Starsector > General Discussion

[completed] Migrating the unofficial wiki from Fandom to wiki.gg

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Histidine:
Update: We've moved!
So the poll has run for six days now and we have the results:


Out of 835 responses:

* 821 (98.3%) in favor of the move
* 3 (0.4%) opposed
* 11 (1.3%) don't know/no opinionI actually had no idea Fandom was so totally reviled, I'd expected there to be at least some disagreement.

Anyway I'm happy to announce that the forked wiki has gone live at starsector.wiki.gg! Thanks to Kelenius, TheWikiFish, and other contributors (like wiki.gg admin Westgrass, who almost singlehandedly created the current appearance) for making this possible.

We hope you enjoy the new look, the greatly reduced ad count, and a little new content as a cherry on top. If you're looking to contribute, see our guide for some useful information.

Original post

Hello, I'm Histidine. You probably know me as the dev of the Nexerelin mod, but here I'm posting as the admin of the unofficial Starsector wiki, with a question of some significance for the community.

If you've been around gaming circles online, you may have noticed any number of game wikis previously hosted on Fandom.com deciding to migrate to other providers such as wiki.gg, or taking up independent hosting. This has actually been happening for decades (back when Fandom was still Wikia) but has picked up interest again in recent years, with notable 2022-24 migrations including the wikis for Warcraft, Minecraft, Terraria, Zelda and Dr. Who. There are a number of reasons for this; the notoriously intrusive Fandom ads (especially on mobile), sometimes taking up half the page, are the most famous but not the only one.

Here are a few articles from the past 1-2 years discussing this trend, with discussions of specific communities that have jumped ship; I strongly recommend reading/watching them if you want to understand the rationale for a migration:


* You don’t understand why wikis are leaving Fandom
* Why People Don't Like Fandom Wikis
*
A number of involved persons (principally myself, editor Kelenius, and co-admin TheWikiFish) at the wiki are now looking at a move to wiki.gg as well. My impression from looking at the Unofficial Starsector Chat (Discord server) is that Fandom hosting isn't very popular among the community either, but I'd like to establish a community consensus before migrating. Any move needs community buy-in to work, so I want to hear your opinions on this.

The poll
Results
If we moved, what would change for the public?
There will be two wikis, the old Fandom one still being up and competing with the new one for SEO, very likely appearing above the new one in Google search results.

As you might guess from the above articles, we expect your user experience to be better on the new site :)

We can work to promote the new wiki over the old, including asking for all relevant links (including Discord bot responses) to be redirected to the new wiki, and for editors to move to the new site to minimize splitting of contributions. For site visitors/editors, the wiki.gg Redirect browser extension (Chrome, Firefox, Edge) can automatically put you on the right site.

Also, the migration only applies to the English version of the wiki. Any other language versions (e.g. French) will have to make their own decision on whether to make the move with us.

How soon could this happen?
The application has already been submitted and we could launch the fork in the near future, once the forked site has been polished to match the current Fandom implementation.

nathan67003:
YEEESSSS

Can confirm that it is LEAGUES better not only in terms of user experience not being nuked to hell and back by parasitizing screen space but also by it being far more flexible in a myriad of ways. Look no further than the cookie clicker wiki for an example of what I mean; the new (few months now) .gg wiki is outright flavourful.

helias:
I'm absolutely in favour of moving over. Fandom has been on a steady decline since long before they became known as Fandom, and it's not looking like they'll be getting better any time soon. wiki.gg is a much more reasonable site to navigate and doesn't bombard users with advertisements or unrelated YouTube videos. Plus, a migration could be just the thing to spark a burst of activity for the wiki which it desperately needs. (Did you know that the Missile Autoloader didn't have a wiki page until three weeks ago, when it was created - ironically enough - by a Fandom staff member? It's two major patches old now!)

Nettle:
Yes please. Down with the fandom's monopoly.

FooF:
The mobile experience on Fandom is downright abusive. I can’t stand it. 1000% in favor.

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