Gamepedia Witcher wiki and Fandom community issues

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Gamepedia Witcher wiki and Fandom community issues

Opening a dedicated thread here.

---------- Updated at 03:19 AM ----------

Quite some development apparently: http://www.gameskinny.com/020u0/wikia-and-cd-projekt-red-announce-collaboration-for-the-witcher-3-wild-hunt

I wonder what CDPR expect from the community.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

@SMiki55: Hi! Did you move from Gamepedia back to Wikia Witcher wiki? I've seen lot's of your posts there lately.

 

[SMiki55]

I was tired of seeing YT videos and Witcher RPG lore materials copying wrong info from Wikia so I started improving it (after all, it is unfortunately more popular). Gamepedia was bought by Wikia though, so I'm not sure whether there is any difference anymore :/

Post automatically merged: Jun 25, 2019

But all my edits are free to copy.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

I was tired of seeing YT videos and Witcher RPG lore materials copying wrong info from Wikia so I started improving it (after all, it is unfortunately more popular). Gamepedia was bought by Wikia though, so I'm not sure whether there is any difference anymore :/

I see. I suppose the main difference is the community today. Plus I like Gamepedia's design a lot more. I don't really keep track of Wikia witcher wiki and can't say how popular one is vs another, but I check a few things there once in a while, since they diverged in different ways. And noticed some of your recent edits there Popularity depends on contributors anyway, so where you contribute, you'll bring more users. Not that I care about user traffic.

But all my edits are free to copy.

That kind of tedious, and I don't think it's good to just verbatim copy from one to another. May be use some ideas to feel the gaps is OK. Wikia used to copy my whole articles from Gamepedia. And it felt weird. So I don't feel like doing the same back.

 

[SMiki55]

It's not about editors, it's about readers :/ Seeing that Pondsmith ignored some of my lore mails just to copy incorrect info from Wikia into Witcher RPG was frustrating.

Post automatically merged: Jun 25, 2019

It's still a contemporary state though. I planned to abandon wikis as a whole some time ago in order to focus on map and working on Sapkowski's website. I've postponed it due to reasons mentioned before.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Looks like after Fandom bought Curse, there is some plan to remove wiki duplication:

https://help.gamepedia.com/Wiki_Crossover_Project
https://community.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:Mira_Laime/Update_on_our_plans_to_bring_Gamepedia_and_Fandom_together

They mention they'll avoid messing up active wikis, but it's still quite an annoying development. A lot of contributors abandoned the community Wiki on Gamepedia, which is a concern.

@SMiki55: did you know about the above?

I think Gampedia wiki is better, and if anything, let them merge Fandom one into it, if they really want to, not the other way around.

 

[SMiki55]

I have no idea how it would go; has someone at least adressed the censorship problems?

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Yeah, good question. No idea, now that Fandom owns it, what stops them from causing the same problems like before?

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

@SMiki55: Regarding wiki policies, the only info I found was here:

Q: Will they be allowed to keep their own Terms of Usage [On wiki-policies]?

A: We'd consider that to be part of the discussion admins and active editors would have if they decided that wanted to explore combining projects.

So I assume they don't plan to change current policies of existing Gamepedia wikis at least.

And regarding editors disappearing, @Gamewidow clarified the situation a bit. Apparently, Netfiix made a deal with Fandom, so the "official" (i.e. paid work) from editors goes there at least in regards to Netflix Witcher series.

Which means that it's not a fair comparison now, i.e. Fandom now gets all paid backing, and Gamepedia Witcher wiki will only rely on the community effort. So I invite you to come back if you have time, since I don't see Fandom Witcher wiki agreeing to join with Gamepedia one, and going to Fandom doesn't sound like a good idea either.

 

[Pangaea666]

What was the censorship about now again? The "cards" from Witcher 1?

I'm quite frankly a bit concerned about the future of the official Gamepedia wiki given Wikia/Bandom wolfed down Curse, and the above-mentioned links. From their perspective, the longterm goal is probably to merge wikis into Wikia, hope the others become inactive, and then forcefeed the rest into Wikia. To put it mildly, that's not a prospect I'd be ecstatic about.

The design on Gamepedia is much better. Not narrow as hell and not spam on 75% of the screenspace. Therefore, the edits I've made have been done there. Unfortunate if users mostly go to the wikia one, but I'd not want to stick my neck into that nekker lair tbh.

What saddens me a bit, however, after looking at some pages over there recently, is that although the design is atrocious, some of the content is actually better on wikia than gamepedia. But like Gilrond mentioned above, I don't feel it's the right move to simply copy articles over. Yeah, they did that from gamepedia in the past, but I find it kinda morally dubious. It's allowed ofc given the various site/wiki policies, but... yeah.


On a related note, since I'm posting here for maybe the first time in a decade or something: I finally finished the game last year. It sure was a good ride!

 

[SMiki55]

Given Wikia team's approach to unofficial content such as modding (links to useful tools or mods get removed because "they don't want to hold responsibility for scr*wing one's PC"), how about branding Gamepedia's version as a modder-friendly community? That might also extend to areas such as fan art (but not fan fiction).

Post automatically merged: Jan 26, 2020

As for copying stuff between places, my writing is always free to take, just note me in edit description.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

The wiki on Gamepedia shows modding symbol on the front page, so I think that's already labeled? Quite a few pages in that category there:

The Witcher 3 modding

witcher.gamepedia.com

 

[Pangaea666]

Holy Melitele's (dwarven) tits. Quite a few pages in here:

The Witcher 3 classes

witcher.gamepedia.com

Not familiar enough with the Wikia version, if they have zero mod or tools info there, but it's an advantage with Gamepedia that we can enter info like that there, like the excellent articles about ModKit and so forth. It's bound to be very helpful for people who want to venture into such endeavors.

It was sad to learn that Game widow has kinda stepped down now, because she basically wrote the entire wiki. That's exaggerating a little -- but not much.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

@Fleurpink: No specific news, she just stopped contributing, probably due to pressure from "Fandom". Btw, feel free to come to the wiki and help out with what you find interesting.

 

[Pangaea666]

I too suspect it's due to internal pressure from their new overlords, with the hope of Gamepedia wikis getting inactive, and then they can in the next step kill them off entirely or co-opt the content into their embarrassingly named domain. She can't say that of course, and has said she doesn't have time any more. Which may well be the truth as well. I'm just speculating and trying to read between the lines. And it would be sort of sensible from Wikia's point of view to get everything under one domain, and simply forward the traffic from the Gamepedia URLs.

We can't know for sure, but I suspect this is what is really going on, and she either stepped down due to disagreeing with it or being upset, not wanting to oversee such a development -- or of course, that she simply has too much other stuff to do now on all the other wikis.

She is still contributing, but not as much as before, and she is no longer listed as an admin in the community portal (where all official roles are listed) - though she still has full admin privileges of course, like she does on every other wiki on the Gamepedia domain (being a key staff member).

 

[Pangaea666]

Read here about what is happening throughout 2020: https://community.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:MisterWoodhouse/Unified_Community_Platform:_The_Vision,_Purpose,_and_Process

In brief: Stage 1 is about unfucking the colossal code mess that ****dom is, being on an ancient MediaWiki version with millions of lines of custom code. A good deal of waffled PR-speak in the article, but that's kinda the basic of the first stage.

Since Gamepedia is mostly on default MediaWiki software, and it's updated, not much will happen to them here it seems. It's stage 2 we should worry about. This is unfortunately as expected, and my worry is that Gamepedia wikis will be forced over to ****dom's narrow spam-infested "look and feel".

Unified look-and-feel across platforms and devices.

****dom and Gamepedia experiences are very different today but we’re hard at work designing a new wiki experience that brings the best of ****dom theming and Gamepedia skins together. Building a more consistent look-and-feel across wikis is critical for improving the fan experience for all screen sizes and device types. We will be actively seeking user input and feedback for this process.

Of course we need to read between the lines here, but considering ****dom is much bigger than Gamepedia with more wikis (and in more genres), it's more likely the design will be more similar to current ****dom than Gamepedia when they both move forward on the same platform and with the same "look and feel". What that means in practice we can't know at this stage, but a someone who likes the wider screenspace and not being overburdened with spam-rails, I worry about the future on the Witcher wiki.

I recommend to read the whole article to get a better impression of what is happening -- while keeping in mind it's a PR-person writing it.

Having worked a decent bit on the wiki lately, with much more in the works, I have to admit I'm not feeling too willing to contribute right now, considering what is quite likely to happen in the future. In our heart of hearts, we know how these corporate processes usually go. We've all seen it before.