User:Dianliang233/sandbox/Second Discussion

This page serves the purpose of hopefully concluding the discussion which will decide where the Minecraft Wiki will fork to.

Why a second vote?
A lot has happened during the past few weeks, with the majority of it happening on our Discord server.

We've interacted with our community via social media and were able to expand our contacts with very experienced people in the field of MediaWiki forking. There's even been media coverage. As we went deeper, a couple of things became obvious to us:


 * We should leave Fandom. 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.
 * We did not explore all possible options beforehand, or maybe it's the vote's publicity that brought us a potentially very attractive option. This new offer came from Weird Gloop, the company that hosts the RuneScape Wikis. Great people have reached out to us, trying to make sure we choose best. It would be inappropriate for us to reject that help.

What has been said in the votes page isn't wasted because primarily we wanted discussion – arguments in support. It wasn't supposed to be a simple majority vote.

Good decisions can't be rushed. So we ask all of you this: please give a chance to properly consider our all options again, carefully. Learn the advantages of each host and don’t speak based on prejudice and familiarity, but rather stay well-informed and give every option a thought.

Unlike the last one, this discussion is not a vote where the winner will be our decision. We hope to come to a consensus about who we collectively feel is the best option, and go from there, solving this problem once and for all.

Options
We have deemed that we should focus on the following 4 options:


 * wiki.gg is a wiki farm 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 is a platform that hosts the Pokémon wiki project, Bulbapedia, as well as its forums and the Bulbanews project.
 * ABXY is the host of several gaming wikis including Inkipedia (Splatoon), StrategyWiki and Zelda Wiki.
 * Weird Gloop operates the RuneScape wikis, including the official RuneScape Wiki, the OSRS Wiki, the RS Classic Wiki.

We have ruled out these two options:


 * Fandom: Due to overwhelming support, it is certain that this wiki will proceed with the fork. Therefore, Fandom is excluded from this round of discussion.
 * Self-hosting/Fully Independent: Many in the past have expressed that their most preferred option is to go independent. We now have input from professionals, but staffing, financing, tech support and structure are still big unknowns. Given the risks, we determined on Discord that self-hosting is not a viable option.

In order to prevent another discussion, we will be refusing any further proposals for hosting.

We request that all editors give a technical opinion on which host would best suit the MCW. The editors on Discord have been working tirelessly over the past two weeks to organize information, communicate with potential hosting sites, and gather as much information about them, so we can make an informed decision when the time comes to migrate.

Before getting started
Before participating, please read the pages above. this page details the many differences between the four hosting options available,and it is essential to read if you wish to decide where you think the Minecraft Wiki should fork to

In the section below, please rank each host option from in order of preference and give your reasoning in the format shown below:
 * 1) Rank #1 – ~
 * 1) Rank #1 – ~

You may also rank multiple options equally or leave out options.

However, we are only using this voting format for easy organization.

For additional comments that do not directly express a vote, such as clarification questions, please use the section or join our Discord server.

This discussion will be closed 5 days from the discussion's start date, on July 24, 2023. If the discussion still has active participants near the end of these two weeks, the duration of the discussion will be extended by two days, closing on July 31, 2023 instead.

There are four alternative options that are being considered. One is wiki.gg, a wiki farm run by former Gamepedia staff members hosting some gaming wikis such as Terraria. There are also two semi-independent hosts: the host of Bulbapedia/Bulbagarden, and ABXY (host of several wikis including Inkipedia, StrategyWiki and Zelda Wiki). An unlikely fourth option has appeared though. The RuneScape wiki, and its official page has offered to host us, and this is a rather strong contender and favorite among the editors on discord. In the latter cases, a separate entity manages backend tasks including hosting and finances (e.g. negotiating with advertisers), but leaves the wiki on its own in other regards. This gives greater independence than being on a wiki farm (e.g. greater leeway to customize the wiki skin), while putting more responsibilities on community members as opposed to sharing it with the staff of a wiki farm, but not nearly as much as if the wiki were to host itself.

Discussion
''This is the main "voting" section. Both the rankings nd the supporting arguments will be taken into account.''

Additional comments
''This section is for additional discussion separate from the main discussion areas. See also the previous discussion on the community portal, and the previous vote and its conclusion previous vote.'' Any additional questions here may get answered by our Discord Editors.