Forum:Proposal

From Alternative History

Vote closed

Wikia's unilateral introduction of it's "new style" chuckled with ads in ridiculous places, including the very article space itself and thus ruining the layout of many articles, has increasingly annoyed me lately and vastly diminished my fun in editing Wikia wikis.

This makes that I have been toying with the thought of moving the content of this wiki somewhere else and that I've now reached the point that I can say that this could be a realistic prospect and I am willing to spend money on it. I've found a decent wiki host and a way to quite easily move all of the content in a matter of, I estimate, hours rather than days.

Moving to an external server as an independent wiki would grant us much more options in managing the wiki, including a reswitch to monobook with more article space than Wikia's monobook offers, implementing the MediaWiki extensions we choose to implement and the ability to set up our own version of Commons with the other language wiki's, unhindered by the presence of a big company creating unwanted policies for us.

The GFDL licence also completely allows us to move the content to any place we want, only the site itself is Wikia's property, the actual content is freely distributable and as Wikia states itself "owned by the communities".

In other words I propose moving to a different server and am completely willing to take personally pay for this, so the plan would be completely free of charge for all other users of this wiki. Personally I would like to start as soon as possible and am thus very curious what the community thinks of this and whether you would like me to do this. --Karsten vK (talk) 19:37, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Drawback-What if your funding status changes, and you can no longer afford to support the wiki? We would then lose all data. Louisiannan 20:36, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

We'd have to make regular backups, of course.--Max Sinister 08:52, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Surely backups should be made, but ≈ € 3,80 (US$ 6) a month could hardly be a problem. And I'm planning to pay for two years in advance, so if any change would occur in my financial situation we'd still have time to find a solution. Still, how do you like the idea in general? --Karsten vK (talk) 18:03, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I like the idea. While I haven't (as of yet) had any problems, the advertisements looks just awful. I have recently worked on the Norwegian page about the Winter War on Wikipedia, and while there are more restrictions, it looks a lot nicer than many wikis which is stuffed with adverts of all sorts. If this project is carried out, I'll start immediate backup of all my pages. - Realismadder 15:35, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

I'd probably support the move, but I'd also like everything already on this wikia to stay here. Nobody is suggesting taking stuff off this one, right? And one other thing...I'm not really sure what you mean by the ads taking over, but in my preferences, I set the skin of this page to "monobook", and there is just a list of advertisements on the right side, without anything else. Is this what you're talking about, or have the other skins started introducing more intrusive advertisements? --Riction 03:11, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I'm mostly referring to this new Monaco skin which is now default for all non logged in users and can horribly mess up pages by placing a rather voluminous add right within the article itself (example: [1]). I dare say this is bound to scare off new users, who form the clear majority of visitors if I am to believe the Wikia Community Development Manager: "Right now, logged-in users make up about 1% of the people, and about 5% of the pageviews". My current thoughts on what to do with this wiki is to just place it all under a cascade protection to prevent further editing and leave the current content as it is, leaving this wiki open for editing would mean risking the eventual rise of two parallel, potentially rivalling communities, and I can't see why we would want that. --Karsten vK (talk) 14:17, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Personnaly, I would be for staying here. its free, its already established and its doubtful (though of course not impossible) that wikia would go offline in the foreseable future. The drawback I see with a private wiki is that if anything happen to the owner (and I have seen it happen before) we might lose everything or at the very least, being blocked off.

So while I can appreciate Karsten's offer and understand his reason, I vote no. --Marcpasquin 14:25, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I just discussed this issue with a friend of mine whom I know I can entrust this and possesses the necessary technical know-how that I would give him (and probably also another friend of mine, but he is in Sweden at the moment and I can't contact him) a copy of my passwords and the necessary contact addresses and to make sure that their contact addresses are know to the community, so that if something was to occur there will always be several backup possibilities. I must admit I hadn't thought of this before, but I hope that addresses the issue sufficiently. --Karsten vK (talk) 15:04, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

Actually, there isn't a single advertisement when I use this page. But I will definitively stay here until the others come up with a final sollution. Realismadder 12:09, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

That's new Wikia policy: Registered users using the monaco skin (I presume you are using monaco) don't see any ads. All non logged in users however still see them. --Karsten vK (talk) 13:50, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

Even if unlogged the advertisement is not an issue. Realismadder 14:27, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Contents 1 Vote 1.1 For 1.2 Against 1.3 Comments

[edit] Vote

Owke, I suggest we'll just have a vote over this, offers more clarity for everyone. Anyone who has been a member for at least a month and has made at least 25 edits can vote once by adding ~~~~ below your choice:

[edit] For

• --Karsten vK (talk) 18:29, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
• Realismadder 14:27, 17 July 2008 (UTC): While I understand the opposition's worries, I feel sorry for the many visitors who will have a problem using these pages.
• --What If?
• --Ggw 12:49, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Against

• Louisiannan 21:44, 15 July 2008 (UTC) For a number of reasons, but the proposal's appreciated. I would be more inclined to consider a mirror site.
• Benkarnell 01:57, 16 July 2008 (UTC): A mirror site could be good, but I'd worry that some writers, especially those that contribute occasionally or are on hiatus, would get lost in the shuffle when they suddenly can't find the site at this location.
• --Marcpasquin 14:55, 16 July 2008 (UTC)for the reason I mentioned above.

• Xi'Reney 20:44, 18 July 2008 (UTC): the idea is very gosd, and backup could really be useful. But I fear that when moving everything to an alternate location we would use a lot of interested users respectively visitors. Especially all those who more or less stumble over us from within wikia as wikia is a very common and accepted neutral place of finding people sharing same interests. I feel by moving to somewhere else not wearing the name of wikia we would fall back to a status of a "normal" website like naming it www.althistory.tv and we would face seriously how to keep it popular (though i dont know actual traffic on this wiki? Thats my opinion about this.

• Riction 04:15, 4 August 2008 (UTC): I think that Karsten makes some very good points, but one thing is that I don't really see the Althistory Wikia as having to appeal to everyone. I think that most of the people who are really interested in this site log in, and if one only logs in, one can get most of the ads removed. I log in and if I occasionally visit the site, I won't have to log in again for months. Because of this, I was largely even unaware of the problem with ads. I'm not sure, but I assume that all Wikia pages have the new layout, so people are either used to the ads or log in. If you're too lazy or not interested enough to log in, then you probably won't be a major contributor anyway. The site is not about getting users, but getting contributions, right? As others have said, a mirror site would be great...but just leave this one here, too. I also fear that if the site moves, it could eventually disappear. I know that Karsten has allayed most of these fears, but I want my stuff to still be on here in 10 or even 20 years and longer. I know that people's interests change. In fact, I've been visiting a bit less frequently than I once did. Some major contributors one year are gone the next. I've seen it happen. I know that Wikia will still be around, and probably even more popular in 10 years, but I really can't be sure that, even with the best intentions starting out, that a private website will always be around. One solution is that another site be opened, as Karsten says. I don't really think that these will be "rival communities". Are we making money off of submissions? If not, then why don't we just have a "point of divergence" and link to each other's sites. That way, any user frustrated by one can go to the other. Users can freely copy pages between them. Either both sites will gain users that prefer to work there, and everybody will be happy, or one place, if really better, will "win" most of the contributors, and might turn into the main site. At any rate, it would be a more natural process happening over time, as opposed to an idea implemented by the dictates of a few. So I think that this site should stay up, and that another one should be made. After all, there are already some other alternative history websites out there on the web, with little (or a positive) impact on us.

[edit] Comments

You are wellcome here Forum:Images Alt His , other active point of Nexus

On the users getting lost: I'm planning on using the "sitenotice" I also used to announce this vote to point users to the new wiki (I'll probably have to increase the size of the letters a bit for this to be effective) combined with a message on the main page, so the new site will never be more than one click away. I supose that would mean that the loss of traffic would remain marginal, and we would even be still accessible via Wikia. --Karsten vK (talk) 19:53, 19 July 2008 (UTC)

Come to think of it, the fact that I was planning to re-announce the website on several places due to the move could even lead to more attention if we do this properly. --Karsten vK (talk) 10:32, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I understand about the traffic problem, there are more factors then just the name of the site where it is located. Accepted hereby. Just one question which is not meant to attack someone personally neither to offend someone! What about the risk if moving it somone - friend of a friend? might claim the content as his own? Any concerns regarding copyright, GDP license etc. if we move to another site as I am no specialist on this topic...

Xi'Reney 15:29, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

All content on Wikia wiki's is licensed under the GFDL licence, which means that it is freely distributable and doesn't belong to any particular person or organisation, including Wikia. Anyone is free to move or duplicate content to a different location as long as the content remains licensed under the GFDL licence , so you can't just move the content and claim you have copyright over it. In fact, there are a tremendous amount of copies of Wikipedia around (which is licensed under the same license as we are) and they are all perfectly legal, and so would duplicating or moving the content of this wiki be. So in the absence of copyrighted material, I don't foresee any copyright problems. --Karsten vK (talk) 20:15, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Contrary to what I just told you Karsten I will not withdraw my "against voice". I thought over everything and especially Rictions last edit just showed the way I feel it should be made! Make it A POD site, copy everything that is contained here and let us use the "best of both worlds".

Xi'Reney 15:34, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Splitting the community is the last thing I'd want to do, so a POD-site is a definite no to me, not stemming from any commercial viewpoint. I'm currently involved in some process to set up a proper actual wiki farm and will probably inform you of that if everything over there is properly arranged and I will probably be able to offer much better guarantees for long term continuity. For now this means I'm closing the vote and we are staying with Wikia. --Karsten vK (talk) 13:40, 7 August 2008 (UTC)