Forum:Vote to Leave Fandom

Forums: Village pump → Vote to Leave Fandom
(This topic is archived. Please do not edit this page!)

An example of a Fandom ad being placed in the middle of this very vote!

During the last several months, the hosting situation with Fandom has reached a level that some of the admins feel is untenable. Fandom has gotten more and more aggressive with ad insertion, including places them into the middle of pages and also including ads in lists of recent or popular pages. Undesirable features such as Fandom Quizzes, have thus far been kept off of Wowpedia while they're considered in beta, but will inevitably be forced upon us whether we want them or not - indeed, even while disabled we can see that browsers are still attempting to access them, contributing to the substantial load time issues that have been noted by a number of users. We have reported all of these issues, and more, and been met with either silence or outright refusals to address our complaints. As a result, we are asking the community whether Wowpedia should follow in the Hearthstone Wiki's footsteps and migrate. Wiki.gg, which is run by former Gamepedia staff, is on our shortlist, though we are exploring other options as well, including a hosting offer from the raiding guild Method.

The biggest hurdle we would face, if we did so, is essentially competing against ourselves. Due to the content licenses in use, a copy of Wowpedia at the time of the move would continue to exist on Fandom, and the existing site has years of history contributing to search engine priorities. This is nothing new - the same thing happened when Wowpedia forked away from WoWWiki. Still, it is not an inconsequential problem and is definitely worth keeping in mind so that everyone goes into this fully aware of the potential ramifications. But, to be clear, no content would be lost - we would be starting with all pages and data that currently exist on Wowpedia.

This vote will close on October 2nd at 11 AM PDT.

Questions from Discord

Some things that have been asked and answered on our Discord:

• Will the extensions be moved over too, what about things like UsingData was that something made custom by Fandom/Gamepedia?

Yes. UsingData and DefaultLinks weren't made by Fandom. They were made by a previous Wowpedia admin here, foxlit, and they're open source.

• Should this affect the Wowpedia Editor's Toolkit?
  • No. That's a browser extension, and depends more on Wowhead not changing anything.
• Can I change my username on the new site?

Yes, user renames are possible.

• One of the biggest issues with Fandom was them (unilaterally) pushing new features, quizzes, scripts, and of course ads, and design/layout/skin changes, without our consent. How much control would we have over those things? Can we just say no?

Wiki.gg's ad placements are fixed: The top and bottom banners, and the side banner. Since their ads are "in-house" they have full control over content, so they are always game-related (pretty much ads from Freedom Games and their dev partners).

One of their main selling points is that they are basically vanilla mediawiki, but allow wikis to customize how/as much they want (within reason ofc), so they don't perform layout/skin changes (expect those that are unavoidable when updating mediawiki, though those are mainly minor and are easy to override). The only new mandatory feature that they currently are developing is a global profile feature. Most other features are pretty much opt-in.

Votes

Another example of ads acting up

Yes

1. Yes Dark T Zeratul (talk) 05:44, 19 September 2023 (UTC) - (Nominated)
2. Yes ConmanW - (Fandom has long been causing problems across multiple wikis with its ad content. It makes it so the average person wants nothing to do with trying to dig through wikis with all the ads)
3. Yes Kaydeethree (talk) 06:02, 19 September 2023 (UTC) - (Can't believe we're doing this again)
4. Yes XreaperDK (talk) 06:26, 19 September 2023 (UTC) - (The ads, popups, and general restrictions constantly shoved by Fandom will only get worse, platforms that head this direction rarely get better)
5. Yes PeterWind (talk) 16:07, 19 September 2023 (UTC) - (See comment below.)
6. Yes Zealvurte-gpuser (talk) 17:41, 19 September 2023 (UTC) - (The visitor experience continues to degrade to the point of driving them away from Fandom wikis, while the search position remains poor anyway, so I don't see a major downside. I have no opinion on where things move to.)
7. Yes Flame486 (talk) 23:14, 19 September 2023 (UTC) - (I'm all in favor of things that will make the wiki better. We did this song and dance once before. It was a shame it went back once again.)
8. Yes Ketho (talk) 23:21, 19 September 2023 (UTC) - (Their CM Antonio told me 2 years ago they would take wowwiki down but that it had to wait because of some absolutely bullshit reason. We've waited long enough.)
9. Yes Erkorr (talk) 03:08, 20 September 2023 (UTC) - (Ever since Gamepedia was taken on by Fandom, I think it's gotten progressively worse. First, the ever-pervasive side bar, then the constant logouts and theme-resets, and not to mention the propensity for Fandom to force advertising and other wikis down a user's throat. I think anything would be better than Fandom at this point -- A Wikimedia-driven system wouldn't be a bad idea, but I'm not sure if that has any drawbacks beyond hosting costs (that probably will increase over time and space, too!))
10. Yes Agente l (talk) 21:29, 20 September 2023 (UTC) - (Fandom has shown to be exclusively profit driven, caring little about the user experience as they continuously insert ads, quizzes, videos and etc with a one-sided mandate on articles across wowpedia and many other fandom wikis. There's absolutely no signal that this will improve any time soon, at all. We should follow example of Zeldapedia, Runescape wiki and Minepedia (minecraft wiki) and leave the fandom platform behind, for the good of the community.)
11. Yes Pcj (talk) 03:46, 21 September 2023 (UTC) - (Kind of biased since I head wiki.gg, but I'm mostly ready to see Wowpedia leave Fandom.)
12. Yes Numynum (talk) 08:22, 21 September 2023 (UTC) - (It really bothers me how much customization you need to do, for fandom wikis to not be obnoxious. Adblockers are a start, but tampermonkey scripts being a must-have is unacceptable. This makes the new-user experience pretty crap, especially so on mobile. I have no opinion on wiki.gg VS other hosts. (ironically, they pushed some "what do you think of fandom" questionaire in my face, to replace the "we're voting on moving" popup xD))
13. Yes Meorawr31439 (talk) 10:10, 21 September 2023 (UTC) - (See comment above.)
14. Yes Vanillabox (talk) 21:36, 22 September 2023 (UTC) - (12 buttons on the left bar, only 3 ever used.)
15. Yes Kiingy (talk) 05:22, 24 September 2023 (UTC) - ()
16. Yes Aliok (talk) 06:48, 24 September 2023 (UTC) - (I argued in favor of forking when Fandom bought Gamepedia. There was never any good faith on Fandom's side of things, and they have thoroughly abused the good faith of Wowpedia in myriad ways. Although the primary reason for my leaving of Wowpedia was to do with power-tripping super-users in the community, Fandom (with every negative reason that the name brings to mind) was a close second. I barely play World of Warcraft anymore, but I gladly will return and help if Wowpedia moves out of this abusive relationship.)
17. Yes Alayea (talk) 08:08, 24 September 2023 (UTC) - (I had serious reservations but was willing to give Fandom (formerly Wikia) a second chance. But as the old saying goes, "fool me once..." Awful page layouts, bloat, restrictive customization, severely inferior UI both for desktop and mobile, slow performance, and on and on. It was because of all those problems that I announced back in 2021 I was no longer willing to contribute to Wowpedia. I still care about this community, which is why I decided to come out of the woodwork and give my opinion on this matter. If Wowpedia was free of Fandom/Wikia and able to return a superior user experience, I would be willing to contribute again.)
18. Yes Nearthel (talk) 13:02, 24 September 2023 (UTC) - (In general, fandom wikis are way worse than independent wikis. Latest MediaWiki versions (not used by fandom) are better for editors and the ad free experience (or at least with minimal ads) are better for users)
19. Yes Eithris (talk) 16:54, 26 September 2023 (UTC) - (no comment)
20. Yes User:Nathaliemlromer - (optional Fandom messed up my original username that still exists on here (I guess someone in charge could contact me privately about it via this username). The site often is slow, when I try to upload an image for a page needing one I've had attempt it several times because the site would freeze. This site should be treated as a treasure trove which I don't think happens at Fandom. Just get this site to a place that's like that proverbial "forever home.")
21. Yes Argaeroth 07:23, 1 October 2023 (UTC) - (Fandom just sucks, and I miss the old Gamepedia shit. The ads, the popups and everything else just make it a pain.)
22. Yes Rarumas (talk) 12:33, 1 October 2023 (UTC) - (I'm tired of the Fandom bloat. I'm all for wiki.gg after seeing the Hearthstone move!)
23. Yes WardsJames (talk) 18:11, 1 October 2023 (UTC) - (In the end, i was convinced, Wowpedia need something better than Fandom, no matter what it is.)
24. Yes Jigjug (talk) 19:05, 1 October 2023 (UTC) - (Too many adds and popups.)
25. Yes Dragnog (talk) 20:10, 1 October 2023 (UTC) - (I agree that we need to leave Fandom. I'm not sure that wiki.gg is the best place for the wiki to move too, but certainty better than the situation we currently have.)
26. Yes Techhead7890 ^{Talk Contribs} 13:40, 2 October 2023 (UTC) - (If we can get a good offer from a different host I think we should take it. We never chose to come back to Fandom after leaving the first time, and the same issues from last time are still there. I think we can get things sorted once again.)

No

1. No MyMindWontQuiet (talk) 10:38, 19 September 2023 (UTC) - (Have no love for Fandom but my biggest worry is that Fandom is very likely to just buy out Wiki.gg when they start getting too big and then we're back to square one, and have lost a lot in the process. My other concern is that there's no hope to compete against Fandom's SEO and the new wiki will just get buried under Google's page results: Fandom's Wowwiki is still top of all results ahead of Wowpedia even though Wowwiki has been dead for 13 years. The new wiki will be far behind both Wowwiki and Wowpedia. All in all it doesn't feel worth losing all the work from the past decade.)
2. No X59 (talk) 15:42, 19 September 2023 (UTC) - (I share MMWQ's concerns, especially since FANDOM did buyout Wowwiki so there is a precedent for them buying out competing wikies. At the same time I am worried that we could make the split, only to then experience the same or similar issues with Wiki.gg itself forcing us to have the same discussion for a third time.)
3. No Cnorthfield2000 (talk) 18:53, 19 September 2023 (UTC) - (I am just worried on how much will be able to be ported over from Fandom to wiki.gg. Plus, I do agree with MMWQ points)
4. No Joshmaul (talk) 02:05, 20 September 2023 (UTC) - (We've been through this process already, for all the good it did us. We declared independence, then ended up getting annexed again. I'm not meaning to sound flip here, but at this point, get an ad blocker and pray for the best.)
5. No Hawki (talk) 00:28, 21 September 2023 (UTC) - (With an adblocker, it's not really an issue for me. Whatever inconvenience from the ads isn't worth a move at this point. That, and there'd be too Warcraft wikis if that happened.)
6. No rowaasr13 (talk) 16:13, 22 September 2023 (UTC) - (What MMWQ said. Unless there's more grave problem that can't be solved with ad blocker - and it seems all current ones can be solved by it - wowpedia will have more to lose from move. Even in previous move I already lost all history that I had since Classic.)

Abstain

1. Abstain Xporc (talk) 07:28, 19 September 2023 (UTC) - (no comment)
2. Abstain Ryon21 (talk) 09:42, 19 September 2023 (UTC) - (For now I'll abstain. Might change the vote before the closing. I have strong pros and cons for every choice and I cannot simply decide. Whatever the outcome will for the better, I think. And I'm eager for new changes.)
3. Abstain Nith (talk) 14:21, 19 September 2023 (UTC) - (I tend towards "no" for the reasons mentioned by MMWQ but I'll abstain for now)
4. Abstain DeludedTroll (talk • contribs) 15:24, 19 September 2023 (UTC) - (Dunno. I'm mainly concerned about the issue of gaining traction and having to compete with Fandom, but if the community at large votes to leave I definitely won't protest.)
5. Abstain Yuvyuv111 (talk) 15:54, 19 September 2023 (UTC) - (See comment below)
6. Abstain Sir_Weltschmerz (talk) 21:26, 19 September 2023 (UTC) - (I am inclined to agree on the move but fandom will never let such a large wiki be taken down or allow it to just become a redirect to another wiki. Aside from competition, I think moving is a good idea. I may change my vote to the "yes" camp, but I feel I am too inexperienced and not fit to give a formal vote.)
7. Abstain Ejep520 (talk) 21:26, 20 September 2023 (UTC) - (/* No comment */)
8. Abstain Sandwichman2448 (talk) 00:30, 21 September 2023 (UTC) - (Oh, how nostalgic. While still present, I really have not been active since 2018. I lost the time and the energy for talk page arguing and large projects. Because I will not be part of the project's energetic main push moving forward, I feel that I should not leverage my old history to add my weight to Wowpedia's future direction. That said, I count myself as on the fence: 1) FANDOM sucks. Always has. Any "feature" that gets removed at this point would be a quality of life improvement. 2) Competing services will barely get looked at, no matter their functionality. WoWWiki is still first in Google searches, years later. 3) Competing services that show any success will just get bought out by FANDOM at a later date when the fork begins to really take root. See you at Leave Wikia round three?)
9. Abstain Kruggov (talk) 15:23, 21 September 2023 (UTC) - (I don't really have enough experience to give a concrete vote.)
10. Abstain  Vraul Jawrip (talk · contr) 23:05, 24 September 2023 (UTC) - (I do agree that Fandom is an awful host and that the move from WoWwiki to Wowpedia was a good one. I'm just afraid of the possible morale loss that would happen should Fandom buy out wiki.gg and drag this place right back in.)

Comments from ineligible voters

1. Yes Mamapapaxp (talk) 12:01, 19 September 2023 (UTC) - (This one fries my noodle. On the stay side, there's the image submitted by Zeratul - which at least shows 'relevant' or 'contextual' ads; also, the FREE internet died of old age some years ago. Everything has to be paid for... somehow. Then there's the mentioned size, popularity and user acquisition potential of Femidom. The 'Get the Hell Out of Dodge' flipside to all these coins:- Ads? Never! I didn't even know there were any because my uBlock Origin removes 99% of all ads, everywhere; maybe many other users can learn to use a good blocker if they aren't already. (Actually, that's also a reason to stay, damn!) As far as paying for stuff goes, I don't have much to give, but I donate £5 to Wikipedia once a year to keep that site going, because I use it almost every single day. If enough users can get on that train, - perhaps even Patreon - maybe private hosting with a memorable domain can be a reality? Maybe even cover some Adsense in the early months? Finally, the counter to the last point? I can't think of one but, dammit, there's principles at stake here. Maybe you'll get far less users if you go private, but they'll be the loyal, interactive and 'desired' ones and, if enough of them throw 5-20 bucks a year then who knows, maybe one can stand on principles! It's the quality of YOUR ongoing contributors, as well as those of the past, that made (and keeps) the site great, not the traffic driven to you and hosted by Sub-dom. So, I say modify EVERY page, months in advance, to warn of the change. Then wreck or burn the furniture before you leave, (It may be Thrall-dom's house, but you brought the furniture, right? Then go!)
2. Yes SweetsourGamer (talk) 16:55, 19 September 2023 (UTC) - (Never have been a fan of fandom. It's too clunky, operates poorly and the amount of ads (especially on mobile!) is incredibly frustrating at times.)
3. Yes Radikid (talk) 07:17, 20 September 2023 (UTC) - (mobile is almost unusable due to ad placement)
4. Yes Krampoph (talk) 00:46, 21 September 2023 (UTC) - (I just don't like this place tbh)
5. Yes ChefWarly (talk) 06:18, 21 September 2023 (UTC) - (Anything would be better than Fandom.)
6. Yes Velaethia1 (talk) 12:39, 21 September 2023 (UTC) - (I think a truly ideal world we'd have all these websites like this being indepdent. But baring that it sounds like wiki.gg is being a lot less scummy then fandom.)
7. Yes KadeRox (talk) 18:40, 21 September 2023 (UTC) - ()
8. Yes Dejoblue (talk) 00:45, 23 September 2023 (UTC) - (SEO is terrible; if a hit ever appears it is always second to WoWiki. The navigation flyouts on the left are obnoxious when going back and forth between editor and documentation. This account is from 2007 and is somehow linked to the now defunct BioWare Dragon Age:Origins forums. Anecdotally, perhaps hyperbolically, there's a 50% chance it's easier to google fizzlemizz wowforums or wowinterface zork or phanx and find the function you need and context for its use. Also, more and more it is easier to just use the git repo and extracted UI documentation. It's all well and good for me, but my concern is barrier to entry, and for myself, reentry. This is all exacerbated by the APi overhaul since BfA. As far as monetization; they have had more than enough time to extract any value out of the free content here and Fandom is effectively double dipping, and I would surmise has no incentive to remove WoWWiki content or degrade its SEO so that more relevant and not out of date/deprecated functions and solutions are found here. I do prefer the layout as WoWWiki is all but unreadable, but any Pros are obfuscated by relative obscurity.)
9. Yes Petzsematary (talk) 18:21, 23 September 2023 (UTC) - (Fandom is nearly unusable without adblockers and I don't ever see it getting less user-unfriendly. A move is 100% due.)
10. Yes User:Stpain - (no comment)

Comments

I would like to remind people we have a discord and even a specific channel for this topic. This is the invite link: https://discord.gg/gnGQcAk (Yuvyuv111 (talk) 22:08, 21 September 2023 (UTC))

Is wiki.gg the only alternative? Perhaps there are other options? I don't say wiki.gg is bad or good. idk that. I think forced to be just another without knowing compare to others. (Yuvyuv111 (talk)) 06:48, 19 September 2023‎ (UTC)

Unfortunately, Wowpedia is one of the biggest wikis out there; there are very few free hosting services that can handle our storage and traffic needs, and said storage and traffic needs also make self-hosting prohibitively expensive. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 07:09, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

wiki.gg isn't the only option, but it is on the short list. We've had a few other interested folks reach out. --Kaydeethree (talk) 19:11, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

It might make sense to inquire with Blizzard to see if they'd be willing to provide hosting for the project. Community projects like this are a huge value-add to the game. Twocows (talk) 19:28, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

We've reached out in the past. For a variety of reasons, it's likely never going to happen. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 19:40, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

Wondering what changes, if any, would there be for Wowpedia when being in wiki.gg. Like Layout-wise, or any "features" gone? Probably the keyboard shortcuts, that's fandom, right? Any changes to editing itself? I'm looking at the Hearthstone page (didn't even know they moved :-D), I see the left bar added there. Anything else? -- Mordecay (talk) 07:37, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

fandom has its own set of keyboard shortcuts that (i believe) are enabled by default, but mediawiki does have keyboard shortcuts too. mostly the difference is that fandom’s shortcuts are a single key, and MW’s are a combination that depends on your browser (e.g. fandom is E to edit, and MW is alt+shift+E if you’re on firefox)

as for fandom features, the only one i can think of that’s ever seen use is Special:TagsReport. it comes in handy every once in a blue moon, but imo losing it would be a worthwhile tradeoff because apparently CirrusSearch is default on all wiki.gg wikis. CirrusSearch is the search we had back on gamepedia, and i found its variety of combinable filters extremely useful —Eithris (talk) 18:14, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

RE keyboard shortcuts on Fandom: You can choose between Fandom and MediaWiki shortcuts at Special:Preferences § Editing. Wiki.gg more than likely just the MediaWiki, no custom shortcuts. — SurafbrovWarcraft Wiki administrator T / C 18:40, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

aye, personally i use the MW shortcuts because i have cats. having the delete shortcut as a single key was… not ideal lmao Eithris (talk) 18:47, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Layout-wise, there will definitely be changes as the the platforms support different skins. Fandom supporting the "FandomDesktop" skin and "FandomMobile" skins and wiki.gg supporting the vector skin (the skin that the hydra skin from Gamepedia was based on). wiki.gg also uses a responsive layout so that there is only one skin for all devices/window sizes. Having different skins/layouts is probably a good thing as you don't want the two wikis to look too similar as that would confuse users. We also support a theme extension by default that allows you to style as many themes as you want for users to choose between. ReedemtheD3ad! (talk) 19:16, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm an E for editing dude, but I guess I could live without that :D

Layout/skin info sounds interesting, as long as black background in editing box remains :-P -- Mordecay (talk) 21:53, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Likely we'd end up with something very similar to the skin we had back on Gamepedia. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 22:35, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

What do we know of the wiki.gg leadership? I see pcj seems to be on their team according to their discord, but how much pull do they have? What is wiki.gg's position on long-term growth, thriving, and what are the chances they'd be willing or able to sell to a sizable offer in the future? Is the ad revenue they get from non-intrusive ads enough for them to thrive off of, or will they eventually have to cave to more intrusive ads to make enough to thrive or even just stay afloat? --XreaperDK (talk) 13:54, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Hello, I am on the wiki.gg Team. pcj is our Head of Wikis on our platform. We are fully funded through the sales of games that Freedom Games publishes. (Freedom Games being the company that we work for and that hosts wiki.gg) Our in-house ads help to drive sales and we receive no direct funding through their use. As for the possibility of selling to Fandom, I will point out that it was not Curse's (hosts of the Gamepedia platform) to be sold to Fandom, but rather the decision of those above us (twitch/amazon being the parent company of curse). Freedom Games has no parent company like twitch/amazon, so we have control over the say of the wiki.gg platform and I can say we would not sell to Fandom. Our primary goal is to provide wiki communities with the best hosting experience that we can. We focus on community needs. I mentioned that we don't receive money directly through ads, so our focus is not on money. ReedemtheD3ad! (talk) 18:10, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for explaining. It certainly helped easy my worries over the matter, as prior to this vote I didn't know that wiki.gg existed.--X59 (talk) 19:58, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

We'll see how the vote goes, but the clear advantage of forking before an expansion is revealed, would be that any search for "expansion wiki" would lead to the new wiki, should we fork. Of course that won't solve the search engine struggles we would face concerning our older content. PeterWind (talk) 16:07, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

For me one of the biggest current problems is the Fandom quizzes. Checking the browser console, those processes keep running for anywhere from 30 to over a 100 seconds, slowing down editing while they're ongoing. I've experienced the same problems on different machines too. On average I'd say my editing has slowed down by at least 70% since those processes were implemented. PeterWind (talk) 15:28, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Had to strike out two votes. Sorry guys, it's not because of your opinion, but you do not fill the conditions for voting on this issue. Xporc (talk) 19:01, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

To clarify since a couple of people brought it up: 100% of our existing content would get ported over. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 19:06, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

This also includes userpages (not profiles) and contributions. Users will be able claim their Fandom usernames on our platform to retain their full contribution history. ReedemtheD3ad! (talk) 19:11, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Out of curiosity, if Wowpedia gets ported to wiki.gg, will the fandom!wowpedia remain... active/accesible for editing, like Wowwiki was? -- Mordecay (talk) 21:53, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, unfortunately that's Fandom policy. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 22:33, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

"Yes, user renames are possible."

I am sold!-- Mordecay (talk) 21:53, 19 September 2023 (UTC)

What would the timeline for something like this look like? If the vote goes to "yea," would we flip as switch and be on wiki.gg automagically? Inside of a week? Do we have a means in mind to redirect folks to the new domain if we go that way? Thanks! -- Ejep520 (talk) 03:21, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

It'll take a couple of weeks, and we'll spread the new URL once it's ready. we're hoping to complete the migration before BlizzCon. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 05:18, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Would it be possible to have our own domain name being used with wiki.gg? So that if we ever felt like we needed to switch again, that we can either replace the DNS to point to the new wiki home, or create DNS based redirects? --Numynum (talk) 08:10, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

If we were to acquire our own domain name, sure. Kaydeethree owns warcraftwiki.com, for instance, and we've discussed possibly using that. Fandom owns wowpedia.org, though, so using that isn't an option. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 16:40, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Small update, @Suraf here has already managed to:

- switch all Wowwiki domains over to Wowpedia now

- disable GameSpot Expert Reviews on Wowpedia

- disable Fandom Trivia/Quizzes

Which should hopefully fix the performance issues that Wowpedia has been encountering lately due to Fandom's features, and undo some of the bloat.

Fandom have also offered to remove the Popular Pages module, but I imagine that would be only if we don't leave. And there might be the possibility of disabling the in-content ad unit. It looks like our intent to fork away from Fandom might've shaken them a little and that they might be willing to listen. We plan to schedule a call with Brandon Rhea (VP of Community) to see if we can negotiate further in favor of Wowpedia.

Don't know if this changes anything for the voters, but if there's a way we can get what we want without losing Wowpedia then I think it's worth at least considering it. We have nothing to lose. For me, worst case, if a year from now it turned out to all have been lies and they try to push their bloat onto us again then we can always just leave. Best case, we don't need to fork and we save Wowpedia.

We don't want empty promises though, we will be asking for some tangible and IMMEDIATE change, because of course we don't want to miss our window. - MyMindWontQuiet (talk) 20:38, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Typical Fandom ads, right there in the middle of the content page, plus multiple ads in the sidebar (not pictured: a top ad banner that covers half the screen until you scroll down).

Important clarification: they have not, actually, disabled Expert Reviews or Fandom Trivia. They've merely said they would do so. It's important to note that these are all things we've been asking them to do for months, if not years, and they've either ignored or told us they couldn't do. It's also important to note that it doesn't appear to have affected my performance issues, at least, in any way. And still doesn't solve any of the in-line ad placement issues, as seen on the right:

For my part, I don't trust Fandom to keep any promises they've made. They did the whole "we're different this time and we totally want to work with you" song and dance when they bought Gamepedia, and now here we are once again, dealing with exactly the same issues that caused us to fork from WoWWiki in the first place. As far as I'm concerned, they have not earned a second chance. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 22:04, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I'm willing to at least hear the argument if the admins do sit down and talk with them. I'm not convinced they wont turn back on everything in 3 months, or offer only false promises. I agree we would need immediate tangible proof of their good will, and their word on not going back on anything. Even so, I still think it likely they would either go back on it in 3 months, or just rules-lawyer their way around their wording to the most annoying degree they can. But if the admins do talk and say it was a positive experience im willing to hear it out and (maybe) consider a 2nd chance. I wasn't around during the Wowwiki transition though. --XreaperDK (talk) 22:11, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

RE: The Expert Reviews and Fandom Trivia - they are indeed disabled in the wiki config. They're still visible in some cases because of cache not being favorable... — SurafbrovWarcraft Wiki administrator T / C 22:32, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying, Suraf. As an additional note, I'm also concerned that Fandom could pull this nonsense on us, when McDonald's paid Fandom to replace a page from the McDonald's Wiki (yes, it exists) with a McDonald's ad. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 22:42, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Also to clarify - not all wowwiki domains have been transferred over. Just the redirects that used to point to wowwiki-archive. wowwiki-archive is still up and as far as we know, Fandom has shown no inclination toward taking it down. They're still getting page views (and thus ad dollars), and would prefer the ads despite the end-user confusion. --Kaydeethree (talk) 21:28, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Just wanted to share that the split discussion is on the wow forums.--X59 (talk) 16:44, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

I will add there is also a thread on Reddit. (Yuvyuv111 (talk) 17:16, 24 September 2023 (UTC))

I was browsing through the Runescape Reddit and saw a thread about the Minecraft Wiki moving from Fandom to the Weird Gloop and it reminded me of this thread. I don't know if this is viable for you or even if they are accepting new wikis, but some people here were asking for alternatives and they seem to be doing a really, really good job running the Runescape Wikis.--Ashendant160 (talk) 20:21, 25 September 2023 (UTC)

About the Method offer, What is the offer from their side? Can we get some details? What is the reputation situation of Method brand nowadays after the events and the dramas in the past? (Yuvyuv111 (talk) 20:20, 28 September 2023 (UTC))

Once the vote has finished, will there be further discussions about the host we are going to move too or has this already been decided? I do worry with wiki.gg that once it gets big enough, Fandom will simply buy all those wikis back, although also appreciate that the sheer size of the wiki may limit our choice for other offers.Dragnog (talk) 20:15, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Next steps

Well, it's official: we're leaving Fandom. Naturally, many of you may be wondering what will happen next, so I'm going to explain briefly what to expect over the coming weeks.

Hosting

Regarding the choice of host, the admins have decided to go with wiki.gg. We wanted to settle the hosting decision before the end of the vote so that we could jump straight into the migration process as soon as it concluded, so that discussion has been happening behind the scenes. Thanks to everyone who commented both here and on Discord regarding the matter; a lot of great points were raised that helped us to come to this decision. For anyone who's curious, one admin favored Method, five favored wiki.gg, and three expressed no preference.

Migration process

The actual technical migration process is what will take the most time, but also be largely invisible to most users. Our new host will get a snapshot of the wiki and upload it to their servers. After that's done, for the next few weeks they'll automatically import any updates made here to the new site, so there's no worry about anything getting lost during the transition period. Once the new site is set up and the admins have confirmed everything, we'll share the new URL. There will be a process when you register to link your new account with your old Fandom one in order to keep your contributions. If you want to change your account name, this is the time to do it. The goal is to have the new site up and running before BlizzCon.

The name

This is the one aspect that's still in flux. Sometime in the next day or so we'll put up a second vote for whether we want to keep the Wowpedia name or rebrand, and if the latter, what to change it to. A vote has been started for this at Forum:New Wowpedia Name.

Questions

If anyone has any questions about the process that haven't been answered here, the best way to ask them is the #leaving-fandom channel on our Discord. Otherwise, feel free to ask on the Talk page for any of our admins.