On IRC we've been bouncing around the idea (for awhile) of leaving Wikia, checking out options, etc... Wikia plans to move us to a new skin in October (phasing out the old Monaco skin) and has already enacted rules limiting customization. Sadly, this leaves little control in the hands of WoWWiki users and admins to make the wiki look like WoWWiki always has and to maintain it in a way that reflect's WoWWiki's own interests. WoWWiki (and myself personally) have nothing against progress or change, but sadly the "new" look is not conducive to the wiki experience (you can see examples if you would like on other Wikia wikis) - the focus is on getting traffic to other Wikia wikis.
In any case, I feel strongly that we need to investigate our options and see if there is another choice. One problem is getting Wikia to let go of the WoWWiki domain name - they own it and may be reluctant to let it go. Most importantly, I want to make sure we have consensus on this; if we "move" the wiki to another host Wikia policy is to continue it on their own servers, so if we move without getting consensus there will be a split involved in the userbase.
Anyway, I would like comments on this. --Pcj (T•C) 00:10, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
Direct comments
- I've been firing off emails of my own in preparation for this forum post (rather, the one I was planning on posting a week from now once more people had a chance to see the new skin)... The new ToU has decidedly pushed me away from the "let's see if we can fix it" stance I've attempted to carry until now. I'm nearly ready to fork at this point, to be quite honest.
- I hardly expect wikia's going to give up the wowwiki.com domain -- we're 10% of their global page views! They would much rather we fork and split contributors than completely move away so that they can still have some ad impressions. (look at tfwiki vs transformers.wikia). Instead I've been trying to come up with a new domain name we can use that'll forward wherever the new wiki ends up.
- Anyway, the skin still is beta and I'm going to try to hold out hope for sanity from wikia for another week or two before I start pushing my hosting proposals along. --k_d3 00:22, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
- Well, if you want to pay for it - and preserve the whole database (all 87,000 articles of it, lol) - be my guest...but if it's a matter of looks, I honestly don't see a problem. As long as we can still read it, and still edit it...then does it matter? --Joshmaul (talk) 00:31, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
- The main problem outside of appearance is navigation is going to suck. I'm on the new skin right now and basically the only way to get around is to type in the URLs. The search box doesn't even show up the whole time. Plus, if we want a change, we're at Wikia's mercy - we can't change most things on the interface now. --Pcj (T•C) 00:33, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
- Well, if you want to pay for it - and preserve the whole database (all 87,000 articles of it, lol) - be my guest...but if it's a matter of looks, I honestly don't see a problem. As long as we can still read it, and still edit it...then does it matter? --Joshmaul (talk) 00:31, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
- I am slightly more optimistic about retaining the domain name, though only about || this much. wowwiki.net essentially looks available if we really have to go that route (having a looksee at godaddy), and I think that would be a more appropriate TLD anyway, given our content.
- My question is: Where do we go? We have too many hits to just walk up to any old random provider and say "gief bandwidth". If we do, who knows how much in the necessary fees we'll need to come with? Who, of us, have the money? I don't expect much help from the community, but maybe I'm being doom-and-gloomy. Going the other way and finding us a random provider that would take us in for free, what will we pay for in advertisements?...
- Then, of course, there's the route of "approach these companies which are familiar to the WoW crowd", which kd3 hints at [perhaps admins could get a summary via the email list about what exactly he's been emailing around about?], as well as those tossings around on IRC. I'm most favorable to this option as I know a few here who have previously discussed it are as well, but who would do so? We usually end up with "not a one", but we haven't really contacted (m)any of them...
- Yeah, this looks bleak to me. But I'm tired and stressed with schoolwork. --Sky (t · c) 04:10, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
I totally support moving it if puts power back in our hands. ::coughs up dust:: Timing it with the release of Cataclysm would be great. How much does it cost to keep a site like WoWWiki afloat anyway?--Hobinheim (talk · contr) 04:00, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
- Bandwidth would probably be the biggest concern - according to [1] WoWWiki gets about 2 million pageviews per day. As far as space needed, the database size (not including images) is about 2.6 GB, including images is probably quite a bit more. And then room for growth. It could be a fair penny if we went independent, and then we would probably have to negotiate for ads to pay for it, which would be more work. Best option would probably be to get into some other existing system, but we shouldn't rule out the independent idea out if that sounds like fun to someone. --Pcj (T•C) 04:05, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
- I like the independent idea because it helps keep us out of messes like this. And a raw 2M hits per day won't be a big deal at the start since people will be initially confused and divided about the split. But once people start to get the message and Cataclysm comes out, all bets are off I guess. It doesn't sound like fun as much as it might be a necessary evil. Can Google ads at least put a dent in that? =)--Hobinheim (talk · contr) 04:10, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
I'm not an editor here on the WoWWiki, but I thought I'd mention this here since you guys are probably the highest profile wiki considering moving: With regards to independent hosting, what about pooling resources with another few wikis who are considering moving? I'm not familiar with the current rates for hosting, but it seems like the cost would be a little easier to swallow if it were divvied up among several communities. I'm waiting until the 6th to talk with my community about migration, so I can't vouch for us yet, but there are already a few other wikis who could join forces with you if you do decide to move. -- Nonoitall 09:08, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
I do like the idea of banding together with other communities that are looking to move, if it means that we have to ask for donations from people then so be it. If we get as many page views as people have been saying, then it would only take a small percentage of people to donate relatively small sums before it all added up. Also, what do people think about asking for help from Blizz? I know that I use WoWWiki for everything, whenever I try and use the official WoW site, it seems clunky and not as informative as this site. Perhaps we might be able to talk to Blizz about becoming the official WoW encyclopaedia? Jeffajaffa (talk) 19:55, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
- WoWWiki is already an official fansite. As for becoming the official WoW encyclopaedia, in the stead of the small one on the official site, WoWWiki is by no means perfectly accurate. I like to think that we are slightly more accurate every day, but it still contains content that was made up or misinterpreted by fans.--SWM2448 20:55, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
- I don't support banding together, only because it will add to the logistical quagmire. It sounds good in theory and emotion, but the complexity of the move will only go up. Also, people are cheap. Asking for donations won't last. They'll probably just go to some other resource.--Hobinheim (talk · contr) 22:08, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
Domain and Hosting Issues
So, if we do fork, there's no way wikia's going to sell us (our new host) the wowwiki.com domain. So, short of going to "wowwiki.net", which would be kinda shady in most users' (and google's!) eyes... what else could we use? --k_d3 21:50, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
- The problem with domain names suggestions is people can grab them. :( --Pcj (T•C) 21:58, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
Regarding the issue of hosting, it's a bit of a long shot but what about asking Blizzard to host? -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 03:29, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
- We are asking multiple places, it's a bit premature to go over options at the moment. Mainly we want to get users' opinions and solidify what we can do before presenting what we've got. Expect to see more details in the coming week(s) as the skin rolls out and we get more interest in moving off Wikia. :P Feel free to suggest ideas though, especially if you have contacts. --Pcj (T•C) 03:35, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
OK, one of the users of Wikisimpsons contacted ShoutWiki and they said that they would have an option to upgrade to Monaco once they reach MediaWiki 1.16. It will cost though apparently. I am not sure if this is one instalment or monthly although I hope it is not the latter. Vector will be available once they update too. ☆The Solar Dragon☆ 06:16, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
- ShoutWiki is an option, they're just getting started though so I'm not really excited about it but we'll see. --Pcj (T•C) 11:41, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
Once we find a place to host this, we might consider asking Blizzard to give us a sub-domain. That is "wiki.worldofwarcraft.com" would be nice. Not sure they would go for it, but could solve some of our name change problems for the better. I still think that hosting it is going to be the major deal. I could do it easily at my place of employment. At least the technical aspects would be easy. Polictical, not so much. And would you want to tie into a "Free" hosting environment if it meant you had to move if I changed jobs? Mgg4 (talk) 23:32, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
- Do you work for a webhost or something? Any idea what it would cost without your "employee discount"? --Pcj (T•C) 23:37, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
- I do web hosting, but it's for our own software as a service. We are not a "Web Hosting Company" in the way you would think of one. I could check into that if it becomes necessary, however, there are web-hosting services that we could look into, if we wanted to maintain the code/pages ourselves. Some of the other groups I belong to get some pretty good deals. Now the volume of this wiki might be a problem at some of those ISP/ASPs, but I'm sure something could be negotiated. Are we at the point where we want to start seriously looking at this yet? Mgg4 (talk) 23:58, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
Things that would change if we left Wikia
I'm going to compose a list of stuff that would change if we move off - no matter where we go. Feel free to add if you think of anything. --Pcj (T•C) 00:52, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
- Not sure what section to put this in, go ahead and move it if you've got a decent idea: in moving, we would essentially enter a situation in which there are two WoWWikis: the new one, and the old one on Wikia. The consequences of this are... Interesting, to say the least. It would likely cause some confusion for awhile, and have a serious effect on both the current userbase and the previous one. As has been brought up previously, see http://tfwiki.net vs. http://transformers.wikia.com for an example of this. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 03:27, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
- Part of the potential move to new hosting is that there would be all kinds of news posts/press releases getting sent out to the other fansites/news sites/et al about our "earth-shattering change wrought by the Cataclysm!" Links to the new site in the elinks templates... and so on. The user split has been my biggest fear behind all of this, but if we get the news out widely hopefully people will update their bookmarks. --k_d3 03:37, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
What we would leave behind
- Monaco would be gone - either way it will be gone in a month or so, but if we leave there's no way we're maintaining it. WoWWiki would switch back to the old WoWWiki skin or a re-color of Monobook or Vector (Vector and other skins as an option of course). We would not adopt Wikia's new look - obviously.
- Problem reports are gone; again, either way, because Wikia is planning to phase these out too. But obviously we can still get things fixed, just the notification system will change.
- Ads would be different - depending on where we set up shop we should be able to get something reasonable worked out. Most of our options currently look very reasonable.
- Avatars, Facebook Connect, and the like, all of the Wikia social features would be gone.
- "Following" would probably revert to "watching". Any remaining instance of "photos" would revert to "images" or "files".
- The Rich Text Editor would be gone. CategorySelect (easy-add/remove categories) would be gone too.
- Our domain name - sadly probably the thing we're all most attached to. As we mentioned above we would have to change the domain name. Currently we have no plans to move to a subdomain of another domain (like WoWInsider just did), but we still have to come up with something that we like and can agree on.
- The domain itself and all its current content would stay with Wikia for use as they see fit. A copy of all content would go to the new site.
- We'll probably lose some users - inevitable in a transition. Since we don't have the raw user database users would be required to re-register on the new site. All of the site history and images will carry over, however.
- Unified login with other Wikia sites will not work.
What we would gain
- Things should work better - Wikia has been having some issues lately, and while obviously we can't promise 100% uptime (and the quality of service depends on where we go), removing a lot of the Wikia bloat can't hurt - WoWWiki would use only what it needs.
- More direct control of the backend means better optimization of WoWWiki-specific code.
- Site speed may increase if the wiki is centrally hosted instead of distributed across multiple cache servers - reducing DNS lookups reduces load times.
What would stay the same
- All of the content existing at the time of the split would be carried over. This includes edit history and images.
- Relevant extensions will be kept.
- Any relevant JS or CSS code.
- Our relationship with Blizzard and other sites will probably stay the same. Depending on where we go it may even improve (for example if we enter an existing network of gaming sites).
Some thoughts from Wikia
By the way, I spent some time today customizing the new WoWWiki skin (it's a work in progress), and this is how the main page looks:
I should note, improvements should be coming to reduce the height of the top areas, and exact colours are easily tweaked (e.g. making the buttons more "gold"). Kirkburn talk contr 19:31, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
The new skin is something we have been working on very intensively over the last few months, and I know that several here have been heavily involved in the beta testing stage of the project. Right from the start we knew this was going to be a difficult move for many established wikis and long-term users. There are big changes in this skin, and the first look is a shocking one to anyone used to the old look. But I’ve been using it for a while now, and I can honestly say that it's now jarring to me each time I have to switch to Monaco.
We've talked on the staff blog about why we are making this change. We want to make every wiki on Wikia the best it can possibly be. Your content is the biggest part of that, of course, but our part is in making an interface and features that attract people to the site and help them understand what it is and how they can take part.
The new look will be something we will be working on well beyond the release date. The beta testing has been vital in developing this skin, and feedback as it's released and used by more people will be helpful as well. We'll also be watching very closely to see how it's used and what the effects of the changes are on editors and readers.
Some of you have tried the skin, and hopefully will have seen how the beta version has changed over the last few weeks. For the others, I'd urge you to give it a go as it's released. I think that, like me, you’ll find this is a skin that will really take the WoWWiki interface to the next level. -- Sannse (talk) 22:06, September 30, 2010 (UTC)