Minecraft Wiki:Moving from Fandom

This page serves to begin a discussion that will decide which host the Minecraft Wiki will fork to.

Overview
This previous discussion has revealed that the Minecraft Wiki community overwhelmingly supports forking the wiki. Said previous discussion intended to figure out which host the Minecraft Wiki would fork to, however due to complications detailed in the conclusion page, the discussion did not accomplish this. Because of this, this second discussion has begun, which will decide which host the Minecraft Wiki will fork to. Please note that previous responses did not go to waste, as they allowed us to officially decide a fork would certainly happen, and criticisms of hosts allowed them to change and improve.

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

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 three semi-independent hosts: the host of Bulbapedia/Bulbagarden, ABXY (host of several wikis including Inkipedia, StrategyWiki and Zelda Wiki), and the host of the RuneScape Wikis. 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.

See Minecraft Wiki:Wiki host comparison for a detailed comparison between the various hosts. It's also encouraged 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 how the wikis function under the respective host:
 * Terraria Wiki - Wiki.gg
 * Bulbapedia - Bulbapedia
 * StrategyWiki - ABXY
 * RuneScape Wiki - RuneScape 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.


 * Some 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.
 * On wiki.gg, the wiki would be hosted at . On Bulbapedia, ABXY, and RuneScape Wiki the Minecraft wiki would instead use its own custom domain.


 * Further host suggestions
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * 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 required to make this option happen.

Arguments for hosts
Arguments for each host are presented below, 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, this is why they are written in a first person perspective.

ABXY
ABXY is an independent wiki host that 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.

In my opinion, ABXY’s differentiating factor is its history. It has been running for a decade and a half with the sole purpose of hosting independent wikis and is currently hosting 11 wikis. Although I do not doubt our other hosts, I simply feel the most secure with the Minecraft Wiki being in the care of ABXY.

Bulba
Bulbagarden is a family of sites focused on the Pokémon franchise. It hosts Bulbapedia, a large wiki that has existed for over 18 years, making it the oldest and longest running host available to us. Bulbapedia having existed for a very long time tells me that they have the experience we need our host to have. Bulbapedia 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.

RuneScape Wiki
RuneScape is the most transparent about infrastructure, funding, and business operations.

In terms of tech infra, they are the fastest and most reliable. 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 are very experienced in MediaWiki

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.

wiki.gg
wiki.gg is a wiki farm run by former Gamepedia employees. While it may have been launched very recently - in March 2022, the employees have had experiences with wikis years prior to wiki.gg. 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). 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.

I also have to mention a very gentle onboarding experience, a theme toggler, great community support and freedom in general.

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 in the above sections.

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

For additional comments that do not directly express a vote, 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.

Discussion
This is the main discussion section.

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.''