TibiaWiki talk:Community Portal/Moving

Moving

As of late September 2010, we have been scheduled for permanent skin changes. The Oasis skin is now active, and Monaco will be gone in November.

Rationale for moving

Options

• Wikifarms
• Other supported fansites

  Because TibiaWiki is under a free license, we could just export/import the entire database. Some changes might be required depending on the version of MW used. Because Tibia fansites are generally struggling to support themselves, I think it would be easy to find a partner. While I haven't done my research, I think we should look to the more respectable/long-standing fansites first (TN, TibiaML, etc.). A potential problem is that we need to sort out bandwidth requirements (more than 1 TB).

Pros

The benefits of moving are vast. (please add to this list)

• We will be able to revert back to Monobook or Cologneblue (et cetera).
• We will (probably) not have unannounced MediaWiki updates which break our pages.
• We could be a more democratic community.
• Ads could be less, on different places or completely disabled.

Cons

(please add to this list)

• We will be unable to use Monaco or Oasis, since they are not under a free license.
• Our Wikia domain has a high Google/search engine ranking. If we move, we will need to wait a long while before people link to the new domain. Thus, we most likely won't be the first result for "Tibiawiki" - this website will be.
• We might loose our "supported" / "promoted status temporarily. (Ogrey thinks it's ok)

Specific benefits

(please contribute)

Independent hosting: Moving away from a wikifarm has its benefits.

1. Since our host will be directly involved with the community, they will have their own input on our proposed changes. We will overall have a more stable connection with staff.

Another wikifarm: Moving to a new wikifarm offers no specific benefits, but we still may be allowed to tailor the technical stuff to our own likings, rather than have them defined for us.

Opinions

If you have time, please sign your name under one of the appropriate headers.

• Oppose if you like/don't mind the changes and wish to stay.
• Support if you dislike the changes and wish to leave.
• Abstain if you are indifferent about the changes, and don't care either way.

Discussion

I created this page to discuss our options of leaving Wikia. Please keep on-topic, there's a section pertaining to the Oasis skin itself here: TibiaWiki talk:Community Portal#New skin/appearance 'Oasis'.

Here are my initial thoughts; take them with a grain of salt and contribute to the discussion! I am generally leaning toward a private host who is already affiliated with Tibia. I have spoken to a friend who mentioned that TibiaNews had intentions on building a (mini) encyclopedia. If we moved to TN their goal would be achieved and they would have a large enough userbase who update the articles. However, I'm not sure many Tibia fansites can support our bandwidth requirements. (I use TN just as an example - please, don't assume I am biased). A downside is that I believe they too have quite heavy advertising.

We need to think realistically. No, we won't have ad-free hosting. We require that the administrators do frequent backups, and that they have enough bandwidth. We also require that they be active - because there are potential legal issues involved, with which we may need them to comply. -- Sixorish 00:56, October 25, 2010 (UTC)

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Moving to another wikifarm will have its own problems (they might enforce skin changes etc. to us exactly like Wikia does). Moving as a subdomain to Tibianews seems not very good for me, since this site gained some negativism when they promised stuff they didn't make true (like promising an update but not completing it for a few years). If we moved to another fansite I would say TibiaML. My contact with Steven (so far) was very positive, they seem to have a healthy team who update a lot/are active, and I like how they are multilingual. I want to try resolve stuff with Wikia first, but if it doesn't work out this seems like an feasible option. Sixorish, thanks for this idea, I didn't think of it and I'm getting quite enthusiastic for it the last 3 minutes I think about it :D ^^ Bennie (talk ~ fellows) ^^ 07:47, October 25, 2010 (UTC)

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Surely we can leave a redirect here for a while til google gets wise to where our new domain is. We have to remember that supporting ourselves isn't feasible. Erig couldn't handle the user flood every update and I doubt we can either. I'd rather stay here and argue it out with wikia staff, surely they have to realise this wiki is now unusable to the average tibian and as such they won't visit it; dropping their revenue..
Craggles ಠ_ಠ Talk ∙ Contribs 09:56, October 25, 2010 (UTC)

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Anyone knows how much bandwidth we use/need? I need average and maximum (during update months). ^^ Bennie (talk ~ fellows) ^^ 11:16, October 25, 2010 (UTC)

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Ok, I'll say what I was thinking yesterday when I said "start a partnership with somebody who will pay our new domain". I was thinking in Tibia Propaganda Ltda - the TibiaBR owner's enterprise and partner of the official reseller BoaCompra - that pays the servers from the following well-known sites: portaltibia.com.br, tibiabr.com, tibianews.net, tibiaspace.com, tibiaml.com, tibiacity.org, tibiamx.com.mx and more. Maybe we can use their server too, in exchange we'd have some ads from BoaCompra. Remember what Sixorish said: "we won't have ad-free hosting".

<·> Hunter of Dragoes <·> My Talk <·> My Contributions <·> 15:22, October 25, 2010 (UTC)

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Going a bit off-topic to begin with sorry! Craggles, about the point you made of staying and arguing, if you haven't yet then please see User talk:Sarah Manley. That's the kind of reasoning I expected from Wikia when I went off on one. It's not Sarah's fault, but that's just how it's going to be.

If we did move, I think we would get plenty of advertisement from CipSoft as well as other fansites, Wikia wouldn't just lose a good contributing community, which can be the case for other wikia's out there. CipSoft's feeling on unsupported fansites won't leave Wikia with much use for the TibiaWiki that's left behind. We would probably have the amount of hits as we have now after a little while. I also like the idea of joining partnership or something. But this is an area that I am not familiar with, I just remember the issues back at erig.net around updates.

Regarding staying, I've heard of issues with advertisements such as one person claiming they see adverts even advertising Tibia bots here! Although even if we did move, there would still be an uncertainty with what the advertisements display. This would probably be one of the issues with other wikifarms, seeing as all companies basically have the same terms and conditions and mediums for their adverts. But I don't see much problem with sending some emails to customer support teams on other wikifarms to see what they think they can offer TibiaWiki. Eitherway that could atleast help to see which wikifarm would be more suitable for TibiaWiki, if there was one at all, without actually coming to any decisions. Beejay 02:04, October 26, 2010 (UTC)

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If tibiawiki moves to one subdomain (for example: tibiaml), all people will still be able to contribute? because i think that's the main point of tibiawiki, not just be a large tibian encyclopedia. » Sez ~ Talk « 18:11, October 26, 2010 (UTC)

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@Sez The Withe, there are two things a website has, a domain name and a place it is hosted. Those are totally different. (IF we move) we will most likely not become a subdomain of tibiaml or any other site but have a generic stand-alone domain name. Exactly where the hosting takes place is not relevant for the common user. Oh, and of course everybody will still be able to edit the wiki, otherwise it would not be a wiki anymore ;)

I can give a small update about things which are planned. Different possibilities concerning: domain names, hosting, ads or donating are considered at the moment. Again IF we move, Erig can help out with some technical stuff, so that won't be a problem (I personally have no experience with doing Mediawiki installations and stuff..). Also, please note that we can't use Monaco outside of Wikia. I personally see this as a small disadvantage, I got accustomed to it and I like some functionality of it which e.g. Monobook doesn't have. I'll add that in the pro/cons ^^ Bennie (talk ~ fellows) ^^ 20:15, October 26, 2010 (UTC)

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My thoughts

I'm currently entertaining the thought of hosting the wiki myself again. I'm doing a test import with the dump from September, and it takes a few days to import, so best case is we would lose a few days of edits. I'm also uncertain how the re-registration of wiki accounts would work. The new wiki would start off with no accounts. wowpedia has a "claim your account" feature, it would be useful to contact them to see how they're doing that and any other thoughts they had about their move.

Also, I see no reason why we would lose our promoted status, the officially supported fansite is wherever we tell CipSoft it is. Once, and if, we made the move, it would be illegal to link to tibia.wikia.com in-game (although I'm sure they wouldn't really ban anyone for linking to it, at least not initially).

--Erig 10:07, October 30, 2010 (UTC)

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About losing promoted status, I double checked and Ogrey said it would be ok, i.e. we wouldn't lose it (but he has to double check this statement). Wowwiki uses this special page. It is listed under their version page with the author foxlit. I couldn't find anything about it via google though.. ^^ Bennie (talk ~ fellows) ^^ 11:08, October 30, 2010 (UTC)

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They're using a similar thing to how erig.net/other fansites confirm Tibia character authenticity.

Great; you may recover your account using this form.

Edit your user page on the old wiki:

Include the following text in the edit summary: "ui8lieXqyT0="

Your last edit's summary is: "(no summary)"

Basically, a unique code in the edit summary of a recent user page edit. Wouldn't be too hard to code, or we could just ask foxlit for it.

--Erig 11:35, October 30, 2010 (UTC)