Wikia -> Miraheze...?

[bunn]

Wikia seems to have got worse and worse in terms of slathering everything with impossible quantities of ads.

I just found out about the existence of https://meta.miraheze.org/wiki/Miraheze, a non-profit, no-ads mediawiki host, and I wondered about the possibility of copying the great Sutcliff wiki content over to it.

I think much of the work on the wikia site was done by Hedgebird, but I'm sure there have been many contributors: this seemed like the best place to float the idea tentatively.

Comments

[chantefable]

I hope to hear from the contributors to wikia in support of this. I use Sutcliff wiki and a user-friendly, ads-free experience seems like a good idea.

[bunn]

I'm not sure how the changeover would be organised, but presumably at the very least the text could be manually copied and pasted. I'd be happy to do that, I don't think the wiki is so large that manually moving it the low-tech way would be impossible.

[hedgebird]

No objection from me. I adblock the shit out of wikia, but an ad-free, non-profit site sounds nice. Is it easy to use?

Though if it were me doing it, I wouldn't import the wiki wholesale. As an admin I had no clue what I was doing when I started the thing (and mostly still don't.) I often slapped up sketchy outlines/listicles that I was "totally gonna expand/crosslink eventually, when the associated articles are written!" and then never did. Maybe someone uses them, though, idk.

[mossgreen]

See my reply below; I just started a wiki on Miraheze and it does help if you have at least some HTML knowledge under your belt (or can grab code for infoboxes and the like and edit the crap out of them to suit your own needs)

[mossgreen]

I have literally just started a wiki on Miraheze (for period PBs for PBP RPGs, if you're curious) - I've found it pretty easy and I haven't done anything wiki-related for years. The hardest thing was following the directions to add my own logo/avatar. Mine's here if you want a look; it's very new and like 99% redlinks just from its newness and the nature of what I'm doing with it.

Adding templates is OK if you have the code for them and can just copy it over and edit for your own needs.

So yeah, I can recommend Miraheze; you'll find it not too hard to figure out if you have any experience on any mediawiki wiki whatsoever; I think the Wikia ones are more user-friendly in not requiring you to use any sort of HTML or anything.