Forum:Proposal to Fork to Yugipedia

Proposal to Fork from the FANDOM owned Wikia to a new YGOrganization Operated

YUGIPEDIA

Intro
Around 5 years ago, the idea to fork the Yu-Gi-Oh! Wiki was discussed on this very forum. The initial decision back then, was that the community were against it. This thread will be used to discuss those events and why this idea is a lot better now.

In the time since then, Wikia has rebranded itself as FANDOM, which is representative of the changes we've seen so far: ads taking over the entire screen, autoplaying videos, and mandatory Fandom junk at the bottom of every single page.

What are we proposing? The wiki should 'fork' over to different ownership at a different url, in order to shed itself of the current wiki design practices that the admins here have no final say on. A new wiki would be created, copying all of the content that currently exists on this wiki. For better or for worse, the wiki at yugioh.wikia.com would continue to exist alongside it, since Fandom refuses (virtually always) to close a wiki after it has conducted a 'wiki fork'. As a result, the Fandom's YGO wiki would retain a big advantage over us in many ways. Fandom's SEO would remain high for a long time, which would be difficult for the new wiki to override. We would also expect to have rather low numbers in terms of views compared to the current wiki, at least initially.

However, YGOrganization would be in support of the new wiki, linking to it from their articles. The new wiki would continue its affiliation with The Organization and the use of their translations. I cannot speak as to what the existing wiki would do in regards to that. I fully intend to work with the admins, and never mandate or force any decisions through on the platform. I recognize that no one person knows what's best for a community this size for a game this size, and that nobody is as passionate about this game and its anime as you guys. Our biggest goal is making the wiki not only a bearable experience on mobile, but as enjoyable an experience as the PC version of the site. The problem with mobile is that Fandom gives you guys absolutely no ability to customize it. No CSS, no JS, nothing. This would not be true on our proposed fork, Yugipedia.

The relationship between the Wiki and the Org has always been great. It’s also been rather one sided. Some stats from the week of December 15th to 22nd: Sent TO wikia via 623,473 views: 6975 Received FROM wikia via 5,557,400 views:983

Every week I receive complaints about the wiki in one way or another. They are not only common, they're diverse in their context. The admins of this wiki can attest to me being the only person in the admin channel of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia Discord server as a consult specifically for both the quality and quantity of the feedback and ideas I give to them on a regular basis.

As already implied, this fork is not going to happen without community support. Several administrators are currently in support of the fork, so they'll go ahead and discuss that for themselves in this thread. We're hoping to listen to and work with the members of this passionate community, so make your voices heard here. I will attempt to answer any questions as best I can myself as well.

Pros

 * More control over ads; no video ads
 * Other skins
 * Full support of the Organization
 * More control over back-end things
 * Will be unaffected by any further changes Wikia/Fandom makes.
 * Mobile experience both existent and useful
 * A primary focus on content rather than revenue, prioritizing the user experience instead of income. Maximized effort to ensure something like this doesn’t happen

Cons

 * Loss of viewership by virtue of Wikia's SEO
 * Loss of any users who do not choose to contribute to the forked wiki
 * No direct support from Wikia. We would have a team in place for such issues on the new wiki, but Wikia has a good track record of helping us here, make no mistake