User:ManyOursOfFun/sandbox/summary of forking discussions

This community portal topic serves to educate voters on the three other hosting options available for the Minecraft Wiki, the risk of forking, and how those risks can possibly be alleviated. You are strongly encouraged to read the first message in this community portal topic as it provides a list of reasons for why a fork is being discussed and voted upon.

The Minecraft Wiki has four options for hosting:
 * 1) Stay at Fandom, a wiki farm
 * 2) Fork to wiki.gg, a wiki farm
 * 3) Fork and be hosted by Bulbapedia, a semi-independent host
 * 4) Fork and be hosted by ABXY, a semi-independent host

Although wiki.gg is a wiki farm, it affords more editorial control and slightly more skin control than Fandom, as well as offering more wiki extensions. Anonymous editing is allowed. Some have also described wiki.gg as having better SEO than other forking alternatives. However, as of writing, wiki.gg does not support notifications of any kind. Additionally, while each wiki can create their own mobile skin, wiki.gg does not have an official responsive mobile skin.

Meanwhile, semi-independent hosts provide more freedom than wiki farms. ABXY and Bulbapedia offers more wiki extensions, better skin control, better extension control, and good mobile support. They even require the wiki to have a custom domain. Some differences exist between the two, though. Bulbapedia doesn't allow anonymous editing, and some legal responsibility has to be shouldered by the wiki itself. However, it does allow the Widget extension to be used, which is useful for the Minecraft Wiki as it allows the sprite templates to function. In contrast, ABXY holds all legal responsibility and allows anonymous editing, but has a worse content delivery system (CDN), and does not allow the Widget extension to be used.

All options display advertisements on their websites in varying quantities. Wiki.gg displays small banner ads at the top and bottom of every page, as well as three small ads that take up the right side of content pages. Bulbapedia has a sticky ad that takes up the bottom portion of the screen, one ad on the right side, and an in-content video ad that becomes sticky after scrolling down. ABXY has two banner ads on the top and bottom of each page. In addition, wiki.gg and Bulbapedia display no ads to logged-in users, while ABXY displays ads to everyone regardless of whether the user is logged in.

We urge you to visit wikis hosted by the three host options, in order to gain a fuller sense of how advertisements are organized, as well as to get a rough idea of the overall design and layout of each wiki.
 * Terraria Wiki - Wiki.gg
 * Bulbapedia - Bulbapedia
 * Zelda Wiki - ABXY

You are also encouraged to look through User:MarkusRost/fork and this Google spreadsheet, as they provide a concise and easy to digest comparison between all host options.

Regardless of what forking host may be chosen, one major issue arises when forking. Fandom's forking policy states that the original Fandom wiki must stay intact and separate from the forked wiki. The forked wiki cannot be linked to on the Fandom wiki, and a notice alerting readers of the fork will only be allowed to be displayed on the Fandom wiki for two weeks, after that time period it will be removed.

In addition to any possible splitting within the community, SEO is commonly cited to be a major issue. Fandom currently has superior SEO out of the other forking options, meaning that the Fandom wiki will outrank the forked wiki in search results for a significant period of time. Additionally, Google will consider the forked wiki a "duplicate" of the Fandom wiki, meaning it will be hidden from search results. Major amounts of edits across large amounts of articles will need to occur for the forked wiki to no longer be considered a duplicate by Google. The forked wiki will be advertised through content creators and online social spaces such as Discord and Reddit in order to raise awareness for the fork.

It is requested that all editors vote on this matter, as it is a drastic change for the Minecraft Wiki and will affect all editors and readers in some way or another. The vote you give should be representative of your own opinion on the matter, and not the general opinion of an entire language wiki.