Minecraft Wiki:Moving from Fandom

This page serves to conclude the discussion which will decide where the Minecraft Wiki will fork to. This discussion will remain open until August 14, 2023.

Overview
A few weeks ago, we started a discussion about whether to fork the Minecraft wiki and which host to go with. The result was a clear consensus that we needed to fork. However, a lot has happened in the meantime and we believe more discussion is warranted. We've received a significant amount of outside coverage from YouTubers and even media articles, which was largely unexpected. We also increased our presence on social media platforms in an effort to expand our outreach with the community. As a result, we got in contact with many people who are very experienced with independent wiki hosting and forking; in particular we received an additional hosting offer from Weird Gloop, the company that hosts the RuneScape Wikis.

We believe that it would be inappropriate to disregard the help and expertise as well as this additional hosting offer that we've received, so we are holding this second discussion to decide which host the Minecraft Wiki will fork to. This is a very important decision for the future of the wiki and needs to be made carefully. Please note that the previous discussion did not go to waste, as it has shown that the support for the fork has been truly abundant and overwhelming. We believe that we have the support of our community and other communities behind us, which is what will allow the fork to succeed.

Please see the first message in this community portal discussion for a detailed list of arguments for why this fork is happening.

Options
There are four hosting options that are being considered.


 * wiki.gg is a wiki farm host run by Freedom Games, a game publisher formed by former Curse/Gamepedia and later Fandom executives and staff, and is hosting gaming wikis such as the Official Terraria Wiki.
 * Bulbagarden hosts multiple wikis such as Bulbapedia and NintendoWiki.
 * ABXY hosts several gaming wikis including Inkipedia (Splatoon), StrategyWiki and Zelda Wiki.
 * RuneScape Wiki hosts itself, the OSRS Wiki, and the RS Classic Wiki.

ABXY, Bulba, and RuneScape Wiki are "semi-independent" hosts, meaning they provide much greater freedom to the wiki with certain aspects such as skin customisation, while a separate entity manages backend tasks such as hosting and finances.

See Minecraft Wiki:Wiki host comparison for a detailed comparison between the various hosts. It's also encouraged to visit wikis hosted by the four host options as linked above, in order to gain a fuller sense of how advertisements are organized, as well as to get a rough idea of how the wikis function under the respective host.


 * Important notes
 * ABXY, Bulbapedia, and RuneScape Wiki allow us to have any skin and visual appearance, with full customization - they do not have a single visual layout. As such, the layout seen on either of the example wikis are not reflective of what a forked Minecraft Wiki would look like.
 * All proposed hosts use MediaWiki as the wiki software.
 * Bulbapedia have offered to host Minecraft wiki separate from Bulbapedia, and as such it would not be part of Bulbagarden. This would be a similar arrangement as they currently have with Nintendo Wiki and F-Zero wiki for example.
 * We are in possession of the  domain, if either ABXY, Bulba, or RuneScape Wiki were to be the chosen host, said domain would be where the wiki would be located.

Any suggestions to be hosted by any host not already considered an option will be refused, this is to prevent the discussion being delayed due to a possible new host, a situation that has already occurred.
 * Further host suggestions
 * Miraheze is not being considered due to it proving itself to be an unstable platform for wikis, as just recently there was a very serious scare of it shutting down and forcing all of its wikis to move elsewhere.
 * WikiTide and Telepedia are not being considered either as they would be unable to host our wiki.
 * Wikidot is not considered as its plans are not enough for us and it does not use MediaWiki, but its proprietary software.
 * Fully independent (the Minecraft Wiki hosting itself completely) is not being considered due to it currently being unrealistic, we do not have the specific people necessary to make this option happen.

Before discussing
Before deciding which host you prefer, we recommend reading the host comparison page, arguments given by other responders, and the arguments given for each host under this section. We also recommend participants join our Discord server for updates.

The final decision will be made purely based on the strength of arguments.

This discussion will stay open for two weeks, meaning it will be closed on August 14, 2023.

For additional comments that do not directly express an argument, such as clarification questions, please use the section or join our Discord server. These would also be the appropriate locations to give a statement on the fork on behalf of a language wiki.

Note that this discussion only applies to the English wiki. Other language wikis do not necessarily have to move with the English wiki; some have opted to remain on Fandom or fork at a later date. According to a Senior Community Manager at Fandom, language wikis that do not fork will be allowed to point their interwikis towards the forked English wiki.

Below are the main discussion sections. Arguments for each host are presented, they exist to persuade and to outline factors of the hosts that cannot be outlined in a neutral point of view on the host comparison page. You must write your responses in the discussion section below the argument for the host you wish to give an opinion on.''

Argument for
ABXY provides all of the key features the Minecraft Wiki would want from a host, that being a very small amount of ads (just one at the top and bottom of the screen), anonymous editing, full skin control, incredibly free extension control, a mobile skin etc. This is to show that ABXY is not lacking in any important departments.

It is important to note that the status of certain factors have changed since the last vote, for example: ABXY saw criticism due to its lack of cookie notice and how logged in users still saw ads, both of these concerns have been remedied, as a sufficient cookie notice has been implemented and logged in users will not see ads by the time the Minecraft Wiki has forked. It has also been expressed by ABXY that it would be unlikely for the amount of ads on the Minecraft Wiki to need to increase, meaning no in article ads would be implemented.

ABXY’s differentiating factor is its history and the large amount of independent wikis it hosts. It has been running for a decade and a half with the sole purpose of hosting independent wikis and is currently hosting eleven wikis, covering a wide variety of games. ABXY would be a secure and safe home for the Minecraft Wiki.

Argument against
ABXY does not currently have global CDN, which may negatively affect the loading times of the wiki. It also would not allow the use of the widgets extension, meaning they would need to be converted into other extensions.

Discussion
Put responses relating to ABXY as a host in this section.

They have experience in wiki hosting, for sure. The only real disadvantage I can think of is that they do not have widgets, but I've heard converting our templates isn't really hard. I like that they allow any skin and we could even install multiple ones. If the ad amounts won't be increased and logged-in users don't have them, it's even better. I don't like ads on websites, so having fewer would be nice. Overall the best option to me, as both a reader and editor. I greatly value being independent, just look at the wikis, no ABXY branding to be seen. Gugalcrom123 (talk) 19:49, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
 * If you are worried about ads, RS has less ads than ABXY does. Also, for the record, ABXY does have a tiny amount of branding seen by the "powered by strategywiki" button at the bottom of the page, similar to RuneScape's "a member of Weird Gloop" at the bottom of their wikis. Neither are very obtrusive though. Ishbosheth (talk) 02:59, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I mean, the ad amount is acceptable, very fine for any site, and there's no branded header like wiki.gg has. Gugalcrom123 (talk) 05:52, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

I personally the move to ABXY. I have been in contact with multiple communuties from forked wikis that have only praised the host. For me, the main avantage over WeirdGloop/RuneScape, the other main option, is the fact basically no technology needs to be changed upon forking. -MetalManiacMc, French Minecraft Wiki Administrator 19:48, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Widgets need to be changed, unlike Bulba, but I've heard it's not that hard. Gugalcrom123 (talk) 05:52, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

ABXY was my previous favorite option in the semi-independent sector, but the lack of a global CDN compared to RuneScape (or even wiki.gg) is a deterrent that I'd like to point out as a non-English user. If there is an opportunity to give a higher quality of service to readers and editors throughout the world, why would we miss that out? — BabylonAS 19:54, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
 * That's something I was worried about but, I tested in Europe the delay is barely noticable. And thanks to the decrease in ads, it actually loads faster than Fandom. -MetalManiacMc, French Minecraft Wiki Administrator 23:30, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Also, images and media (the heaviest parts of a page) do have a global CDN. In Romania, loading a medium-sized page there takes just 1 second. Gugalcrom123 (talk) 05:52, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Both ABXY and RS are very appealing options, but the problem I have with ABXY is not with what it offers (because I like their offer) but with what it doesn't offer. RS offers all that ABXY offers in terms of hosting hardware, but RS also has a lot more people to help with SEO and other extensions. It seems like ABXY is just a slightly worse option. Ishbosheth (talk) 02:59, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * RS would require a quarter of our extensions to be replaced. Gugalcrom123 (talk) 05:52, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Cargo isn't used on english wiki, and the widgets are easy to replace. Erider123 (talk) 06:00, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Argument for
Bulbapedia is a large wiki that has existed for over 18 years, making it the oldest and longest running host available to us. It also has experience hosting non-Pokémon related sites and wikis such as the NintendoWiki. This longevity and experience with hosting is what the Minecraft Wiki needs from its host. Bulbagarden is also very lenient with which extensions it allows; all extensions currently used by the Minecraft Wiki would be allowed to be used, meaning no time would need to be spent converting widgets into extensions, or finding other alternatives to extensions that may not be allowed under other hosts.

Currently, Bulbagarden is at a near zero risk of being bought out by Fandom, which is a real fear for some other hosts, mainly wiki.gg. This is because Fandom has tried to buy out Bulbagarden multiple times in the past, each time these offers have been declined. Therefore, while Archaic (the current head of Bulbagarden) is the head of Bulbagarden, the Minecraft Wiki would have zero worry of being forced to return to Fandom.

Bulbagarden are also incredibly serious operators that will give us invaluable advice about limiting liability.

Argument against
Bulbapedia does not allow anonymous editing, while the decrease in vandalism due to this is welcome, vandalism is not difficult to deal with. The activity increase provided by anonymous editing, as it lowers the barrier of entry for editors, is very valuable to us.

Discussion
Put responses relating to Bulba as a host in this section.

Good second option after ABXY. They do offer widgets as a bonus, which is nice. They have many ads, but they're disabled by logging in so it's not an issue, at least to me. As independent, if not more, than ABXY. I'm not too sure about the reported frequent downtimes, though. Gugalcrom123 (talk) 19:49, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Saying "There are ads but they don't affect me" is pretty weak argumentation imo. We should be considering what is best for everyone, not just the editors. Ishbosheth (talk) 02:59, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't understand why widgets are a bonus. The extension is such a security risk that there is literally a warning box on top of its MediaWiki article. Currently our widget usages can be easily replaced by extensions like EmbededVideo and TemplateStyles, so I don't think there's any problem for us to get rid of them once and for all. --  Dianliang233   T • C  https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/zhwikia/images/c/c5/PVT_wordmark.png/revision/latest/scale-to-height-down/16 11:54, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Idk how to add comments, so feel free to move this comment around if its wrong. Note this isnt meant to be a reply to any above comments. Anyway, I like the idea of it joining Bulba, but it should be a branch so that they dont have to rebrand, yknow? also Sandboxels wiki moved to wiki.gg and the old wiki is still available to edit just for fun, so i think we should do that. -Finnodile. #DemoteHydro
 * -moved here from additional comments section :) Ishbosheth (talk) 03:20, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

If we are going to try and beat fandom's SEO, I believe that we are going to need a more aggressive approach than Bulba. While this option isn't strictly bad, this offer lacks in several areas that other offers cover, and it does not provide any particularly unique advantages to offset those things. Namely, Bulba lacks in SEO support and it does not allow anon editing. Not to mention that it's example wiki's have much worse levels of ads compared to the other options. Ishbosheth (talk) 02:59, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Argument for
In terms of tech infra, RuneScape Wiki is the fastest and most reliable. They are the most transparent about infrastructure, funding, and business operations. They have the most mature global caching and CDN based on Cloudflare, guaranteeing fast access worldwide. They document their choice for cloud VM, the reason behind the choice, and the testings they do to keep it performant while economic in great detail. Their system admins, who are hired full-time, can provide support with both wiki customization and server. They also have experience setting up the type of corporate structure that will prove useful to the Minecraft Wiki.

They currently only have one ad, and it's the least obstructive among all (it's below the fold, i.e. you have to scroll for it). For editors, there are no ads. If you're in the EU, there are no ads, because of that, cookie banners are not needed. They keep their books open, proving their financial stability. If no more revenue is generated from today, they have enough funds to keep the site up for at least 6 months, but they have space not yet used to increase services and funding.

The RuneScape Wiki has had great success beating Fandom's SEO, being the most successful forked wiki off of fandom, and are greatly familiar with the process we are going through. Their help would be invaluable to us if we wish to succeed in the SEO battle against Fandom.

Argument against
The RuneScape Wiki is the strictest with which extensions it would allow, meaning multiple extensions currently used by the Minecraft Wiki would need to be replaced.

Discussion
Put responses relating to the RuneScape Wiki as a host in this section.

I find RuneScape Wiki to be a very obvious choice for a host. As the "argument for" says, their expertise and knowledge in a large amount of factors (SEO, setting up a legal entity, etc.) will be immensely invaluable to us. If we choose RuneScape Wiki, I think beating Fandom's in the SEO battle in a relatively good amount of time is very possible. Why is that? RSW's fork was very successful, they beat Fandom in the SEO battle, they gained knowledge from that fork that they didn't even possess when it was happening. With their help, I truly believe we can have a fork as successful as theirs.

As for other factors, like the stuff laid out on the host comparison page, RSW has every single thing we'd want: global CDN, anon editing, allowing language wikis, allowing a custom domain, complete control over the skin, etc etc. One very important thing to note is the almost non-existent ads. One ad is placed below the fold (meaning you have to scroll to even see it), this ad isn't shown to mobile users, and is not shown in the EU. It isn't shown in the EU, because that means that no cookie notice is required, meaning the Minecraft Wiki would not have a cookie notice and it would not be a concern.

The one single negative, is that they're quite strict with what extensions are allowed. However they clearly communicate why they're not allowed, and all extensions that are not allowed can be replaced, and RSW will be the ones doing the bulk of the work to replace them. So I barely consider this a negative.

Overall, I think the choice is clear. I greatly support the Minecraft Wiki being hosted by the RuneScape Wiki. -   Harristic   |  Talk |  Contributions  18:37, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

. Out of semi-independent options, RuneScape Wiki is the way to go.

As a person not from the European Union, I'd still say that a cookie notice (and the ability to choose cookies) would still be a good thing to have.

With Widgets not being an option with RSW (or ABXY for that matter), I'd suggest starting testing replacements for widgets if they're already available on Fandom (but not implement them right away, as this way both Fandom and RSW/ABXY versions of MCW would use the same technology, probably impacting SEO). However, the single greatest offender on the extensions front is Cargo, used for crafting recipes and the like on some language versions of MCW. The English wiki doesn't use Cargo, while the language wikis won't be forked right away, meaning that before those would convert to the RSW-approved altenative that is Semantic MediaWiki, we could perhaps make it running here and come up with designs and ideas that might be used later by other language wikis. — BabylonAS 19:09, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm all in for good SEO, but 1/4 of our important extensions would need to be disabled. Also, they only host RuneScape wikis currently, which I do not like as it does not show that they have experience maintaining external wikis. Multiple skins would help to customise the experience. I do not like the crippled skin they have on the RS wikis. And no widgets either. My third choice, I do not prefer it but it's much better than wiki.gg. Gugalcrom123 (talk) 19:49, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
 * It should be noted that the extensions that need to be changed have alternatives, and the reasoning behind the forbidden extensions relate to security and best practice. It isn't unimaginable that we would have to change some of our extensions at another host down the line. In addition, RS has offered to help and has expertise with converting extensions to their new alternatives, so the amount of work put on us would not be as significant as you claim. As for the skin, we can choose whatever skin we would like, just like on ABXY or Bulba. Ishbosheth (talk) 02:59, 1 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Those extensions would be replaced for good reason, whether that be security concerns or the fact that the extension will literally break in the near future. And RSW would be the ones replacing the extensions, with some help from us. Also I don’t think RSW only hosting RS wikis is a negative, they’ve shown immense competence and experience hosting wikis and that’s what is important. Also do you care to explain whatever you mean by the skin being “crippled”? -   Harristic   |  Talk |  Contributions  20:12, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

I think Harristic put things very nicely, so I won't belabor the point. RuneScape has everything we want, and there are practically no downsides. Cook's advice has already proved invaluable so far - and the battle for SEO will be harder than most people here seem to think. RS gives us the absolute best chance for beating fandom, and we should absolutely take everything we can get. I'll also mention since this seems to have been missed in the fast-paced discord discussions, but going with a semi-independent option where we own the domain would allow ZH and LZH to potentially get an ICP liscense which would allow us to use CDN nodes in China (This would allow much better access speed in China + better SEO on the Baidu search engine). Combined with RS's already impressive CDN setup, this would be HUGE for non-en wikis. We would be able to provide high quality content for ALL languages, not just EN. RS provides the best place for all of our wikis, if they would like to join us. Ishbosheth (talk) 02:59, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

As already mentioned by harristic, RSW seems to have the best bits of everything with seemingly zero downsides. White it is very similar to ABXY and Bulba garden, it still has better services and performance. To keep short, this would be my top pick.

Argument for
While wiki.gg may have been launched very recently—in March 2022—the employees have had experiences with wikis years prior to wiki.gg. Also, wiki.gg hosts a large amount of former Gamepedia wikis, though it also includes some wikis for games they publish, wikis for their partners and wikis from Miraheze. There are currently more than 200 wikis, notable ones being Terraria Wiki and ARK Wiki. There are also two Minecraft related wikis - Aether Wiki and Minecraft Discontinued Features Wiki.

When it comes to benefits, wiki.gg only shows ads for games their parent company (Freedom Games) publishes or game studios they are partnered with (have wikis on wiki.gg, e.g. Re-Logic's Terraria). Due to this ad model, there is literally never a concern about "bad ads", which is something to worry about with all other hosts. Currently, there are three places - header, footer and right sidebar. Furthermore, it allows anonymous editing, there is a customization control, nearly free extension control (they allow the majority of extensions), have good loading times and stability.

And while wiki.gg has no dedicated mobile skin (MinervaNeue), it uses highly customizable Vector 2010 skin, which bears resemblance to the Hydra skin we've used back on Gamepedia with similar structure. wiki.gg wikis have shown me the true power of Vector 2010 and how you can make amazing mobile interfaces without the need for a mobile skin.

Other notable things to mention are a very gentle onboarding experience, a theme toggler extension, great community support, and much more freedom than Fandom provides.

Argument against
As wiki.gg is a wiki farm it would provides less freedom to the Minecraft Wiki in terms of control than all other hosts would. Under wiki.gg, the Minecraft Wiki would be located at the  domain, meaning leaving the platform would be incredibly difficult as we'd have to start from scratch in terms of the SEO battle. Additionally, since Gamepedia was sold to Fandom, there are worries that wiki.gg could be bought by Fandom in a similar manner.

wiki.gg also does not have an official mobile skin, and the desktop skin is limited to Vector 2010.

Discussion
Put responses relating to wiki.gg as a host in this section.

I find it hard to see any significant positives to wiki.gg that make it worth supporting over other options, especially considering it is a wiki farm. We'd be needlessly limiting ourselves, slapping a brand on our wiki, and making it much harder for ourselves if we ever chose to leave the site due us being forced to use the  domain. When comparatively with any of the other options we are granted more freedom, have no branding on our wiki, and it'd be easy to transition to another non wiki farm host if we wanted to because we'd have a custom domain that we own, that being. -   Harristic   |  Talk |  Contributions  18:56, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm not comfortable with it. Worst choice to me. Not only could they get acquired by fandom, but even if they don't, something could happen, but we won't be allowed to fork. I personally don't like the idea of only customising a skin using CSS. Having multiple skins available could help with editor customisation choices. The ads aren't very nice either (ABXY and RS Wiki have fewer), they're uninteresting to me, and there's this wiki.gg header that could also become mustard yellow and pink, stuck to the left and showing ads one day. Gugalcrom123 (talk) 19:49, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

My experiences with wiki.gg are limited to Terraria Wiki only, and they're not as extensive to objectively support or discourage wiki.gg as the hosting option. As I've learned on Discord, Terraria Wiki didn't have a choice of multiple alternative hosts like we have, it was Re-Logic's decision first of all, and I think that wiki's community agreed so long as it meant getting off Fandom. I've only voted wiki.gg as rank 1 in a later comment in the original vote simply because I somehow wanted to have one single option instead of the umbrella "wiki.gg, ABXY or any other decent hoster", and while I've only had symbolic experience with wiki.gg, with other hosts I've had none, precluding from any objective opinion back then. But now, looking back, I can understand why many editors are preferring other options than wiki.gg. — BabylonAS 19:34, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

My main concern with wiki.gg is still around their business model of only getting revenue from sales of their own games. The ads for these games don't directly contribute to revenue aside from creating more exposure for these games, and they don't get revenue from the few 3rd-party ads that they show. While there's incentive in increasing wiki traffic to increase visibility and click-throughs, this relies on constantly having new games and new users to drive revenue, as no matter how many ads a user sees they will only create revenue once for each game purchase they make. – Sonicwave talk  20:15, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

My concern with wiki.gg is quite simple: like Fandom, it's a wiki farm. I personally am not familiar with any one of these proposals, so I don't have a lot to say on them. TheTrubbleMushroom (talk) 23:59, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

for moving to wiki.gg. While the downsides of the other host options are not necessarily dealbreakers, they could be detrimental; wiki.gg's CDN, allowed extensions, and experience with many different wikis are definite positives. If, for whatever reason, the wiki needed to move from wiki.gg to another host at some point, I assume wiki.gg would accommodate that (the fork would inherit the Fandom wiki's licensing), and that's not something we really need to be worried about at this very moment. I think it isn't super likely that wiki.gg will be acquired by Fandom any time soon, or at all; Fandom could end up acquiring any host, but again, that's not necessarily the main thing to be concerned about right now. wiki.gg staff have explained in their Discord server how the platform is funded, and it seems to be working for them. Customization and support are also great, and in my experience, wiki.gg provides enough control and freedom, even if some things need to be requested first. SEO will be an issue for a bit, regardless of the host chosen. For all of this, I'm just speaking based on my understanding/experience; I read the Minecraft Wiki when it was on Gamepedia, and that was a wiki farm too; wiki.gg is similar and provides a good framework. HaiFire3344 (talk) 01:45, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * "If, for whatever reason, the wiki needed to move from wiki.gg to another host at some point, I assume wiki.gg would accommodate that"
 * why would you assume this? – Unsigned comment added by Erider123 (talk • contribs) at 02:20, 1 August 2023 (UTC). Sign comments with
 * Because of the CC BY-NC-SA license. wiki.gg doesn't currently have a Forking Policy akin to that of Fandom. HaiFire3344 (talk) 01:50, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Not sure why their usage of CC BY-NC-SA license indicates that they would take down their version of the wiki/be accommodating to a fork. Erider123 (talk) 02:03, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Regardless of whether they close their version of the wiki, the CC BY-NC-SA license means that wiki material can be copied and redistributed. Such freedoms cannot be revoked. HaiFire3344 (talk) 02:06, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * ...letting people reproduce their elsewhere (which is a legal requirement of the Creative Commons license, and not something wiki.gg can opt in or out of) is the absolute bare minimum by law, and it is also the bare minimum standard that Fandom meets. Not sure why you would describe that as "accommodating" a future fork, as nobody in their right mind would describe Fandom as accommodating forks either. Erider123 (talk) 02:12, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I was using "accommodate" in a very basic/loose sense, but I just received confirmation from a wiki.gg staff member that they would most likely close a wiki that has migrated. HaiFire3344 (talk) 02:16, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * That's the best they can do? "most likely"? No thanks. Erider123 (talk) 02:20, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * The staff member stated that wiki.gg does not benefit from trying to compete with a fork using the old, dead wiki. Also, "most likely" is still miles better than Fandom's policy, and could mean anything, including reasonable possibilities. HaiFire3344 (talk) 02:24, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * That's naive, they are a for-profit company trying to maximize revenue. Of course they benefit from competing with a fork. It is better than Fandom's policy but far worse than the other options available. Erider123 (talk) 02:28, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Do you seriously think Fandom benefits from leaving wikis up that are outdated, vandalized, and possibly had all their pages blanked/locked/deleted by forking staff members who ignored the Forking Policy, which readers would find and probably quickly leave because they see the state the old wiki is in? Even if Fandom just barely benefits from those, wiki.gg would probably benefit even less from handling things in such a way. The exceptions to the "most likely" would probably be very rare, and would assumably only happen due to very specific circumstances, if I had to guess. wiki.gg makes money from ads for first-party games, and it has been stated that they are not raking in money the way Fandom does, just making a sufficient amount to avoid going out of business. I'm pretty sure most hosts need money to survive anyways. HaiFire3344 (talk) 02:34, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * You have a very wrong perception about how both of these companies operate. Yes, Fandom benefits greatly from leaving these outdated forked wikis around, because they generate stupid amounts of ad revenue. Terraria, Zelda, POE are each generating them many tens of thousands of dollars a month (in Terraria's case, maybe six figures) because they still are where readers go for the content. Saying that Fandom "barely" benefits from these wikis is weird (and obviously wrong, because otherwise they would be willing to shut them down).
 * Your description of wiki.gg as some scrappy company trying to make enough money to stay afloat is also wrong, because they just took 10 million dollars of venture capital seed funding. Those are not the actions of a company trying to scrape by, and it should scare anyone who naively thinks they will be on your side forever. Erider123 (talk) 02:47, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I was mainly referring to the less popular forked Fandom wikis that people aren't really editing anymore, if at all, which there are a number of. If wikis in that particular subset of the forked wikis only barely get a few editors every so often, forked wikis that wiki.gg might leave up would probably be even more dead, and again, they would most likely close forked wikis anyway. If wiki.gg is not struggling, that wouldn't be a bad thing for a potential wiki.gg Minecraft Wiki. I can't imagine wiki.gg is the only wiki host that is trying to make money. HaiFire3344 (talk) 02:53, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * The concern about whether the wiki will be closed or not is largely irrelevant. The worst thing about a potential move from wiki.gg is the horrible detriment to SEO that would occur. We would have to build up SEO against fandom from the ground up again, and that isn't something easily done in that situation. Ishbosheth (talk) 02:56, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Wiki.gg had the largest support from the first vote, but the more I've learned about that option the more concerned I get for the far future of the wiki. To be clear, the popularity of .gg is nothing to be scoffed at, and going with this option would probably make it easier to get to #2 on search results. However, the SEO benefit from the wiki farm is, in my opinion, not that important because getting to #2 in search results seems like a very attainable goal for every host with the support we have received. In fact, I believe that we can eventually win the SEO war completely, especially with the guidance of people like Cook from the RS hosting option. With wiki.gg, we are forced into using their domain. If they are bought out by random or their unique ad situation fails them, we will have lost all our SEO efforts and have to start anew. With wiki.gg we are more limited in the way we can display and organize the wiki (I'm talking about skins and extensions). Why should we settle for this when other options are available? I believe the main reason .gg was so attractive on the first vote was because of brand recognition, but brand recognition only helps us in what, the first few months - a year tops? Then it only really hurts us or is at best neutral. We have the support of the community and should make our own brand. While the near future of the fork is very important to do right, we also need to think long term about where we want to be. I don't believe wiki.gg is a step in the right direction. There are some pretty major downsides to .gg and the benefits are not that great. We have better options available. Ishbosheth (talk) 02:59, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

While Wiki.GG was my original option, I no longer see this as a good choice. I still like wiki.gg a lot, but I realize the need for full control/independence like the other three hosts are offering, is necessary. Since wiki.gg is in it's own category of being the only wiki farm considered, I would not rank it "last" but just not what we need, compared to others.IiConsumed (talk) 03:13, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

I will be somewhat harsh in words. I really don't understand why some people are scared by the possibility that wiki.gg (or Freedom Games in its entirety) will be bought out by Fandom. After all, this can happen with any host. What scares me is the abundance of advertising on Bulba, which does not load for me (but there is an area for advertising), like Fandom. It doesn't load on Fandom because of Google, ads from Google are disabled in Russia due to the extreme degree of aggressive political content, but it still appears periodically. Similarly, ads on ABXY are not loaded. On wiki.gg, ads don't get in the way of reading, nor do they suffer from political issues. On Rusescape I don't see it at all, not even areas for them, it's weird how they even exist? Of course, it is indicated that it is, but I still do not see it. Moreover, in principle, it was possible to immediately single out the winner as wiki.gg, but I assume that those who essentially have to take the final step do not like wiki.gg (for objective reasons or not, it does not matter at all). In my opinion, there is enough freedom there, we still provide content, not a wrapper from it. The main thing is that it is convenient to read and edit (which cannot be said about Fandom :) ). Speaking about editorial experience, I can only speak about wiki.gg. The first time after the launch, there were significant problems: intermittent platform crashes, long editing loading times, and other even funny problems (the namespace "Terraria Wiki" for some reason at some point for a while became known as "MediaWiki"). Very similar to Gamepedia, nastolgia :). Now there are no such problems. To fight for SEO, you can do the same as on the Terraria Wiki, namely, make the templates internationalized + CargoTables. This will be very handy for small language wikis, where users are not good at wiki code, and the amount of template code is intimidating. Of course, this will need to be done after the move, not before. Regarding the url, wiki.gg will be very similar to, just add   :). In general, it seems to me that few people look at the domain. I think there is little point in a special domain. — MakandIv (кортамс|сатовск) 08:34, 1 August 2023 (UTC)


 * You do not understand why being at the  domain is a bad thing. It is not about looks, it’s about the fact that if we ever forked from wiki.gg, we’d have to get a new domain. We’d have to have the SEO battle all over again, doing it once is an immense struggle, doing it twice sounds like a death sentence. No wikis have forked from wiki.gg yet, because you are essentially stuck there, so we don’t know if they’d keep the old wiki if we forked from them. Haifire said above that wiki.gg staff said they’d “most likely” not keep the old wiki around, that is not reassuring at all. If we go to wiki.gg, we are stuck at a platform that is mediocre compared to our other options. -   Harristic   |  Talk  |  Contributions  11:30, 1 August 2023 (UTC)


 * It's still worth keeping in mind that any scenario where a potential wiki.gg Minecraft Wiki would have to move from wiki.gg is hypothetical at best and would probably only be something to seriously consider after many years of being on the platform, presumably being prompted by some thing that we can't really speculate on at this moment. It's been established that wiki.gg is not struggling, and shows no signs of looking to be bought out by anyone in the foreseeable future, so those should probably not be concerns for potential reasons a wiki.gg Minecraft Wiki would have to leave wiki.gg. wiki.gg also offers basically everything important that the Minecraft Wiki needs in some form (including widgets and other extensions), and the fact that users may already have an account for other wikis on the platform could be seen as a minor benefit. Since we have not seen a wiki migrate away from wiki.gg thus far, I see little reason to speculate about how wiki.gg might handle forks in ways that would be detrimental to forking wikis, especially so early on. The wiki.gg staff member's response does not sound super concerning to me, as even if MCW did have to move from wiki.gg, I doubt it would be within wiki.gg's interests to compete with both a new fork and another dead Fandom wiki; at the size wiki.gg is at compared to Fandom, I assume the abandoned wiki.gg wiki would be completely dead, considering the state we've seen some abandoned Fandom wikis in at least, so they may as well close it. That way, the second fork would have a good chance to start improving its SEO.  can redirect to the wiki.gg wiki, so if the hypothetical wiki.gg MCW ever does go (semi-)independent, it's very easy to find by just removing the , which people may do anyway. And who knows, maybe wiki.gg will even support custom domains at some point in the future. I also don't see how wikis are "stuck" at wiki.gg. HaiFire3344 (talk) 15:17, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * If we have to fork from a semi-independent option we won't have to "start improving its SEO" at all - it will keep all of it since the domain is the same. Losing the domain means a fight against fandom's SEO, which as we have established is very hard to fight. None of our hosts put us in danger of forking again for the foreseeable future, yes, but wiki.gg gives us the least security if that did have to happen. And yes, .gg gives us pretty much everything we would need for a wiki. But so do all the other options, and some of them (like RS) even offer more or better than wiki.gg. Ishbosheth (talk) 16:10, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * That's fair, but why would MCW lose its domain? By the time a hypothetical migration away from wiki.gg (or any host, for that matter) might possibly need to happen, I'm not sure Fandom's SEO would be the main thing we'd have to worry about, since many things will have likely changed between the different versions of the wiki. Also, RS would require replacing multiple extensions, and while I understand RS can help with much of the work needed to replace them, that's still more work that generally has to be done compared to, say, wiki.gg. Non-English wikis also have to be considered here, as it appears they will need Semantic MediaWiki, which could require additional testing phases. While it's not a huge deal, the forking process shouldn't have to be delayed or complicated if it can be helped (EN wiki alone has 8,899 pages). wiki.gg has had experience hosting non-English language variants and wikis about a variety of gaming topics over the years (or year if you only count the time wiki.gg itself has existed). I'm assuming RS is just, well, RuneScape? Possibly not the best for a wiki about Minecraft. HaiFire3344 (talk) 17:12, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Do I understand correctly that the fear of problems with a possible fork in the future repels the most? I've already pointed out that I'm pretty much put off by the presence of Google ads (I'm not sure if that's the case, but everything says that or something like that). Also, the policy on forks on other hosting can also change. Fandom or someone else will buy them and that's it, again the same situation. Same for wiki.gg. What you cite as a negative factor for moving to wiki.gg can be cited for other hosts as well. Or am I wrong? — MakandIv (кортамс|сатовск) 18:18, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * wiki.gg only has in-house ads for first-party games and partners, so unlike other hosts, there is no need to worry about potentially problematic ads. Indeed, Fandom could acquire any wiki host, so it's not a concern that's exclusive to wiki.gg. I'm not super familiar with how semi-independent hosting works, but I imagine other things could change for the worse on any host as well, including policy changes and other platform issues. As such, yes, the fact that forking again would be difficult is a problem that we could have with any host. HaiFire3344 (talk) 18:37, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

I can not deny that wiki.gg as platform is fine overall, but we are choosing a host and there are competing options. wiki.gg might be okay, but 1) whatever they can offer us, other hosts can offer us that too and 2) their level of freedom is not preferable. We can set up a company, contract the other hosts, and add some terms to prevent them from selling us out and provide us the option to go fully independent in case things go out of control. However that is impossible to achieve on wiki.gg. --  Dianliang233   T • C  https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/zhwikia/images/c/c5/PVT_wordmark.png/revision/latest/scale-to-height-down/16 12:05, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * 1) Well, some extensions will have to be abandoned, this is a small problem, but still it already says that they do not offer absolutely equal opportunities.
 * 2) However, it is mentioned many times that wiki.gg is a wiki farm, and the rest are semi-independent, which can be understood as freedom of action in managing the wiki. I’m just scared by the fact that hosting on ABXY, Bulba and RuneScape can get out of control with a big chance, although I can’t say for sure, since I don’t know the number of wikis located on these hosts, but considering Bulba and RuneScape, we can say that they have mostly wikis on a certain topic (Bulba - about Pokemon, RuneScape - about RuneScape, including OSRS and RS Classic) and I don’t think that there are more than 20 of them. At a minimum, I’m afraid that MCW will be like an eyesore for hosts. Yes, they offered to stay with them, but in the future the situation may change radically. Wiki.gg has clearly set the tone for hosting any game wiki. Yes, the situation can change there too, even at any moment. But what's the difference? I don't think MCW would be in a better position to repeat the fork situation on other hosts than if it happened on wiki.gg. Besides, why should we even think about it, we cannot assume problems on other hosts in some indefinite future. I have more negative thoughts about this, that we are going somewhere into the wilds. — MakandIv (кортамс|сатовск) 18:18, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * wiki.gg seems to have the most confirmed supported extensions, according to Minecraft Wiki:Wiki host comparison. I agree that the current scopes of the semi-independent hosts are something to be concerned about; who knows what MCW could be getting itself into if things change, although the same could possibly also be said about wiki.gg. Indeed, I think it's best not to speculate too much on possible future problems, since they're mostly vague and could happen with any host. HaiFire3344 (talk) 18:37, 1 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Indeed you are correct, these speculations about the semi-independent hosts are incredibly vague and hold no weight. ABXY and Bulba host multiple different game wikis, and RuneScape Wiki hosts four RuneScape Wikis, they have done this so successfully that I don’t think “they only host wikis for one game” is actually at all relevant. We want an experienced host, all of these hosts are experienced with hosting wikis. Wiki.gg is a Wiki Farm, so it hosts every single gaming wiki that it can with no consideration for quality, whereas the semi-independent hosts choose which wikis they want to host. And again, it’s not a good thing that every single extension ever is allowed, considering some have security issues, or will be broken in the future. It is actually a good thing that RSW is saying “we aren’t going to let you use PortableInfobox forever” because that extension will break in the future, we have to remove/replace it no matter where we go. -   Harristic   |  Talk |  Contributions  20:12, 1 August 2023 (UTC)


 * ”I’m just scared by the fact that hosting on ABXY, Bulba and RuneScape can get out of control with a big chance” please explain what you mean by this, because right now it is baseless speculation with no explanation at all, it is also incredibly vague, what does “out of control” even mean here?


 * About the extensions, yes it is a small problem, and I’m not sure why you’re talking about “equal opportunities” when wiki.gg is the most limiting. No, just because we are being warned about problems with some extensions, and having them changed, does not mean we have less opportunities.


 * Being worried about the amount of wikis the host hosts, when we already know the host is perfectly competent and has tons of experience, is strange to me. Are we really valuing quantity over quality? Also no idea what you mean by “at a minimum, I’m worried MCW will be like an eyesore to hosts”, the previous and latter sentence don’t seem to connect to this strange claim at all. -   Harristic   |  Talk |  Contributions  20:12, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Additional comments
''This section is for additional discussion separate from the main discussion about deciding the wiki's host. See also the previous discussion on the community portal.''

[...] Telepedia are not being considered either as they would be unable to host our wiki., just following up on this, as the one who runs Telepedia — what was the rationale for assuming that Telepedia would be 'unable to host' Minecraft Wiki? -- <span style="font-family: Rubik; background:linear-gradient(90deg, purple, purple) repeat-x 0 0.7em; background-size: 2px 8px;"> Original Authority  <font style="background:linear-gradient(90deg, purple, purple) repeat-x 0 0.7em; background-size: 2px 8px;"> [talk] 18:29, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure of any official reasoning, but essentially we weren't given an offer. That quote was put there in order to prevent further offers or other editors from bringing it up, since we've already had to delay discussions for new offers. And, in my opinion, it would be very difficult to beat the offers we already have. Ishbosheth (talk) 02:59, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Some of the "arguments for and against" paragraphs in the host descriptions seem biased to me. For example, I don't think anyone here is competent to gauge the likelihood that Fandom or some other company might try to purchase the host. I also have no idea what "tech infra" in the Runsescape Wiki "for" arguments might be, and wonder if it wasn't reaching for something to praise. There are a few other examples of what I mean. I think these paragraphs should be limited to observable facts, with speculations relegated to the Discussion sections where the author can attempt to persuade us. But I hesitate to remove what I see as bias without concurrence from others. — Auldrick (talk &middot; contribs) 19:30, 31 July 2023 (UTC)


 * The only argument that estimates a likelihood that a host is bought is Bulba, and there is a clear argument for why that estimation is made, so it is justified. The only other example is in the argument against wiki.gg, that says people are worried about it getting bought. This is also true, people are in fact very worried, the most worried out of any host.


 * You could say it’s biased, I imagine it comes across that way since they exist to persuade and are written in opinionated manners, but everything said is factual or backed up by facts. Also if your argument about the tech infra thing is that you just don’t know what it is, that’s not a claim to say it’s biased. -   Harristic   |  Talk |  Contributions  20:02, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Why can't we just stay here? I'm worried I won't be able to find this wiki again once it has been moved. Slimy (talk) 23:51, 31 July 2023 (UTC)


 * I'm sure that they'll post the link to the new host here once they have moved. Also, some of the reasons the wiki is leaving FANDOM are ads covering content, the incident on the McDonald's wiki, limited control of the wiki skin, and more. Minermatt122514 (talk) 00:39, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Has anyone discussed the idea of becoming independent from a host entirely? I mean, this would be a big challenge, and would require talented programmers and donations, but just throwing it out there. Jubean (talk) 04:53, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * EDIT: Nevermind, found this discussed earlier in this article lol Jubean (talk) 05:01, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

How do I stop getting notifications about this? TheTrubbleMushroom (talk) 19:38, 1 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Not sure why you would be getting notifications, but check your notification settings and turn off what you don't want.IiConsumed (talk) 19:53, 1 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Click on the three dots next to the edit button or go to Special:Watchlist to unwatch the page, and go to Special:Preferences > Watchlist and disable "Add pages and files I edit to my watchlist". – Sonicwave talk  20:01, 1 August 2023 (UTC)