Category talk:Wikia

I'm not sure this is doing what we want. I'm totally down with not wanting the sub-category, but this way Wikia doesn't show up at all in category:WikiFarm. TedErnst | talk 01:21, 11 June 2006 (EDT)

Now that I think of it, maybe all the wiki farm should be in the subcategory, or at least the ones that have wikis for the community... MarkDilley

Alright, but are we talking about a category or a sub-category? In my mind WikiFarm is a Wiki Topic sub-category. Wikia should not be a sub-category of that, I don't think, unless you're suggesting that every wikifarm should be it's own sub-category of WikiFarm, yes? TedErnst | talk 13:41, 11 June 2006 (EDT)

vibrant?

Hi, yes Wikia itself is vibrant, but not all of the wikia-wikis are vibrant. --141.52.232.84 08:50, 20 June 2006 (EDT)

Each Wikia wiki has a status link. The Wikia wiki itself is vibrant, that doesn't mean anything is being claimed about any other wiki. Make sense? Best, MarkDilley

Criticism

This article has information about Wikia. A great deal is critical but there is favourable material as well. Wikia itself tells users what is good about their site. Users should know both sides in my opinion. Proxima Centauri 04:53, 18 February 2009 (EST)

Hmm. Is WikiIndex here to list wikis or to review them? If information about Wikia's flaws is put up (and I'm not necessarily saying it shouldn't) does that mean that problems with other wiki farms should be listed? Does that mean that problems with all wikis should be listed? Is criticism actually useful? Should WikiIndex have a "no original criticism" rule, that requires criticism to be citated back to an external source?

BTW: You might be interested to know that a user called CatherineMunro edited this page. There is a CatherineMunro over at Wikia. I personally find her very helpful, and (if this CatherineMunro is the Wikia one) she doesn't seem to have removed any criticism, but it has been snipped a bit. (Mostly the cruft about Wikia being like "New Coke" - which is meaningless to non-Americans anyway - has been cut.) David Shepheard 21:14, 23 April 2009 (EDT)

A discussion about the WikiIndex policy on reviews of wikis (or wikifarms like Wikia) has now started. See: WikiIndex_talk:Community_talk#Site_reviews if you want to be involved in this. David Shepheard 07:14, 9 May 2009 (EDT)

WikiNode deleted

Someon over at Wikia (called Angela) has deleted the WikiNode (http://www.wikia.com/wiki/WikiNode).

I'm going to pull it from the template, but thought I would mention it here, so that someone doesn't think I've vandalised the page.

I don't know why Angela deleted the WikiNode. It might be because she doesn't think WikiNodes are useful, or it might be because the WikiNode page that was put up on Wikia was a template that nobody bothered to turn into a good page.

If anyone is a fan of WikiNodes, I suggest you hop over to Wikia and take this up on the discussion page, rather than just recreate a poor quality WikiNode that might just get deleted again. David Shepheard 20:53, 23 April 2009 (EDT)

Special:Mostvisitedpages not working on Wikia

The Special:Mostvisitedpages page on the wiki I run has been frozen for a while now. But now this special page seems to have been pulled on every wiki on Wikia.

I'm not sure if this is temporary or not, but it potentially means that every article on WikiIndex relating to a Wikia wiki needs to be edited. David Shepheard 14:19, 12 January 2010 (EST)

Special:Mostvisitedpages has been dropped on Wikia. To check pageviews you can use quantcast (for example, [1]), but be aware that if there's a wikia in english in another language that share the same base domain plus the language code), the english one includes all the other language stats, so it can be difficult to track. --Ciencia Al Poder 06:37, 7 February 2010 (EST)

Forgot my last comment. Only pageviews aren't useful to calculate wikiFactor. --Ciencia Al Poder 06:40, 7 February 2010 (EST)

Special:Mostvisitedpages seems to have been turned back on (unless it came on by mistake during an upgrade). David Shepheard 03:26, 5 November 2010 (PDT)

updating

Seems the top 10 needs an update. --Sgt.Friso 05:04, 6 February 2010 (EST)

One logon works for all wikis at Wikia

I find that I can sign on to any Wikia wiki using my username and password that I created first at the Wikia Scratchpad. I think when I sign into any one of them I can edit any Wikia wiki. I think this should be mentioned in the article. This is very convenient when you edit more than one Wikia wiki, but I'm not sure if this may imply some disadvantages as well. Lumenos 15:09, 23 June 2010 (EDT)

WoWWiki and PathfinderWiki both leave Wikia!

In the last couple of days I've found out that the admins of both WoWWiki and PathfinderWiki have decided that they no longer wish to work on Wikia.

With the work being released under the CC licence, they have forked their projects to their new homes, rather than been able to delete them at Wikia. But WoWWiki in particular is one of the top roleplaying wikis on Wikia and this could be the start of an exodus. It will be interesting to see if anyone actually stays behind to continue the Wikia versions of these projects.

The new World of Warcraft wiki is being called Wowpedia...and is identical to WoWWiki up to several days back, so I am guessing that could get a new article (even though the actual wiki database dates back to the start of WoWWiki).

But the new Pathfinder wiki has retained the PathfinderWiki name, the URL they had before they merged with Wikia and the PathfinderWiki branding. (I'm not so sure what to do about that one.)

A bit of research can find the exact split dates. But at the moment, I'm wondering how this sort of thing should be reported. David Shepheard 03:35, 5 November 2010 (PDT)

You can read more on The Piazza forum's 'Two major Wikia RPG wikis have split off' thread. David Shepheard 03:37, 5 November 2010 (PDT)

I think it's reasonable to have separate pages for each fork. As far as the naming convention, assuming they keep the same name, we could use a parenthetical clause to distinguish between them, such as PathfinderWiki (Wikia) and PathfinderWiki (independent). We already do this for other wikis which share the same name. Each page could mention the fork and link to the other. --MarvelZuvembie 19:11, 5 November 2010 (PDT)

It looks like the split for World of Warcraft has already been taken care of (see Wowpedia). The current PathfinderWiki article points to the non-Wikia site. The URL for the Wikia fork is http://pathfinder.wikia.com/wiki/Pathfinder_Wiki. I propose we create a separate page for it. --MarvelZuvembie 19:25, 5 November 2010 (PDT)

An anonymous user (probably a user from PathfinderWiki) edited the PathfinderWiki page.

To make things even more complex, both of these two wikis started off as independent projects, joined Wikia and then Wikia would not give them permission to leave. This is the only reason for the fork. If the community had "gone with the majority" they would have moved away as a single project. It seems that Wikia wishes to claim some sort of right to maintain a copy of any projects that do not wish to continue on the site.

The WoWWikia URL (which is not a standard Wikia URL) was signed over to Wikia when they merged and they refuse to give it back. The pathfinderwiki.com URL belongs to someone called Alfred and was never signed over to Wikia. Also the one WoWWiki admin who did not want to leave Wikia is a Wikia staff member. The rest have had their admin powers stripped from them. David Shepheard 19:48, 5 November 2010 (PDT)

It looks like NetHack Wiki may have also jumped ship.[2] Dungeons and Dragons Wikia and d20npcs Wiki, too. --MarvelZuvembie 09:35, 6 November 2010 (PDT)

Ugh. I just took a look at the Wikia to which I most frequently contribute. The new look completely erased all the wiki's customizations and appears to have messed up the navigation menu, too. It looks horrible. I can see why the others are upset. --MarvelZuvembie 11:18, 6 November 2010 (PDT)

Wow, you are right. I'll have to pass the reports of RPG wikis back to The Piazza. People interested in those subjects are going to want to know about the move. There must be other wiki users considering the move too.

The interesting thing is that despite the exodus, Sansse is refusing to consider switching back to the former template (which seems to be the main reason why people are choosing to leave) and she is also refusing to allow any wiki-community to shut down the Wikia version of their project when they leave (meaning that every wiki that leaves is forking instead of moving). There are so many wikis leaving Wikia, that I think that the Wikia page may need to be given a section that lists them all. It might even need to be a subpage or even something like a 'wikis that left Wikia' category. I'm not really sure which is best. I've never seen anything like this in my life!

And if Wikia are creating "forks" that are unsupported, that might need to somehow be noted on any pages set up for those wikis on WikiIndex. Wikia's forking is bound to create confusion and the articles here are going to need to present both wikis along with a reason for the fork (perhaps a 'forked from wikia' template could save some typing. David Shepheard 07:59, 8 November 2010 (PST)

I haven't looked for any others, but I'm sure there are more. It looks like Wookiepedia is staying, though. They appear to be the new poster child for Wikia, now that WoWWikia has forked. This weekend, I concentrated on fixing my favorite Wikia. I doubt it will make a move; like me, the other admins have been mostly absent of late.

I'm sure this isn't the first wiki to fork, but I can't think of any pertinent examples at the moment. I think that listing the wikis which have moved from Wikia is a reasonable thing to do. A template also seems like a good idea. --MarvelZuvembie 13:35, 8 November 2010 (PST)

Perhaps..

Perhaps all Wikia wikis should be named, if they have pages here "[wikiname] (Wikia)". So like "Psychology Wiki [Wikia]" instead of just "Psychology Wiki". this way viewers here will have more information at hand when making decisions. Wikademia 22:27, 15 December 2010 (PST)

I had been using the parenthetical only to differentiate when there's more than one wiki with the same name. The problem with putting the extra word in the pagename is that it will add an extra step during a search. Instead of taking you right to the page with the name Wookiepedia, if we change it to "Wookiepedia [Wikia]", a person searching for "Wookiepedia" will be presented with search result options and have to choose from those. That seems like bad UI to me. Instead, maybe we could make the Wiki Farm or Hosting Site part of the infobox. --MarvelZuvembie 12:37, 16 December 2010 (PST)

Is it possible to do an alternate infobox, that includes everything from the standard infobox, but adds on wikifarm? That would stop all other wikis having some sort of 'None' line.

Alternatively, would it be possible to have a WikiFarm line that vanishes if the line is left blank, but adds Category:Wikia or whatever, if filled in? David Shepheard 11:08, 28 February 2011 (PST)

Both solutions are possible, but I think that the 2nd solution might work better. Otherwise, when we modified the standard infobox, we'd also need to modify the alternate infoboxes. I can easily see them getting out of sync. I've learned but have forgotten the syntax to make an optional parameter that will not appear if not used. I believe it uses some kind of {{{if}}} statement. It already exists in practice in the standard template for the wiki license parameter. --MarvelZuvembie 14:57, 28 February 2011 (PST)

OK, I've looked at the template and I believe that the line would look something like this. --MarvelZuvembie 15:01, 28 February 2011 (PST)

{{#if: {{{farm|{{{wiki farm|{{{wiki_farm|}}}}}}}}} |

Active?

How many of the ~900 wikis in this category are also in the Category:active? Is DPL installed or so?--Dan Bolser 13:40, 11 April 2011 (PDT)