I mean you all contribute for free already (as far as I know ?), I'm pretty sure the cost of hosting and domain name can be very easily reached with a system like Patreon. B6i6o6 (talk) 14:46, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
 * If the Patreon route is adopted, I will happily become a monthly donor. Serenus (talk) 08:20, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I would contemplate supporting an independent Wowpedia similar to how I support Blizzard Watch.  But understand that even Blizzard Watch depends on ads for a large share of its revenue despite having several Patreon/Paypal supports DDC (talk) 01:39, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Just FYI of you all that are not on Slack, it's still unclear what will happen to wowpedia, but there have been some signs Wikia may be willing to sacrifice its own wikis in order to redirect to a gamepedia one when the gamepedia one is clearly superior Xporc (talk) 10:04, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
 * As I mentioned above, gaming.wikia.com has already been redirected to gamicus.gamepedia.com. (with the announcement here) I can't imagine it'll be that clear cut most of the time. Gcx0 (talk) 11:37, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Unrealistic thought, but will Blizzard be willing to host us? Has anyone tried reaching out to them? Serenus (talk) 15:55, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Alas, as you say, unrealistic; Blizzard would not host what is, even as informational as we are, a fan site. Linking to us over... them is one thing. Hosting us is something else entirely. --[[Image:IconSmall_Deathwing.gif]] Joshmaul, Loremaster of Chaos (Leave a Message) 08:57, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
 * We have, though Joshmaul is almost certainly correct about the likely outcome. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 09:45, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Do you think an online petition will help? Serenus (talk) 14:04, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm going to say probably not, again, for the reason mentioned above. Elevate one fan site over all others by hosting them yourself, and all hell will break loose. (Not that people need a reason to complain, given how many overdramatic "I'm quitting the game" posts and comments I see every expansion cycle, but I digress.) --[[Image:IconSmall_Deathwing.gif]] Joshmaul, Loremaster of Chaos (Leave a Message) 22:35, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Good point. An argument can be made that a wiki is different from other fan sites and many video games do have wikis/encyclopedia hosted by their publishers/developers. But their caution is understandable. Serenus (talk) 11:38, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Is there a possibility that we will wake up one day soon and find Wowpedia is just a redirect to Wowwiki now and all of the content on Wowpedia is gone? If so, is it possible to archive all of the articles we have so they do not get lost? Or is there already some kind of archive feature that will keep everything safe and this is a non-issue? --ShadowShade81413 (talk) 04:23, 3 January 2019 (UTC)
 * We already have the archive in that event. And while technically possible, that would be politically bad for Wikia, so I'm thinking it won't happen like that. -- (•) 08:02, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

Anonymized accounts
Gamepedia/Fandom recently renamed a number of user accounts to @DeletedUser1234567. If you were affected by this, you can rename your account back to your old name (or a new name) by visiting https://www.gamepedia.com/account ; this will eventually propagate to wowpedia. This process also nuked the affected users' User: and User talk: pages (and sub-pages); as administrators, we do not appear to be able to restore the deleted revisions.

This entire process seems ridiculous to me: usernames/user pages/user talk pages shouldn't be viewed as personal data requiring consent (and if we take that view, this level of anonymization is woefully inadequate, as some of the preserved log text contains original names), while CC-BY-SA prohibits removing author attribution in this fashion. — foxlit (talk) 21:45, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

If you are banned on FANDOM
Sharing today's announcement here for those who do not use Gamepedia's Slack workspace.

"misterwoodhouse @here Hey gang!

We are officially part of Fandom today! We know that many of you have some concerns about this change and we appreciate that you have been patient and understanding as we work through things.

In the same spirit of goodwill we showed with Project Crossover (the first overlapping community resolutions with Encyclopedia Gamia/Codex Gamicus and Diep.io), we are introducing a new process for Gamepedia editors previously banned on Fandom for wiki forking activities to apply for reinstatement. While we will be reviewing every case individually, we will do so with an eye towards reconciliation as the default. Please note that this is not a general pardon for violations unrelated to wiki forking.

To initiate your appeal, fill out this form: Fandom/Gamepedia Ban Amnesty

In order to help facilitate the appeals process and to better understand our community, we have invited Brandon Rhea to join the Slack team. For those of you who don’t know him, Brandon is the Product Marketing Manager at Fandom and was instrumental in the set up of Project Crossover, working closely with Benjamin."

-- Alayea (talk / contrib) 23:33, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Breaking spam laws
I think we should also make a request that FANDOM not screw with our notifications/emails. In 2017 FANDOM decided to ignore all my email settings on my old Wikia account, and somehow forced my abandoned account to 'watch' Sannse's new blog post about choosing admins for a wiki. Out of nowhere, I started getting emails from Wikia about this blog post from someone who I can't stand because she was rude and dismissive as hell, as well as force watched another blog post. All my account settings said do not email, and yet... I was getting emails because they forced my account to watch their damn blogs. IF you guys are choosing to stay with them (although with how they acted 7 years ago leading up to our previous split, I don't know why you'd want to trust them), you need to get assurances that they won't screw with email settings and forcing accounts to watch their dumb blogs and randomly get unwanted spam emails. Resa1983 (talk) 02:14, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

RuneScape Wiki left Wikia with support of Jagex (developer and publisher of RuneScape and Old School RuneScape).
I read about this today although many of you must have already known. Last year (September 2018), RuneScape Wiki left Wikia with, quote, "support of Jagex, both financially and institutionally". I very much hope Blizzard can do something similar.

Thread on RuneScape Wiki: https://runescape.wiki/w/Forum:Leaving_Wikia

An Admin said on Reddit that Jagex is paying for hosting: https://www.reddit.com/r/runescape/comments/9j297t/runescape_wiki_leaving_wikia/#e6ogfj2

Coverage on Kotaku: https://kotaku.com/video-game-wikis-abandon-their-platform-after-year-of-p-1829401866

Serenus (talk) 23:58, 4 February 2019 (UTC)
 * RuneScape Wiki's statement on leaving Wikia also includes a nice summary of why Wikia is a bad host, quoted below:

Why?

Short answer: To get away from Wikia.

Longer answer: Here are a few reasons:


 * The state of advertisements on Wikia is horrendous and not improving.
 * Wikia's movement away from wiki content to clickbait editorials.
 * Wikia's increasing control over our site content, via things like JS review and by pushing their own videos over the actual articles.
 * Wikia's security history is terrible; historically, they haven't fixed a problem until someone abuses it.
 * Wikia's software is super out of date. MediaWiki 1.19 is six-and-a-half years old and grossly incompatible with new/updates to extensions. Security fixes and similar have to be backported and Wikia's custom additions are mostly things we don't like (and the ones we do have better extensions in current MW).
 * Wikia don't care about us. We had a discussion with Wikia earlier this year - most of our concerns have yet to be addressed. Not to mention the entire fiasco with featured videos, javascript review, new infoboxes, and so on. Just, they don't care about us or any community in general.

'''We can solve all of the above by not being on Wikia. Additionally, there’s major upside to having control over our own infrastructure:'''


 * We get to use the latest MediaWiki version, 1.31 (and keep upgrading it as updates are released).
 * We get to use new and updated extensions, or even create our own: we can stop using MediaWiki for exchange prices, make interactive maps, create better calculators… so many opportunities for cool stuff when we’re not limited by Wikia.
 * We get HTTPS everywhere by default
 * 2FA is available for all accounts
 * We use a new full width skin, the same used by Wikipedia, allowing us to display more content on the page, rather than the page being riddled in advertising.
 * We get to expand out into auxiliary things that we can integrate into the wiki - some of you have already been using our general purpose tool server, where we're collating editing tools. There's plenty of things we can do and there are some grand plans percolating.

That all said, the most important thing is that the people running the wiki will be people that actually care about the games and the communities.
 * Serenus (talk) 07:00, 5 February 2019 (UTC)