The Sims Wiki:Miraheze migration

This page exists to help keep track of The Sims Wiki's migration from Wikia (who irritatingly insist on being called "FANDOM" these days) to Miraheze, a non-profit, open source wiki farm network.

Why migrate?
Wikia has a long history of being problematic, ranging from their infamous "Featured Video" feature being rammed down people's throats without their permission; their malicious and questionable tactics of forcing the Portable Infobox markup onto communities; a site design that has long been criticized by its editors; an increasingly reader-centric site design to the exclusion of editors trying to maintain the content of the wikis they edit on; and a rebranding to a name that neither reflects the scope of what wikis are nor is supported by serious editors trying to maintain knowledge bases of whatever they are writing about.

There are numerous wiki hosting services out there, albeit none as large, notable, or powerful as Wikia is. Still, Miraheze appears to be our best bet.

Advantages of Miraheze

 * A skin that doesn't suck. Miraheze offers the Vector skin, the same skin that's used on Wikipedia and most other Wikimedia projects, which see more traffic than Wikia's wikis and are used by more people on a regular basis. The Vector skin offers a nice, large, wide layout that's easy on the eyes, allows for plenty of space for page content, and isn't inundated with oversized icons that look awful.
 * No ads. Wikia is a for-profit company that relies on ads for revenue. Miraheze, by contrast, is a non-profit organization that does not run ads; instead, they rely on donations to sustain themselves. This means that their goals will be more in-line with what its users and readers want, since having a bad reputation amongst their users equates to decreased donations. With this, we believe that Miraheze will be more willing to listen to what we want, whereas Wikia cares more about its advertising revenue and will sacrifice user desirability for profit.
 * Better software. Miraheze is committed to maintaining the most recent version of MediaWiki, the software that runs Wikia and Wikipedia. While Wikia has heavily modified their version of MediaWiki and are still technically running an obsolete version of the software, Miraheze maintains a closer relationship with the MediaWiki developers themselves, and they are more committed to keeping the software up-to-date, so we are able to enjoy the many leaps in technological advancement that Wikipedia enjoys that Wikia can only dream about at this point.
 * Access to 50 million+ free-to-use files. Miraheze allows for the use of the InstantCommons functionality on all wikis, meaning that you can use any file currently on the Wikimedia Commons for free and without having to upload a local copy, simply by linking to it like you would any other file. This means that we can save on the amount of local files we have to maintain, and Miraheze can save on server space as we won't have to reupload files we want to use from Commons here. Miraheze also offers their own Miraheze Commons that can also be used as an image repository, accessible anywhere on all wikis without having to duplicate uploads.
 * Free and open source. Miraheze's source code is open, and is hosted on Github. Free and open source code means that anyone can study it, fork it, and reuse it, which ensures that Miraheze cannot control its users the same way a company running proprietary, closed source software can.
 * Vast customizability. Miraheze allows wikis to easily toggle on and off a large selection of extensions with the click of a button; add and remove user rights and even create custom ones; create custom namespaces with just a few clicks; and customize the wiki's Javascript and Cascading Style Sheets settings. All without having to send in a support ticket.
 * Direct access to great support. Miraheze maintains both an IRC channel and a Discord server that allows users to directly contact and chat with other members of the community in real time. While Miraheze Staff take care of the behind-the-scenes work, Stewards are volunteer users that serve a similar role as Stewards on Wikimedia—they are available to handle emergencies and help resolve disputes, but are non-intrusive and generally only act when the local community is unable to resolve the situation on their own. Unlike Wikia Staff, stewards are selected by the Miraheze community at large, and the community can call for a steward's access to be revoked through a vote of no confidence. Additionally, bug reports filed on Miraheze are much more open and can be seen by anyone (except for security-sensitive ones). Bug reports are filed through a platform called Phabricator, which Wikimedia also uses. This means that anyone can view bug reports and they are organized more publicly and openly, unlike Wikia which relies on a difficult-to-navigate email support system.
 * It's all community. Miraheze is run by volunteers, not a corporate board of directors. What the volunteers do is more in touch with what the Miraheze community as a whole wants, because said volunteers edit here, too. Wikia is a for-profit corporation that doesn't need to listen to its users, and as recent events have shown, it doesn't want to. If Miraheze tried to adopt this mindset, it would have been a failure from the very beginning. Learn about how you can contribute to the Miraheze family!

Things that need to get done
Currently, the plan is to stay on Wikia. There are no as of yet formal plans to migrate. However, the idea for having this Miraheze wiki set up and ready to go is that 1) we'll have the domain name registered so that trolls can't steal it; 2) we will have time to test our templates and our designs here on another MediaWiki installation; and 3) when Wikia goes over the tipping point, we will be ready.


 * Migrate templates
 * Migrate system messages
 * Migrate Javascript and CSS
 * Make sure migrated Javascript and CSS work on the new wiki
 * Make sure our templates work on the new wiki
 * Import a database dump from the Wikia wiki into here; we'll need to contact Staff for help with this.
 * Upload all the images that cannot be found on Wikimedia Commons from the Wikia wiki to here (which is a lot!)