Forum:Wow are you with Wowpedia?

Forums: Village pump → Wow are you with Wowpedia?
(This topic is archived. Please do not edit this page!)

So, as far as I understand, WowWiki is the leftovers of the breakoff of what became Wowpedia (My usual editing spot), much in the same way that the Half-Life Wiki is the wikia leftovers of the famous Combine Overwiki that broke off into it's own hosting. Now, I know that Combine Overwiki did it due to the Oasis update on Wikia causing major formatting issues and being entirely ignorant of the community's solid "We don't want this" message... But enough on that.

My question is, where should I be? I always imagined I would be faithful to Wowpedia, it's the original and it's also linked on Blizzard's official sites and hosted by Curse, a well known and trusted community. But honestly, after being on Wowpedia for a long time... Wowwiki still feels just... Better. For one, the front page bothers to be updated, something I honestly can't say about 'pedia, and the overall community seems to be an improvement (to me...). Honestly, I'm the kind of person who wants to stick with Wowpedia just due to it's legacy, but in all fairness, I'm trying to figure out what is a more worthwhile site to pour my content into and help to improve. ---Noctrian! Or something! <3 (talk) 16:39, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

What could we do to improve? We're looking for ideas for the main page, since it is kinda stale. --k_d³ 16:44, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

WoWpedia is more updated than WoWwiki. Just compare each's version of articles like Void, Fel, Convocation of Silvermoon, Night Elves, Blood Elves, ... Is the main page's lack of updates so important as to force you to leave the community?Cemotucu (talk) 17:40, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

It's nothing personal, I'm just trying to find the right home for my content :3 I created a similiar thread on the forum for WowWiki and they responded by deleting it and telling me not to mention competing sites <,< So I think you guys might have my stay, never did like the Totalitarian style Wikia places over their content. I also want to check if I got the story of the site's history roughly right? ---Noctrian! Or something! <3 (talk) 21:06, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

More or less. Our WoWWiki page has an overview of that. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 21:25, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Hahaha, that is a hilarious response in light of your question :) Aside from Wikia authoritarianism, I personally find the user interface here far more attractive than WoWwiki. I also almost never visit the front page. It's an elitist viewpoint to be sure, but I feel like front pages are basically advertisements to try and get more readers, whereas serious fans either are looking for something specific (search) or are hoping to learn about something new (which might be the stuff on the frontpage at the beginning of the expansion, but won't be for long). A "hi! this place is pretty sweet, dive in!" message and pointer to the "random article" link would work just fine for me haha. (By the way, WoWWiki is advertising Bastion of Twilight strategies on its frontpage right now.) But I also like the community/administration here. I've tried being involved with Memory Alpha, Wikipedia, TV Tropes, and even explainxkcd, but in each case after enough bad experiences with rude editors or bureaucratic inanity, I've found myself shrugging and saying "yeah, I just don't care enough to keep trying to work with this". I've had a bad experience or two here as well, but for the most part I've felt like people are collaborative, relatively open-minded, and willing to point me in the right direction when I'm working on something - or just screwed up. - jerodast (talk) 04:47, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

My own feeling is that Wowpedia feels much better. I don't like the presentation, and in terms of content Wowpedia is literally years ahead of WoWWiki. Comparing pages is interesting, bearing in mind a lot of older info is identical, coming from before the split. For pages post-split, occasionally there are pages where WoWWiki rivals Wowpedia, but the rest of the time Wowpedia has more, and more up to date information, often substantially so. The irony is that WoWWiki doesn't seem to tag out of date content, while Wowpedia generally does. Of course, the reason the wiki is bigger and better is because of the editors who edit here :)

I'm interested to hear about what you find better with WoWWiki's community. From what I've seen, it has a far smaller editor-base, with the majority of the work done by the paid admin, and most of the rest by a few others such as Fandyllic. I get it if you prefer the presentation; I find a few of the features neat, although I still prefer the Wikipedia-style presentation to the Wikia style.

The choice however is, obviously, up to you :) For myself, I choose to edit Wowpedia for a number of reasons. One simple reason is that it is a far better source and repository of information, with far more expansive articles, far more up to date information, and even far more articles full stop (another 20%) than WoWWiki. I could probably have fun editing WoWWiki for a while since there's so much to be done bringing things up to date, but there's no doubt in my mind that Wowpedia is the superior source of info, and for me that makes it the right place to be pouring my time into. I don't say this from bias; I've seen a lot of both and I think it's clear that Wowpedia is the premiere WoW wiki out there. And if you spend much time editing, it's nice to think you're putting it all into the right place, and not simply catching up with work someone else has already done on a more up to date version of the same wiki. -- Taohinton (talk) 02:05, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Another simple reason is that Wowpedia uses MediaWiki, which can be updated from time to time by Curse. The article width on Wowpedia makes everything easier to read than how short it is on WoWWiki. No hard feelings though. :) — SurafbrovWarcraft Wiki administrator T / C 05:19, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Comparing Special:RecentChanges, Wowpedia had ten times as many updates in the last 24 hours. That alone is the main reason why this site is more up to date on anything post-split. Ddcorkum (talk) 00:20, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I prefer Wowpedia. While I prefer wikia's code in some areas (e.g. category pages), WoWpedia is a more active and complete site. That said, I'm stuck with my damn Gamepedia username when editing here. :(--Hawki (talk) 03:13, 19 July 2014 (UTC)