Forum:Wikia's "New Look" and the Future of the Creatures Wiki

Updates
''If you have not read the message below, do so first. It might help these make more sense. ;)''


 * Update 1: Wikia has pushed back the date of implementation one week, to June 17th, to "give everyone more time". ElasticMuffin 23:07, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Update 2: Wikia admins have said that the Monobook theme that we currently use will be modified to have the same ads in the same places as Monaco, leading to the interesting question of why the new Monaco theme is mandatory. ElasticMuffin 03:39, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Update 3: We've caught an important change to the Wikia Terms of Service where the line saying that Wikia will never display pop-up ads has been removed. This opens up the possibility for them to offer any kind of intrusive ad they like.  In other news, Wikia has also said that they intend to "put the same ads" in the current Monobook theme as they will soon have in the Monaco theme.  We're still working on a move, and are in negotiations to purchase the creatureswiki.com domain.  Thank you for your patience. ElasticMuffin 16:30, 16 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Update 3a: The popup change has been reverted after several people pointed out how silly it was. --GreenReaper(talk) 05:35, 21 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Update 4: I have modified the message below and downgraded the alert level in the message at the top of the pages to reflect our current status. The changes do not appear to have taken effect here yet.  We don't know why.  We are still working on a move, but this is progressing slowly due to real-life commitments. ElasticMuffin 05:46, 28 June 2008 (UTC)


 * NEW UPDATE: It has been determined that soon Wikia will move us over to the Monaco theme. At present there has been no progress toward a move though there has been a couple of generous offers of hosting. We do not believe that Wikia would be willing to close this wiki to prevent a fracture of the community, so for the time being we are staying here. ElasticMuffin 16:55, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Update 8/26/09: Let me clarify - I do not mean that we are staying here because we're stuck here. I mean that we are still here because there has been no forward momentum on any moves to a new host, and we think that a move might fracture the wiki user community into multiple parts.  Anyone that legitimately has the resources and time to devote to this project (note: It is not as simple as saying "I can host it!"  Moving the entire wiki intact will be a time-consuming and probably problem-filled process) is welcome to contact the wiki administrators. ElasticMuffin 21:52, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

The Future of the Creatures Wiki
Hello, Creatures Wiki visitors.

In a move that was at least somewhat expected but nonetheless extremely disappointing, Wikia is forcing all wikis that are hosted by them (of which there are many thousands including this one) to begin switching over to a new "Monaco" theme. This should already have happened at this point, but appears to not have changed yet (I do not know for sure why the changes have not yet taken effect. ElasticMuffin); it was only announced in early June, with almost no chance for community leaders to weigh on on the changes. What's the big deal, you might wonder. It's just a new look, right? Well, if you look over everything carefully you will discover that the problems are manyfold:


 * The new theme will add considerably more distracting ads, including a large ad box inside the top right corner of many article pages and two large ad blocks on the front page.
 * The new theme will be applied so that every non-registered (anonymous) user will see it first- giving users an instant bad impression. You have to register and set your user settings if you wish to use the old theme... but they now say that eventually the "Monobook" theme will have the same ads as the new "Monaco" theme.
 * The new theme is significantly more cluttered, unnecessarily colorful, and harder to navigate than the current "Monobook" theme (this one is a matter of opinion, really. I strongly dislike it but not everyone does).

These changes mean, to us, an unacceptable decline in service. We, the administrators, will do everything in our power to avoid forcing a wiki of this quality level on our users.

Wikia has so far turned down numerous offers by ourselves and other wiki admins to solve the problem by paying money to keep service as it is or without ads. Their only explanation for this is that it is "too complex" to accept money and that users cannot be relied upon to pay the money on a month by month basis. They also refuse to provide any useful figures to determine how much the advertising on a wiki is worth.

In addition, Wikia has taken control of the domain creatureswiki.com without letting us know and without even forwarding the domain to this site. As this domain has very high searchability and value, a Wikia admin claims they grabbed it to prevent other people from "domain-squatting". They called this practice "routine" and said it "did not warrant any big discussion". While we have since partially resolved this problem, we still regard this as a less-than-friendly move. However, we still do not yet have control of the domain.

In my opinion and the opinion of others, it seems that Wikia has decided that it must have control over the communities it hosts rather than work alongside them for a good cause. As the content is free to host anywhere, if the users leave Wikia is left with nothing of value. We are not assets -- we are a community, and should be treated with respect.

As such, we are currently working on a solution to this problem. Please stay tuned to this page for future updates. We are not 100% certain yet whether this will involve a move, and if so, when the move will take place. If it does move, the new location will be prominently posted here as well as on all major community forums.

To the users who read and improve the Creatures Wiki on a daily basis: Thank you, and we hope that this situation will be resolved to the benefit of all.

ElasticMuffin 05:43, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Comments
Please place your comments, if any, here.

This is ridiculous, I can't believe that not only would they force a theme on people, but that they wont let the community pay for it, and they bought up stuff that has no relation to themselves at all. It reasonable for them to force ads considering its free, but an entire theme? 71.196.107.210 21:00, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh Lord, that looks awful. D:> Why in the world are they doing this? Is there anything we can do to push them to keep the old theme? Officer 1BDI 06:03, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Goodness knows lots of people are trying, but so far without success. They say "oh, well, you can set it when you're registered", but they also say they will add the ads to this theme as well eventually. ElasticMuffin 16:30, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

What Officer said. I see no real point in doing this, unless wikia just hates us or something. -Crystalnorn 06:16, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Gah, what a bunch of friggin morons. It seems all they want is money, money, money -KC11 9:l9, 12 June 2008 (Pacific)
 * Well, they are a company. But it would be preferable if they would try to make money in a way that would not anger everyone. ElasticMuffin 16:30, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Awful. Is there a possibility of transferring the content to another host? --Fang Aune 11:00, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Looks as though you are already planning to do so. My bad. --Fang Aune 12:04, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Why not just get creatureswiki.net? or some variation thereof, like wikicreatures? Vipero07 20:22, 18 June 2008 (UTC)


 * It's more the principle of the thing, see. ;)  128.61.57.112 21:53, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

If your looking for another option, ScribbleWiki (www.scribblewiki.com) is willing to host the your wiki. We are not a community builder; but, a wiki host. We would put some minimal advertising; but, in general the CreaturesWiki administrators would control the wiki. If interested please contact us swsupport@lingermedia.com --Simonk 18:19, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I have a add free server (virtual root server with virtually unlimited bandwidth and ~20GB of free space) available to host the Wiki. The server is currently hosting the German community (www.creaturesforum.de). Please contact me at michael@roeschter.de or michael@roeschter.com.

hello there just in case you were wondering it would appear that creaturescommunity.com is for sale, just a little heads up Animopolis 17:43, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Re Update 8/26/09, if hosting is still an issue, what would be involved in hosting the site elsewhere above the standard database import, htaccess configs and files transfer? - Don 12:52, September 5, 2009 (UTC)
 * Various MediaWiki extensions would need to be configured, including my homebrew one which would allow current users to to login. I can do all that. It would probably be a good idea to have a Squid or Varnish cache in front of the server; however it is not essential to get a wiki up and running, and there are alternatives (like Apache's own mod_cache). APC would need to be installed to provide caching for PHP bytecode and MediaWiki variables, otherwise all operations are likely to be slow. MediaWiki can be CPU-hungry without cache, but if you have a reasonable amount of memory to throw at it (say 80Mb of APC cache, another 80Mb for holding copies of pages to display to anonymous users) it should fly even on a system of modest proportions, at least with our traffic and pagecount. --GreenReaper(talk) 22:47, September 11, 2009 (UTC)
 * And I should note: I'm quite willing to rent a Linode myself and host the Creatures Wiki there, if that's what people here want. Money is not a real issue - the level of hosting this site needs is not expensive. --GreenReaper(talk) 23:09, September 11, 2009 (UTC)

Why can't be CWiki hosted on Twinsen -- the server used by many big Creatures Community sites? I think it is perfect for the job. --Lembamjunior 18:20, May 27, 2010 (UTC)

Wow - I've just seen the new style with all the adverts appearing for the first time... *runs for the hills* :P I actually can't even concentrate on reading the content with top, side *and* bottom spam adverts, especially those awful yellow teeth ads which are grosely distracting!! - Don 22:44, October 5, 2009 (UTC)

In my opinion, I seriously don't think the Creatures Wiki looks half-bad with the new theme - but that's with Firefox's Adblock Plus add-on installed, which means I never see ads. --A1b1b1i1d1o1g1g1 16:06, October 10, 2009 (UTC)


 * You won't see many when logged in anyway - we remove almost all ads for logged in users. At the moment you only get the two on the main page, and the internal "spotlights" that advertise other wikis on Wikia. -- sannse (talk) 17:13, October 10, 2009 (UTC)

Is it true?
...that Wikia have stolen your domain? The barstewards, the money grabbing swines! Wikia is going down in my estimation day by day. They have proved with New Monaco that they don't particularly care about the community, just cash. If, indeed they stole the domain, that is bad form and the last straw. -- Hindleyite 16:10, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
 * They bought the domain. There is a difference of opinion over whether it was right for them to do so without telling us that they intended to, or to keep the domain against the preference of those who established it as a mark. --GreenReaper(talk) 16:17, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

This isn't the first time something like this has happened. There had been similar problems with Wikia registering and re-registering "Desciclopédia" (the Brazilian Uncyclopedia) in multiple top-level domains (such as .net and .info), even though Desciclopédia ultimately decided to avoid Wikia entirely and go the co-located server route. The tactic of grabbing every suitable TLD went over rather badly, and this was at the point where they were trying to convince Desciclopédia to switch to them. And then there's uncyclopedia.org... look through the forums on that wiki back in July 2006, and you'll find a very negative reaction to Wikia making a backroom deal with one of the co-founders of the wiki to sell the domain out from under us. The foreign-language Uncyclopedia is currently about evenly split between Wikia and non-Wikia, but at this point every new language has been getting its own independent domain from the day the first page is created - because otherwise the names are cybersquatted and any attempt to recover them is slow and costly at best, hopeless at worst. Unfortunate, but this is the way business is done here. --carlb 01:00, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Other wiki's have moved
Illogicopedia (where Hindleyite is a admin) has recently moved from illogicopedia.wikia.com to their own independent address at en.illogicopedia.com. For a few months they have been disscussing and negotiating with other servers until finally there was a kind enough person to run it. Illogicopedia is now independent from wikia. The same story goes for the transformers wiki. It would be a smart step to follow in their footsteps and pack your bags because wikia aren't gonna get any nicer.--User:TheBladester/sig 12:42, 8 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Indeed, things are getting worse in one respect Wikia:Database download has been revised to remove all mention of images and to add "This list includes details of when the last database dump was made. These are regenerated every few weeks. Please contact Wikia Staff if there is an urgent matter that requires an immediate updated copy." This means the backups are the better part of a month outdated... as if there weren't enough other Wikia issues (ie: enough to fill a complaintwiki.org site). Expect to move a few things manually. --carlb 05:37, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I sent Wikia a message asking if it were possible to move a Wiki to a private host. This was the reply: "We do offer publicly available dumps of pagecontent in XML form. Note:this does not include user data, (because users are shared across all of Wikia) or log data. Should it come to that moving day, we may be able to provide you with extra data you may need for the move, depending on what you need." It may be perfectly possible to move everything, including user accounts, to a new server. I'm certain there are members of the Creatures Wiki who are familiar with both MediaWiki and site hosting (myself, for example). --NadiaFrey 22:02, October 1, 2009 (UTC)


 * It is possible. I've got experience with doing this, and a method of dealing with the user account issue. --GreenReaper(talk) 22:05, October 1, 2009 (UTC)


 * Is the "stolen name" the only moving issue, then? Or are there others? --NadiaFrey 01:21, October 2, 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes. In my view it is not an insurmountable one. Should Wikia choose not to close this site, we are a small enough community that we can simply inform the relevant sites within our community that we have moved. --GreenReaper(talk) 02:03, October 2, 2009 (UTC)