But moving off-Wikia to another, non-Wikia host is everything but simple and straightforward. Wikia usually refuses to close down the existing Wikia wiki; while it's true that they have every legal right to keep the Wikia site open, it's just not very fair or courteous towards the editors and administrators — the community of the wiki. In the worst case, administrators of the Wikia site may lose their rights on the Wikia site and the Wikia site will still exist and be editable by the world.
History knows of some fine examples. A Transformers-related wiki was started at transformers.wikia.com a long time ago. When Wikia's New Style — that is, forcing the Monaco skin down the users' throats — was introduced over two years ago, many wikis considered moving off-Wikia. This wiki was one of them. The wiki moved to TFWiki.net. Autonomy and total control of the wiki and no problems, right? Wrong. Wikia refused to close down the Wikia site and as an added "bonus", a high-ranking Wikia staff member, along with another staff member, removed the admins' and bureaucrats' rights on transformers.wikia.com, the log reason stating that these people have "moved to tfwiki.net". Well, it's the truth, you can't doubt that. What's noteworthy is that Wikia has no problems using the content created by these people. Sure, free content, but the current transformers.wikia.com is basically an unwanted and outdated fork of TFWiki.net.
Another case study: GisleWiki. This wiki was started at Wikia, but the founder (who, btw, pretty much built the site all by himself) didn't like Wikia's way of doing things, so he moved the wiki to its own domain, at GisleWiki.com. Wikia re-opened the Wikia site and look at it now: no edits for a long period of time and GisleWiki.com has more articles, obviously, because that wiki is being actively maintained by its founder. This didn't stop Wikia staff members from not only removing the founders' rights on the Wikia site, but also calling him a vandal. That's right folks — administrating a community, if you're not doing it as Wikia wants, is VANDALISM!
A more personal example is Jedipedia, the Finnish-language Star Wars wiki. I'm the co-founder of Jedipedia, along with Ufsark. In late July 2010, the wiki held a vote — at my initiative — to move to another wiki hosting service. The vote passed with nine (that's right, 9) people supporting and no-one opposing. Pretty much every active community member voted in the vote. Tells you something, eh?
The Jedipedia community and the administration team knew that Wikia wouldn't let the wiki go just like that, so we inserted a piece of JavaScript code into the site's JS. This JS code redirected the old Wikia site to the new location.
But on August 31st, a Wikia staff member discovered that we had moved and were using JavaScript to redirect the old Wikia site. This said person then proceeded to remove the JS code from our site. JouMan206, a long-serving bureaucrat and administrator of Jedipedia who later resigned at his own free will, reverted the Wikia staff member's action. The next day this Wikia staff member removed JouMan206's bureaucrat and administrator rights on Jedipedia. I must say that this certainly reminds me of the real-life historical event known as Prague Spring...
Moving on, currently there are two Finnish-language Star Wars wikis named Jedipedia: one has a community and is not hosted by Wikia, and the another one which is hosted by Wikia is practically empty in terms of people and activity. But it's not over yet. Dubček was taken to Moscow when the Warsaw Pact forces entered Czechoslovakia and I was about to receive my punishment for...for...for being an innocent bystander who had a solution for the community's problems.
04:58, 2 September 2010 I was blocked on a Wikia-wide scale by another Wikia staff member for "malicious use of javascript"[sic]. I was naturally quite shocked as I hadn't done anything on Wikia for a rather long while. So I sent them a short message; copied and pasted my block message and added "Please explain." This is what Wikia replied to me:
Jack, you were redirecting Wikia sites to your wiki farm, with code that
hid the effect from staff/helpers/vstf. I can (with effort) believe
that others using the code weren't aware that this was a problem, but
I'm sure you were aware of our likely reaction.
It seems it's time for you to move on from Wikia.
Here's a challenge for you, my dear reader: can you find a diff where I added "malicious javascript" to a Wikia-hosted wiki? I tell you that you'll be having difficulties with that task, as there are no diffs because I never added any malicious JavaScript to any Wikia-hosted wiki. Nevertheless, I can say that I saw this coming. All Wikia needed was an excuse, and finally they found a suitable one. Still, this isn't the proper way to treat people who did a lot of volunteer work for you, at least in my humble opinion.
What do you think? Please share your thoughts on this issue with me in the comments section.
P.S. The JS that this post has mentioned a few times is posted here, in case you need to redirect your Wikia site to a different URL address:
if ( wgUserGroups === null || typeof( wgUserGroups ) != null && wgUserGroups.join(' ').indexOf( 'staff' ) == -1 && wgUserGroups.join(' ').indexOf( 'helper' ) == -1 && wgUserGroups.join(' ').indexOf( 'vstf' ) == -1 && wgUserGroups.join(' ').indexOf( 'sysop' ) == -1 && wgUserGroups.join(' ').indexOf( 'bureaucrat' ) == -1 ) {
window.location = 'http://URLofYourNewWiki.example.com/wiki/' + wgPageName;
}
7 comments:
http://simpsons.wikia.com/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Sitenotice&diff=159350&oldid=159242
"please do not use the Wikia service to advertise a competitive site."
And then Wikia staff edit war the sitenotice with the site admins. Reminds me of transformers wiki, where much the same thing happened.
Your JS has an error.
wgUserGroups === null should be replaced by !window.wgUserGroups
Because it's undefined when there's no user groups.
null is the same as undefined...
no, null is NOT the same as undefined when you compare both with three equal signs.
@Anonymous: Aside from it being different. "wgUserGroups === null" (or undefined) will throw a ReferenceError if it's undefined. Accessing it via the window object will never do that.
"Wikia usually refuses to close down the existing Wikia wiki; while it's true that they have every legal right to keep the Wikia site open, it's just not very fair or courteous towards the editors and administrators — the community of the wiki."
Actually, in some cases, it's not their legal right to keep the Wikia site open. Uncyclopedia, for instance, is under a non-commercial licence (Creative Commons CC-BY-SA-NC) which expressly prohibits using the content primarily to obtain monetary profit. Wikia's 2018 forced reskin plastered all of the wikis with a mess of clickbait tiles, advertising other wikis on which Wikia is placing very intrusive video and display advertising. Non-compliance with the licence means, by law, the material must be removed. Wikia is now being sued, although there are other issues (such as trademarks, because the non-Wikia uncyclopedia.info was in operation before uncyclopedia.org's domain was sold out from under the project by one of the founders in mid-2006). Wikia also has a record of registering domains with trademark problems, like wikileaks.com (which they had no permission from Julian Assange to register) and desciclopedia.info (which they also have no legitimate tie, as Desciclopedia® has always been independent). There are other instances (I think Guildwiki from the Gamewiki set, also Memory Alpha - although I might want to check that before swearing to anything in court) which had the non-commercial licence. Wikia thinks they can circumvent that restriction by only carrying ads for other (ad-infested) wikia instead of ads for external vendors, but this position likely has no basis in law... an ad is an ad, commercial use is commercial use, blatant infringement is blatant infringement. Don't assume that something's lawful just because Wikia said so?
This is all very trivial. I have perhaps the most extreme case of Wikia / FANDOM grief you'll hear on here.
In March of 2021, a FANDOM staff member made a post saying that sites were now required to adopt a huge laundry list of policies for users, which gave favoritism and special privilege to trans-identifying users. And with threats made to wikis that didn't completely fall in line, with language of "we're not going to allow you to be the wild west anymore."
I founded the Dozerfleet Database in 2011. I stated my issues with the new policy mandates respectfully, stating that I was not going to show favoritism toward anyone. That if a flame war erupted, I'd treat each side according to their culpability in that war. But that I didn't have a very large community, and the odds of such a flame war erupting were minimal.
For this, I was branded "transphobic," and banned from making edits for an entire month. That staff member even went so far as to have me proclaimed "disgusting" for not showing favoritism to sexual deviants!
I was threatened with "further action being taken" if I didn't completely fall in line not only with new policies; but if I didn't also personally adopt a radical woke pro-trans worldview! (By which that staff member meant that he'd be spying on me to ensure that I pushed his socio-political satanic agenda not only on FANDOM, but off of FANDOM as well, in every area of my life he could find a way to have access to.)
Instead, I began forking my content to Miraheze. I did so quietly, making zero announcements on FANDOM whatsoever that I was migrating to Miraheze. I started removing "obsolete content," per a "retool," reducing the focus of the FANDOM version to only the basics about my brand, and moving all project, character, and mythology data to Miraheze quietly.
Then, I was discovered to have agreed with something said in a video by The Quartering on YouTube. I was penalized for that, because I'm not allowed to like The Quartering, apparently.
THEN, the FANDOM spies discovered the Miraheze version that I'd never spoken of. They closed my FANDOM version without warning or announcement, citing "violations" that were never specified. But they kept my images on their servers, even after a different staff member promised to remove them upon my request, so that my stalker from FANDOM could use my own images to steal SEO from my new Miraheze wiki!
This, after also discovering that I'd become the target of hate threads on Reddit, which were going unpunished by Reddit, because I don't fall into enough arbitrary "protected" categories to have hate threads and harassment against me be treated as something serious.
I've been tempted to, at some point, also relocate Girls Incarcerated Wiki (which I also founded) to Miraheze or to ShoutWiki. As well as make a fork for Mighty Moshin' Emo Rangers Wiki, which I adopted in 2017.
The way FANDOM has treated me is beyond reprehensible. All because I wouldn't give the gender-confused carte blanche to bully anyone else on my platform, free of consequence!
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