DoorToNothing - You do not yet know... what lies beyond the door. TALK - Remember, you are the one who will open the door to the light. | |||
Editors, staffers, chatters, and all visitors of the Final Fantasy Wiki, greetings. I'm no constant or frequent editor of this wiki, though I'm here to offer it something that I hope will positively change it forever. Several months ago, Wikia unleashed the lovely Oasis skin, having caused many wikis to get up and move to independent hosting off-Wikia. One such wiki has been your neighbor wiki, the Kingdom Hearts Wiki. Having left Wikia, the KHWiki finds itself nearing the completion of its audit moreso everyday, now thriving with a better skin, active userbase, and reliable hosting that has yet to impose a Godawful skin on us or force tools we dislike to be used. However, now that KHWiki, particularly its Monaco-esque skin that can be customized far more than the only Monaco, Monobook, and certainly Oasis, it is time for us to begin pursuing our goal from the beginning:
You may know of a similar grouping of independent wikis, the Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance (NIWA). Like NIWA, SEIWA would strive to recruit grand, prosperous wikis such as this one that are related to Square Enix relevant topics. The wikis are then linked within the group, prospering from each other's growth and traffic. An independent wiki has so many more benefits than that of one that is dependent on such an absolutely charming wiki host like the most beloved Wikia. The skin is yours to modify as you please, Wikia can no longer force you into certain guises and features, more reliable troubleshooting and coding help with our awesome programmer (porplemontage), and many, many more. Now you must be thinking a few things, like, "Hey, but don't we have to pay for our own independent wiki?" Maybe you're thinking something along the lines of "But what about this wiki that we have worked so hard for?" Honestly, neither is an issue at all! For the former, our hosting was free, so generously granted to us, and we aren't restricted to any horribly small upload or sizing limits for it. Our entire wiki with thousands of articles fit very nicely, not crammed at all. As for the latter question, you would simply let this wiki slowly fade into emptiness, or to let it be devoured by the WikiPrincesses, vandals, and wiki-walkers. After the move, KHWiki's entire work-oriented, "serious" community moved over, continuing all development on the wiki on the independent wiki. As for the old Wikia wiki... well, that's been taken over by those who chose to stay behind. They generally fall into the categories I listed above dealing with what would become of the Wikia wiki. As that wikis gradually gets fewer edits and fewer of them are productive, the independent wiki thrives and flourishes, continuing beyond the limitations of Wikia and Oasis. Obviously, the Final Fantasy Wiki is a prime, amazing, absolutely astounding piece of work, with vast sources of information and knowledge piled into the 10,000+ articles alone. KHWiki, currently managing SEIWA plans as well, would like to offer the Final Fantasy Wiki a chance to leave this wiki and come aboard the Square Enix Independent Wiki Alliance. We would be very lucky and grateful to have you alongside us as the alliance continues to grow from other wikis, such as Chronopedia and FFXIV Wiki. Please, do partake in community discussion over this. SEIWA and I personally would be extremely elated to have you on board with SEIWA, also so that this wiki can truly maximize its potential to be the greatest encyclopedia in breadth and depth in covering the Final Fantasy series. If you have any questions, I and KrytenKoro will definitely be able to answer them. | |||
Please provide details on exactly how we move over - would we have to manually recreate every single page, copy and paste-style?
Ultimately support though, I tire of Wikia imposing useless features on us we don't like. EDIT 12:43, April 13, 2011 (UTC) - Support withdrawn, the arguments again moving have been considerably more convincing than those in favor. Though I'd like to be free of Wikia, not at the cost of our influence and standing. | |||
DoorToNothing - You do not yet know... what lies beyond the door. TALK - Remember, you are the one who will open the door to the light. | |||
Since he did so for KHWiki, I assume that Porple would come to this wiki and pack up every little bit of the entire wiki. This includes every single edit since Day 1, every block, every user account, every page, every namesapce. Everything. Editcounts are not altered. Anyway, this would then be exported over. No copy-pasting is required. | |||
So... what's going to stop Wikia from keeping hundreds of hours of our work and laughing all the way to the bank? Forking doesn't help us, for the following reasons:
I'm failing to see the benefit here? If you don't like Oasis, just use custom CSS or Monobook. Forking the wiki does nothing to help the community; in fact it directly divides it, when you could have more dedicated people working at once with just one. Frankly, I use Oasis myself with only minor modifications so my wide arena tables display right. The skin could be worse. It could be better, but it could be worse. I think forsaking all the work we've put into this wiki and dividing the community is irrational. | |||
A.J. two (The Flashlight) - "Always Avoid Alliteration" TALK - "When life gives you cherries, make a bomb." 00:36, April 9, 2011 (UTC) | |||
Will we have to create new accounts, or will they transfer over? If the former, then I probably won't be able to edit anymore. And I'm sure Also, on a different note, just more of a side thing, what will happen to Mafia DTN? Sees three new edits made since started writing this Okay . . . what Blue said. I use Oasis and Monobook (I only log in to make edits, so most of the time, I'm viewing the wiki in Oasis), and I don't find either bad. I liked Monaco, and Oasis isn't all that different. Sure, it is different, but it isn't bad. And if the wiki stays behind, then how is the average anon going to know to go to the new wiki and not make vain edits here? | |||
DoorToNothing - You do not yet know... what lies beyond the door. TALK - Remember, you are the one who will open the door to the light. | |||
Oasis certainly isn't the only problem with Wikia. Wikia constantly imposes new features and changes that negatively affect a wiki functionally or aesthetically. In addition, Oasis is the default for all anonymous users, and many of them do simply not know how to change their skin. Your information is portrayed better in a non-Oasis skin, and the one that is getting the finishing touches over at SEIWA KHWiki is perfect for modifying to your every fancy and need. Similarly, Wikia did not cooperate or work well with KHWiki during our moving proposal/trying to deal with Oasis, nor did they with other wikis. They do simply not listen to their unpaid workforce, practically speaking. Based on what they have implemented, Wikia values aesthetic appearance and axillary features more than present encyclopedic content professionally. This was a major reason for our departure; we disagreed with that wholeheartedly. As for Mafia, it's similar to the KHWiki's Mirage Arena (our "DNC"). What we did is have the Mirage Arena removed from the old wiki after the datadump was complete, and the very small, diminutive community remaining plans to eventually create some kind of replacement for it. You could choose to take Mafia with the FFWiki, leave it here, or double-incarnate it. That's really up to the community, methinks. | |||
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To count down:
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Can I have the wiki if everyone else leaves? 8) | |||
Henryacores - "É que esta noite vou lançar ao mar/A bruma que houver em mim./Vou beber e cantar este luar/vou dançar até ao fim." TALK - 01:45, April 9, 2011 (UTC) | |||
Support for the sole reason that only thanks to ILHI we could maintain our galleries, whose latest change by Wikia was a huge bullet on our style. Oasis is also incredibly inferior to Monaco and much less flexible. It is also sad to see how a topic can decay so fast. | |||
Oppose. We have our gallery template which is currently nicer than the original Wikia galleries. Additionally, all of the points that Bluesy said earlier are points that I have brought up in earlier forums. However, the main point that I'd like to bring up (again) is that the new anons who have only seen Oasis won't care about Monaco because they don't know it exists. They won't care and it doesn't affect our readership. This is the same with people who came into Monaco who were likely unaware of Quartz (which was terrible, mind you. It was worse than Oasis) and the people with Quartz unaware of Monobook (because you were locked into Quartz. At least you have the choice of Monobook.) The only people who care about Oasis are the people who remember Monaco, which are the users who can switch into Monobook. Thus, there are no real advantages to this moving. We didn't do it before and we shouldn't do it now. Note: When I search "Kingdom Hearts Wiki" (quotes or no quotes), Wikia's KHwiki comes first. And second. And third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh. The split KHwiki is ninth. | |||
I support moving. I think the Oasis skin still causes problems for some people. For me it makes the page move slower. Also, if we do move, couldn't we post a message with a link on the main page or would that cause issues? | |||
Deadlyslashsword - +It takes disaster to learn a lesson, but you're going to make it through the darkest nights+ TALK - 05:11, April 9, 2011 (UTC) - Some people betray and cause treason...we're gonna make everything alright. | |||
Oppose. Bluesy and Scathe make my points, but I'd like to reiterate that it is my belief that moving would tear our userbase apart, and not necessarily in the "natural selection" method either. This is one of the worst thoughts we could entertain. We move, and we'd keep all our info and editcounts and all of the technical stuff, but our community, our most important attribute, would be ruined. The old wiki would still garner the traffic even as leftover users may or may not run it into the ground. Finally, I'd just like to add that we've been screwed over plenty of times by wikia before, and we've bounced back each time. The galleries, the read more sections, Oasis...we've found ways to combat all of them. We're a resilient bunch. We made the choice last year not to move, and that wasn't a wrong decision. | |||
Looks like this wiki is thriving here. In the Top Gaming Wikis page the FFWiki has climbed from #10 to #6 in the time since I joined. (Of course it can be because the other wikis left/dwindled.) In quantcast it says FFWiki gets 38,000 hits a day (if I am reading this right). If you type "Final Fantasy" to Google it's first the big Wikipedia, then official site, then us. In Image Search the wiki shows up fairly often too, but I understand Wikia is doing something this year to improve images showing up in Google Image Search. Supposedly they're gonna improve the search function too, that right now is a piece of shit if there is no page for what you searched. To my eyes it seems there hasn't been a particular drop in activity since the new skin was | |||
Yay. Finally made me a talk box, now to chime in. I've been reading the wiki for years now but only recently started focusing on making edits. I'm personally against moving - mainly because of web presence issues. For one, the wikia network is very big and they've got a strong web presence as well as affiliate links that help to direct traffic here, not to mention a strong Google page rank. Moving to a smaller independent wiki isn't good because you'll instantly lose a lot of traffic, meaning less readers, less editors (the casuals) and the wiki being used less. I'll have no doubts that under a freer hand, the wiki can probably shine better. There is more quality content, but far less outreach. Basically, we'll end up cutting off more of the very people our wiki is supposed to serve by virtue of web presence. Most importantly, leaving (and by this i'm assuming that if we leave, this wiki is still gonna be here) dilutes the FF wiki base. For a wiki to thrive well, it kinda needs to be the only wiki around that specializes in what it does. If theres more than one, people will likely just stick to one - in this case, it'd likely be the one that appears first on their Google search, or the one thats with wikia (hey, they're not independent and seem bigger, probably the better one!). drawing from what i've seen in the past: FFXI used to only have 1 wiki, then there was the whole wikia buyout fiasco, which led to the creation of 2 additional wikis.. one of which wasnt even a real wiki. but basically those 2 sucked cos they started from scratch, and the main one suffered as well - ultimately people would still go back to the main one in spite of everything. FFXIV has got like a dozen different wikis, because everyone wanted a piece of the pie - by now they knew how valuable wikis could be. there used to be a wikia one, but thats gone. Theres ZAM, FFXIVCore, and Eorzeapedia.. and none of them are that great because they all started off around the same time, have their own strengths and weaknesses and so on. Ok, rambling.. but my point is.. dilution is very bad. More bad that sucking it up with Oasis and a bunch of other regulations that Wikia imposes on us. Personally I use Monobook all the time now, since they phased out Monaco. Honestly i think the only thing really bad about Oasis is the width. Too much space given to the sidebar and they don't allow you to make use of the waste space on the sides regardless of your screen res. tl;dr cons outweigh the pros - it takes ages to build web presence, even if you're that good. | |||
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MirrorshardSceada — 08:30, April 12, 2011 (UTC) "You used to be too broken to talk back." Vanitas, Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep A l'Cie's Diary - FFTA2 Walkthrough - Lindblum Tourism Office http://i1188.photobucket.com/albums/z411/Sceada/kafrahead_15px.png | |||
I'm with Bluesey and Scathe on this, the disadvantages would heavily overshadow the advantages, which I must say aren't that numerous in my eyes to start with. However, I must also agree with SCM to a point in that there are still unresolved issues which we should get to. So my vote would be for staying with wikia, but working on these open points where we still have to improve Oasis (who is really not all that bad if you ask me). | |||
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I know that my input won't really matter, but I'd like to put in my two cents. I oppose moving. Right now, we're big and thriving as Kelt said. We're also much bigger then the KHWiki as Lycentia pointed out. It would take a lot more to move us than them (maybe I'm wrong, I don't really know if this is true or not since I'm not that good with all of the really technical stuff but it sounds right). Also, there's the issue with the anons. I know that with the Oasis skin, it's harder for them to move around without the Monaco skin. I personally use Monobook since it's a lot easier to manage in my opinion, but it would be a lot harder for them to find us as many people pointed out, since the new wiki wouldn't be until farther down the list. I think that if we do move that we should post some link on the home page of this wiki (if it doesn't cause problems). So there you go. My two cents. | |||
@Lycentia, a bot moves everything. The transfer is not the problem. My stance: I'll go where the winds take us. Be it offsite or we stay here. | |||
The issue with posting a link on the home page, aside from that I doubt Wikia would let it fly, is that it's only one page out of tens of thousands. People don't always reach the wiki from the main page; they often find it by doing Google searches on specific topics, so many people won't know about the move, and aside from that probably won't care so long as they have easy access to info here, which they will due to its search result placement. To be blunt, I never use the new KH wiki because first off I often forget it exists and second, the old one serves my purposes well enough to play and is easy to find. Just because some of the community wants to abandon this wiki doesn't mean the public will. They won't by a long shot.
That said, also as a guy in the business, this guy is not hosting wikis out of the kindness of his heart. He's doing it for the money generated by page hits just like Wikia. My real question when it comes to him would be his costs vs. his revenues, because web space isn't free and if he can't make ends meet, it all goes up in smoke. This wiki here is pretty much guaranteed for the foreseeable future because Wikia is financially stable.
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Well, here's a link to one result, but this particular site evaluates Wikia as a whole, sadly. For base reference, all sites I used averaged the new KH wiki's worth to roughly $400. Sample size of five, I got $900, $500, $400, $170, and $50, rounded to the closest convenient number, usually up. Add those up and round again and you get $2000, which divided by 5 is $400, which is in line with two of the middle values. These are all on the first page of Google for "worth of your site." This site recognizes the individual wikis as separate, and evaluates the original KH wiki at about $6300, with the new one at about $500, so I just averaged things out to $400 along with other sites and knocked this site's down to $6000, just to be fair. If we're going just by the last site alone, you have $6378 / $527 = a ratio of about 12 times the value. Still not good numbers. | |||
Heh all these website analyses are pretty fun. I tried to check the FFWiki on Alexa (ranks websites in the order of most popular) but it does Wikia only. Still, if you look at Wikia alone... Wikia is 213th most popular website in the world and the FFWiki is 10th most visited wiki, with 1.60% of all of Wikia's traffic. The most high-traffic Wiki at Wikia at the moment, the Dragon Age Wiki, has 6.70% of all traffic. | |||
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In PearAnalytics.com you can do a free website analysis. "Inbound Links to This Page" gives KHWiki.net 65 inbound links. KingdomHearts.wikia.com gets 14,210 and FinalFantasy.Wikia.Com gets 45,603. But if you do "Inbound Links to Entire Site" KHWiki.net has 151, Kingdom Hearts Wikia 678,013 and FFWiki 719,597. | |||
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Everything's possible but it's very hard to take over an already established website. Like for someone to make a video-sharing site more popular than YouTube. My 2c is that it's a bit crazy to leave what I think is fair to say the most popular Final Fantasy fansite in the world, to create an unknown duplicate elsewhere, because Wikia's new site look isn't pleasing (when you have options to use MonoBook and to customise the look even if you use Oasis). Then there are the other things, but they don't seem to be so relevant to most people than the skin. Yeah there's the arguments that anons have to use the default look, but then, if anons don't like it, I think they are more likely to already be going to GameFAQs and the big Wikipedia anyway, than look for some underground wiki that has the same info but on a different layout... More people would probably be interested in the move if you ask again after KHWiki has established a web presence worth talking about, to prove it can be done. I understand the Wowwiki has successfully migrated, but I'm not so sure we could be so successful, because we don't have nearly the same kind of tools to promote the move. | |||
On top of that, you're fighting against a literal machine here. Wikia uses advanced coding to help web crawlers find and index pages and the new setup makes it even easier to visit other popular wikis, which means this wiki will get continued traffic the likes of which no one has anything to compare to yet, since it's never been done this way before. KH is a rather small series and doesn't have nearly the same hold that FF does. This wiki has a lot of presence that would take literal years to compete with. In the meantime, there's nothing that horribly wrong with the site. As I said, I use Oasis, and it's quite easy to navigate. Wikia took user-friendliness for regular viewers into account when they designed it. Not so much advanced users, but a common pedestrian can get around incredibly easily. I realize some people dislike the changes and that certain things are harder to find and a couple of functions have been removed that put more burden on the staff, but if it's that much of a burden, promote more staff. There are some good candidates for it. I think we're forgetting who we're doing all this for: the common masses. Our self-given job is to provide info to the world and in my view, staying here is the best way to do that.
 BSA 05:58, April 13, 2011 (UTC) | |||
Deadlyslashsword - +It takes disaster to learn a lesson, but you're going to make it through the darkest nights+ TALK - 06:15, April 13, 2011 (UTC) - Some people betray and cause treason...we're gonna make everything alright. | |||
I didn't want to say anything about that earlier, but I share that feeling as well. If this is merely an attempt to get the FFWiki to join SEIWA to, in your eyes, legitimize the migration, then I can't respect that either. We're not a prize to be collected. | |||
In light of the developments, it really seems like this is whats happening. KHwiki, among others have moved off Wikia to SEIWA, and would like a wiki representative of Final Fantasy to join the fray since it is the flagship of Square Enix games. Other than a mild case of peer pressure, all you're offering us is:
Whereas in migrating we'd face these issues:
We'd be doing the community less of a service by migrating simply because it gives us a freer reign to do things. There are a whole lot of uncertainties that aren't being highlighted here.
I've quite a bit of research done on social media and monetization, and whilst I've not personally been involved in a deal the size/value of FFwiki, I can tell you a few facts about the strategic advantage involved.
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There is this sense of entitlement that always makes me feel a bit uncomfortable, no matter how natural it is. How Wikia dare make money on our efforts when we work here for free and they just greedily reap the results. When nobody has to work here at all if they don't want to... when the whole wiki concept is based on the idea that nobody owns their contributions; once you release it to the world it belongs to the wiki, there's really little point to be possessive of one's edits. There are other modes of contribution where you can claim everything you do, like writing FAQs for GameFAQs. I think what really would piss people off would be if Wikia screwed with the actual content, putting restrictions on that. Right now you can do pretty much anything besides like porn. So I don't feel restricted by Wikia. (I can still start my porn site elsewhere. ;)) Sometimes the site is down, but like this morning (my time) the down-time doesn't actually show to the readers, it just doesn't let you upload new content for like an hour. Most of the time it works pretty smooth. Biggest problem I think with Wikia is that it loads slower than most other sites. The biggest reader community in Wikia seems to be the gamers, who are likely to have fast internet connections, but still. Wikia have said in a staff blog they want to improve page load times, but who knows, of course they want to; whether anything can drastically be improved is another thing. EDIT: Also, is it just me or have Wikia actually improved the search function? Actually managed to find something using it yesterday. Might've been a one off. ;) | |||
@Spira: Actually, he didn't say anyone else had actually joined. Just that they were "willing," which he seems to have us classed under as well. In other words, I don't think anyone else has left Wikia yet or even necessarily committed and might not in the end. That said, I think with Faethin opposed at this point (he said last night in the IRC we could quote him on that) and Drake's mind changed, along with other opinions expressed in this thread, that general opinion is largely against moving. Or to count it down with users who have expressed it either way, excluding the two making the proposition, it's 4 in favor with 8 against. So I guess, at the moment, we're really not in the "willing" category. | |||
mmm.. Well, we know KHwiki is the only one which has fully moved. Chronopedia seems like they are in. A check on their wikia forum has like a vote poll. Only 3 people responded, but all were in favor of moving. That place also isn't very alive - like a total of 10 editors in the last month - so it might be that they moved, but if you don't link me to the new wiki I probably can't find it anyway. XIV has already moved, or is dead anyway. Last edit was in February. It was posted in end Nov under the the main pages discussion that they were in the process of moving. Not even trying to be cocky, but neither site had much to lose in moving compared to us. The Chrono series is 2 games, the last of which was released over 10 years ago. There isn't much new content to add that probably hasn't already been added. XIV wikia, sad to say, was already inferior to other XIV wikis and db sites like ZAM and XIVcore, which are far more popular, so little of anyone was using it. The template only confounded things. Also, to put things in perspective, our coverage of XIV here is already more extensive than theirs. | |||
Guys, you've already killed it, there's no reason to keep kicking its corpse. | |||
we need a summoner to perform a sending! | |||
Wow, I love how you guys talk about Chronopedia as if it was an authority on the Chrono series or anything. The Chrono Compendium encyclopedia (it's a wiki) is the biggest reference for the Chrono series. Comparing the FF Wiki to Chronopedia isn't a good comparison at all. The FF Wiki is more like the Chrono Compendium, except running on Wikia. The.real.cid 21:28, April 13, 2011 (UTC)
Henryacores - "É que esta noite vou lançar ao mar/A bruma que houver em mim./Vou beber e cantar este luar/vou dançar até ao fim." TALK - 21:48, April 13, 2011 (UTC) | |||
Exactly. I don't mean to be rude, but the Chronopedia isn't anything special out there. Chrono Compedium has much more prestige. | |||
"I didn't want to say anything about that earlier, but I share that feeling as well. If this is merely an attempt to get the FFWiki to join SEIWA to, in your eyes, legitimize the migration, then I can't respect that either. We're not a prize to be collected." I can't speak for anyone else, but I was suggesting it because I seriously hate wikia's behavior, and I've not seen any reason to believe that it's going anywhere but south. I don't know, maybe I'm just completely paranoid. I strongly dislike Oasis (there are multiple accessibility features that were removed, and that I use frequently on other skins, but this isn't the place to go into a rant against Oasis.) I understand that wikia uses google engineering to get better hits. However, if you want to say that KHWiki isn't big enough to be comparable, then look at tfwiki - it is WAY bigger than you guys have ever been (it was one of the top wikia wikis OVERALL, not just in gaming), and it actually got ahead of transformers wikia on google results way, way faster than khwiki did. Furthermore, khwiki's lag in google results is largely due to a slothful approach to going after affiliates. We had a lot of stuff to get set up once we moved over (Which should go much faster for you guys, since you can exploit our solutions), and we've just recently started getting affiliates to correct links. That being on the front page for us? That's SOLELY from our own work; the boost from new affiliate links will soon boost us up even more. Porple is not at all unreliable, and it's kind of...weak to even be suggesting it. He's one of the founding members of NIWA, a large collection of long-standing Nintendo Wikis that dwarf their wikia counterparts in quality and popularity. He is experienced in what he does, and he has much more to lose from flaking out like was suggested here; in fact, wikia has already "flaked out" much more than he ever has. ...In fact, wikia has almost constantly been trying to buy out NIWA's wikis, which they want to replace their own versions with. That should show you how loyal wikia is to you. Per dedicated editors: if you have dedicated editors, they should already be editing here. You may gradually have one or two appear when one leaves, but that is while you had a thriving community. Again, historical precedent (tfwiki, khwiki) shows that 99% of the editors that moved in after a split are the ones who got themselves thrown out of the community the first time around for refusing to work with others...and that kind of hurts their ability to do anything to revitalize the remnant wiki later, because they were by definition, not that dedicated. More of an "issue" would result from editors who stay because they have some misplaced "loyalty" to wikia, who is, really, nothing more than a webhost--even Oasis could be installed at a new site, if you want it. The main question comes down to this: do you want to sacrifice the ability to design FFwiki as you see fit, so that you can rely on wikia to generate easy hits for you, or do you want to sacrifice easy hits for the ability to design FFWiki for maximum aesthetic, maximum presentability of all the information you want to present, and the ability to cater the design to your editors and readers as you see fit; with the historical precedent that, as long as you don't slack off, the hits will come back... I doubt this post will sway anyone's minds - you guys seem to be pretty set in your opinions. I would, however, suggest a more formal opinion poll to see a clearer image of where people stand. Once you know whether there is actually a sizable desire to leave or not, you could discuss in earnest what to do. | |||
Should we at least replace the "kingdomhearts.wikia.com" links on this wiki with "khwiki.net" links? | |||
granted that theres no deadline for something like that, then there is no hurry to do this. I think most of us here would prefer to adopt a wait and see approach. tfwiki as a precedent is an interesting point to note, but transformers and final fantasy are two very different beasts. khwiki is something closer to us tho, so if it can overtake wikia then I think maybe some people would sit up and take notice. but that time hasn't come yet, to be sure | |||
@Bluetash: We would highly, highly appreciate it, yes. If you could change your interwiki linking so that kingdomhearts: goes to the new wiki, that would also be appreciated. | |||
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In my case, it's because I'm trying not to beat a dead horse, but if you like, we'll start with YouTube. First off, yes, Google owns it now, but they didn't always. YouTube was BOUGHT by Google because it was the biggest and best video-sharing site on the net. To be the first to address the points: I can't speak for anyone else, but I was suggesting it because I seriously hate wikia's behavior, and I've not seen any reason to believe that it's going anywhere but south. I don't know, maybe I'm just completely paranoid. I strongly dislike Oasis (there are multiple accessibility features that were removed, and that I use frequently on other skins, but this isn't the place to go into a rant against Oasis.)
I understand that wikia uses google engineering to get better hits. However, if you want to say that KHWiki isn't big enough to be comparable, then look at tfwiki - it is WAY bigger than you guys have ever been (it was one of the top wikia wikis OVERALL, not just in gaming), and it actually got ahead of transformers wikia on google results way, way faster than khwiki did. Furthermore, khwiki's lag in google results is largely due to a slothful approach to going after affiliates. We had a lot of stuff to get set up once we moved over (Which should go much faster for you guys, since you can exploit our solutions), and we've just recently started getting affiliates to correct links. That being on the front page for us? That's SOLELY from our own work; the boost from new affiliate links will soon boost us up even more.
Porple is not at all unreliable, and it's kind of...weak to even be suggesting it. He's one of the founding members of NIWA, a large collection of long-standing Nintendo Wikis that dwarf their wikia counterparts in quality and popularity. He is experienced in what he does, and he has much more to lose from flaking out like was suggested here; in fact, wikia has already "flaked out" much more than he ever has.
...In fact, wikia has almost constantly been trying to buy out NIWA's wikis, which they want to replace their own versions with. That should show you how loyal wikia is to you.
Per dedicated editors: if you have dedicated editors, they should already be editing here. You may gradually have one or two appear when one leaves, but that is while you had a thriving community. Again, historical precedent (tfwiki, khwiki) shows that 99% of the editors that moved in after a split are the ones who got themselves thrown out of the community the first time around for refusing to work with others...and that kind of hurts their ability to do anything to revitalize the remnant wiki later, because they were by definition, not that dedicated. More of an "issue" would result from editors who stay because they have some misplaced "loyalty" to wikia, who is, really, nothing more than a webhost--even Oasis could be installed at a new site, if you want it.
The main question comes down to this: do you want to sacrifice the ability to design FFwiki as you see fit, so that you can rely on wikia to generate easy hits for you, or do you want to sacrifice easy hits for the ability to design FFWiki for maximum aesthetic, maximum presentability of all the information you want to present, and the ability to cater the design to your editors and readers as you see fit; with the historical precedent that, as long as you don't slack off, the hits will come back...
I doubt this post will sway anyone's minds - you guys seem to be pretty set in your opinions. I would, however, suggest a more formal opinion poll to see a clearer image of where people stand. Once you know whether there is actually a sizable desire to leave or not, you could discuss in earnest what to do.
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I didn't think we had anything more to talk about really... I thought KrytenKoro's last post was good though. There are things for both sides. I visited some NIWA wikis inspired by this thread which I had never done before. It's a good idea, I think SEIWA could work too, although I don't think this particular wiki would benefit joining this early. While YouTube is totally off topic, I think it's actually a good example of a "nobody" overtaking a giant, because didn't Google Videos exist before YouTube? They just didn't perhaps realise what a power tool it could be. I don't particularly like Google, sucks they bought YouTube and now you can't use it unless you have a Google account. | |||
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MirrorshardSceada — 07:44, April 16, 2011 (UTC) "You used to be too broken to talk back." Vanitas, Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep A l'Cie's Diary - FFTA2 Walkthrough - Lindblum Tourism Office http://i1188.photobucket.com/albums/z411/Sceada/kafrahead_15px.png | |||
If wikia really messes up badly at one time in the future (which I don't see happening, but that's another topic), then a move is certainly something one can think about. But right now, wikia has in my eyes not really messed up so bad that we couldn't fix it, right? So far, we've been able to cope with anything they've thrown at us and if you ask me, as long as we are able to do that I see really no reason to move. But still, the fact that the possibility to move exists is certainly something to keep in mind should wikia ever really mess up badly enough. But right now, it would definitely be a step in the wrong direction in my eyes. | |||
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Is there a way to know how many registered users on this wiki use the Monobook skin? Anyway, you know, we're here discussing skins and whatnot, but we're all registered users. The large majority of visitors don't have an account and are stuck with Oasis skin, and they're not participating in this current discussion. Also the ads when you don't register or log in are really AWFUL. | |||
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The more obvious the ad is, the more money they can ask for it. While adverts you hardly see are the best for the users, advertisers are not gonna pay much for an ad like that. With Monaco it was Wikia's business partners who wanted their ads inside the content space, but it really messed up with the page layout because there wasn't even a way to "preview with adverts" or anything, so if you were a registered user, there was no way to find out what it'd actually look like. Especially if your page had images the adverts could easily bump them down way further down the page than intended. When making Oasis Wikia probably had to compromise a lot with the ideas the advertisers want and what the users want. I'm not big on the ads but guess it's good to remember who is actually paying for all this. | |||
Just a note on the problems left, SCM:
In other words, most of our problems are either minor or our own darn fault.
BSA 20:19, April 16, 2011 (UTC) | |||
Sorceror Nobody – The supreme nonentity Talk · Flan's Elbow Colosseum · MSPA Wiki · 21:13, April 16, 2011 (UTC) "I can detect matter down to one atom in a vacuum the size of the moon, and apparently, this guy doesn't exist" -- Foaly | |||
Low blow, Bluesey. Sniping me in particular for that is hardly relevant.
Still, while I'm here, here's my position: Stay on Wikia... but watch the bastards closely FFWiki has little to gain from moving; it's nowhere near in the same boat as KHWiki was. If Wikia eventually decides to outright obstruct those of us using Monobook (might not happen, but I'm not holding my breath), that's when I'll change my tune. | |||
I think Monobook will be gone one day. I very much doubt it'll be on-board forever... And is Oasis really going to be the final design on Wikia either. | |||
Monobook will be around as long as Sannse(?) still runs Uncyclopedia. I mean they even got a super-special skin exception. Dress it up though they might, if you're run by one of the head honchos, you get special privileges. In short, there's no reason to think Monobook is going anywhere, due in no small part to it not having looked anything like Wikipedia for years and through I think two new skins on Wikipedia's part. | |||
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I came off wrong to SN and already apologized on his talk page. Believe me, he's at this point one of my best online friends and I didn't mean to sound like I was sniping at him so much as giving a friendly jibe. If you still feel the need to ignore me, well, I won't stop you. My policy is to let people judge me how they feel and if I rub someone the wrong way, it's their right to feel that way without me trying to win them back over and disrespecting their reactions. Back on the skin, I think Wikia said it best with skin issues that people have grown used to every one of their skins so far. People defended Monaco when Oasis came along and did the same for Quartz when Monaco replaced it. And I know what most people think of Quartz now, although I myself only just saw what I assume is it an hour ago using the Wayback Machine (the pieces are pretty, but the setup is bad, IMO). Wikia will come out with another skin to replace Oasis in a few years and everyone will go through this song and dance over again. It's not a betrayal; it's a cycle. And the point of me saying features were annoying was that that's about all they are. I'd only rate a couple of the ones left as major concerns, and even then we're not unable to function without them. Problem reports are a desirable thing, but going to central Wikia generally gets you decent response time and the staff there, in my experience, are quite nice to work with personally. | |||
Whenever I read people citing Oasis as a reason to leave Wikia, I can't help but imagine people complaining about whatever format Wikia creates next and people moan and complain about wanting Oasis back. How the Wiki looks shouldn't be something that comes into play when considering a move, since there are a lot of factors that play into people's preferences, which breeds bias. Personally, I like Oasis and the extra functionality it offers over Monobook, like seeing recent changes to the side, the search bar having an auto-complete function, and having the content of a page centered in the middle of a browser (I have a wide-screen monitor, so Monobook makes everything stretch to fit the screen width, and makes it looks weird). | |||
I'm indifferent on whether or not we move, however, I would like to hit some points you just made. the "Recent changes" offered in oasis is, in fact, incomplete, and only gives an inkling of what's going on. it doesn't warn one about vandals hitting user or forum pages, two things I have has an issue with just today. the auto-complete is something Monobook really should have, actually. Why doesn't it? having a page centered can be okay, but it messes with things sometimes. For instance, numbered points, the centering kind of messes that up. In short, Monobook far exceeds Oasis, but Oasis' existence is not enough reason for me to move (though it is pretty bad.) | |||
I think what he (she? sorry) meant was that they like seeing a summary of recent changes there in the sidebar. I think that's useful sometimes too. If you flag your submission as "minor edit" it won't show up in the sidebar version of the recent changes. The "most recently added images" box I first thought was useless, but has actually been useful a few times. | |||
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that's true, and he's a dude, near as I can tell, but that sidebar is taking up valuable space on the page when you could just do what I do and keep the RC up in a tab. But I don't think it was my place to interject with my Monobook supremacy opinions on here anyways. | |||
"Minor complaint that doesn't come up much and can be easily fixed by moving things without opening a new tab (seriously, who does this?)."
I do, as do people who do a lot of maintenance work. Same thing applies with deleting pages. | |||
Kinda late for the party, but I guess it's good to offer my viewpoint as someone who's not so active, neither is around for years. Like many people already mentioned, the average user (IE: People like me) will probably not even know about the move nor care about most of the 'issues' presented here as reasons to move.
All this skin talk, for example: I could care less. Probably because I 'missed' all these older skins, I don't see anything wrong with the current one, and I didn't even knew it was called 'Oasis'. I can easily do all basic functions like reading stuff and creating a new article, and really, that's what I care about. If someday, somehow wikia changes stuff and it becomes a pain to upload a few images, create a new article and edit it, then we talk about this.
Then, there's everything that will happen after moving out. It would just be plain HARD to take this wiki out of the first pages of google. Like I said, the general public would probably never know of the move; any current blogs, game forums and other stuff linking to this wiki will still keep doing so; any 'casual' reader will continue reading here and linking his friends here, unless this place is literally bombed.
And finally, there's the community division. Sure, some dedicated editors could move on, maybe even most of them. Still, this wiki will be around and more people will surely come to edit; this will only hurt BOTH wikis as far as content goes, since it's obviously better to have everyone focus on a single place, ensuring relevant content.
So, with all that, just want to add I'm against the move, but it seems like it's already sort of decided it won't happen for now.
DiamondEdge 16:25, April 21, 2011 (UTC)
I don't support this AT ALL. The FF wikia is perfect the way it is. There's also a big difference between the KH wikis and that of FF. There are way more people here than at KH. Not to mention all of the pages on the wiki. Finally, [khwiki.net] gets more strict everyday and the original ([kingdomhearts.wikia.com]) will eventually lose all users and be open to vandalism. Unfortunately, it's to late for KH to move back. Don't get me wrong, I love the khwiki but I think it would have been better off if they never moved. This one is a wiki that others use to set their standards and it shouldn't be changed by others' standards. | |||