Right... so what should we do with the wiki?

Discuss anything that involves Wikifang, the Telefang Wiki, here.
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Blaziken257
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Joined: Fri Dec 22, 2006 11:52 am

Re: Right... so what should we do with the wiki?

Post by Blaziken257 »

As most people know, Wikia made a new layout and got rid of the old one yesterday, coincidentally the same day as Telefang's 10th anniversary. And it's very controversial: With very difficult-to-find basic links such as the typical article/discussion/edit/history links, a confusing layout, an enormous sidebar, loads of ads, among other things, it has annoyed many people here. And not just Wikifang users. It's alienating many Wikia users in general, encouraging many to migrate to other hosts.

OK, many of you know about that already. First, should we move in the first place? And if we move, what kind of host would we be using? I'm not good at this kind of stuff, so hopefully someone else here would know. I think I recall at least a few people offering to host it, though, so if someone can work that out then that would be much appreciated.

Second... if we do move, how are we going to move all the articles, templates, images, and edit histories? Is there software that automatically does this, or are we going to have to do all of this by hand? This is going to be quite tedious...

Third, some of you may know about NIWA, a network about various Nintendo wikis. Now, Telefang isn't really a Nintendo franchise, but rather a Smilesoft one. But every Telefang game (as well as Bugsite/Dino Device) was released on a Nintendo system, so hopefully this shouldn't be a problem at all. But fortunately, I noticed that Sanky mentioned about this here on the NIWA forum and a couple of people said that joining NIWA would, indeed, be possible -- that is, if we move away from Wikia. Do you all think that we should do it? I think that it would be a good idea.

Finally, I realize that I've contributed almost nothing to Wikifang in the past year. I apologize for this. I've been busier lately, and I'd been spending most of whatever free time that I've been having either playing Pokémon or contributing to a certain Pokémon wiki (not Bulbapedia, but it is a similar one). I plan to start contributing to it again -- I realize that we're missing maps, Denjuu movesets, and lots more. I can't be as active I was back in 2008, but I can definitely help out more than I have been doing.
Sherkel(imported)
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Re: Right... so what should we do with the wiki?

Post by Sherkel(imported) »

First, I think we should move.
Second, I think we could manage to do it by hand if we have many helping. Glitch City Laboratories did exactly this when becoming a wiki--in doing so, pages were rewritten, becoming much better than they previously were, and we saw missing information. I think that that might happen here if we do that.
Kimbles(imported)
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Re: Right... so what should we do with the wiki?

Post by Kimbles(imported) »

I think it would be a good idea to move, if just to have free control over the design and stuff. Wikia seems to be moving more in the direction of being a social networking site, which isn't really what we want... :/

Medabots Wiki has decided to move and apparently we've already found a host, but I haven't had any part in it so I can't really help... >_<
Regarding NIWA, non-Nintendo wikis can always become an affiliate, which means you'd still be linked to on the NIWA site and on other NIWA wikis, without necessarily being a full member.

As for how to move stuff.... personally, I think Wikifang has a lot of major flaws right now. For example, it relies on a lot of fancy code and templates that don't necessarily look better and cause a lot of problems in older browsers. There's a lot more focus on lists of data than actual content, like descriptions and explanations that would make the pages interesting to read. The organization and categories also need a lot of work, and yet people are working on adding tons of redirects and disambiguations instead that probably aren't even necessary.
I think that as an information source, Wikifang needs to get it's priorities straight. >_> I've thought about ways to improve it, but honestly, it wouldn't really be realistic to fix it now because of the massive number of articles. I wish we could have figured out a decent way of writing every Denjuu page before we made all of them, for example. Stuff like that is really important...

This would be an excellent chance to actually plan things out ahead of time, like how to organize stuff, what your policies are, what you want to include on major pages and what you want them to look like. D: Honestly though, the site's been extremely broken for me for a long time, so I probably won't be helping out with it either way unless you decide to make some changes... *shrug*
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andwhyisit
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Re: Right... so what should we do with the wiki?

Post by andwhyisit »

First thing I'd like to see is all of the denjuu pages added in. And we need a todo list of articles that need to be added in.
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Sanqui
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Re: Right... so what should we do with the wiki?

Post by Sanqui »

Andwhyisit wrote:First thing I'd like to see is all of the denjuu pages added in.
They already are.
Blaziken257 wrote:First, should we move in the first place? And if we move, what kind of host would we be using?
RacieB has offered to host us, which is pretty much awesome. I'm sure I can install Mediawiki if I get FTP and SQL.
Blaziken wrote:Second... if we do move, how are we going to move all the articles, templates, images, and edit histories? Is there software that automatically does this, or are we going to have to do all of this by hand? This is going to be quite tedious...
Not at all. First we need a backup, which Wikia does every two days or so. Importing is a matter of a few hours at most, and is done automatically.
RacieB
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Re: Right... so what should we do with the wiki?

Post by RacieB »

That offer is still good btw, I just need to figure out my ftp stuff so multiple people can use it easily =x Bluehost is great though cause they essentially give unlimited bandwidth / server space (within reason that is, hosting a bunch of movie downloads or something would still be frowned upon I'm sure!)
Blaziken257
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Re: Right... so what should we do with the wiki?

Post by Blaziken257 »

@Tombstoner: Thanks for your input, although we would have to hope that a lot of people would be willing to contribute... even at its peak, there wasn't much manpower behind the wiki, although moving should certainly help...

@Kimbles: What exactly do you not like about it? I don't see much wrong with the Denjuu pages, other than them being incomplete. The stats, movesets, picture book descriptions, locations, etc. seem appropriate in my opinion. The lists, while there are lot of them, don't really detract from the wiki, and besides, sometimes it is convenient to see all the Denjuu at once, rather than one at a time. And we can always change whatever you don't like about the Denjuu pages; however tedious it may be, I'm actually quite used to this, seeing that I've done some extremely tedious stuff with other wikis before. We shouldn't just start over from scratch, because we do have some useful information...

Also, the redirects don't really hurt either. If it's those Japanese ones that you were thinking of, I only did that because there isn't any Japanese Telefang wiki that I know of (although having one wouldn't be a bad idea for the sake of Japanese fans, and if such a wiki exists then we could form some sort of alliance similar to this, but with Telefang instead of Pokémon), so at the time I felt it made sense for anybody who plays the original Japanese game (be it Japanese fans, or anybody in general who has played the Japanese version but not the bootleg). After all, the Japanese terms for Denjuu/moves/etc. are the only official ones, and the wiki should be as accessible as possible...

Also, what's the difference between simply being affiliated with NIWA and being a member of it?

@Sanky: Well, you seem to know your stuff about migrating, which is good. Hopefully you'll be able to figure out how to install MediaWiki...

@RacieB: Thanks a lot! I wish I could repay you in some way... now I can easily see the move happening.

BTW, what should the URL be? Would we be able to come up with something like wikifang.com? Or would it have to be part of meowcorp.us?
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Sanqui
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Re: Right... so what should we do with the wiki?

Post by Sanqui »

Blaziken257 wrote:BTW, what should the URL be? Would we be able to come up with something like wikifang.com? Or would it have to be part of meowcorp.us?
That depends solely on if we buy a domain or not. It would be possible.

This is more of a question to RacieB, but are you planning to set up ads? If yes, I'd suggest Project Wonderful, we have it on another page I visit and it's a *lot* better then Google ads.
Locololo(imported)
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Re: Right... so what should we do with the wiki?

Post by Locololo(imported) »

personally i say that we move, but i do not mind either way
RacieB
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Re: Right... so what should we do with the wiki?

Post by RacieB »

Nah I don't use/need ads. I just pay every couple years or so, it's a nice setup.

Anyway if I were to host it it'd be a subdomain of meowcorp.us, probably wikifang~ but I've been pondering just using the telefang~ one I already have set up since the wiki really makes my site redundant and it's terribly outdated anyway XF
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