The Sims Wiki:Miraheze migration: Difference between revisions

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

* '''Direct access to great support.''' Miraheze maintains both an [[m:IRC|IRC channel]] and a [https://discord.is/miraheze Discord server] that allows users to directly contact and chat with other members of the community in real time. While [[m:Staff|Miraheze Staff]] take care of the behind-the-scenes work, [[m:Stewards|Stewards]] are volunteer users that serve a similar role as [[metawikimedia:Stewards|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 [[phab:|Phabricator]], which Wikimedia [https[mediazilla://phabricator.wikimedia.org/ |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.

Currently, the plan is to stay on Wikia. Therewhile arewe nowork ason ofthe yetmigration formal plans to migrate. However,behind the ideascenes foras havingmuch thisas Mirahezepossible. wikiWe set up and ready to go is that 1) we'llthus have the domain name registered so that trolls can't steal it; 2) we will havesome time to test ourthings like templates and our designs, hereand onupdate anotherthings MediaWikilike installation;our andtemplates 3)to whenwork Wikiawith goesany overchanges to the tippingwiki point, we will be readyhere.

* <s>Migrate Javascript and CSS</s> {{Done|The essentials should be done at this point}}

* <s>Make sure migrated Javascript and CSS work on the new wiki</s> {{Done|Most of the JS/CSS that are only applicable to Wikia have not been set up on the new wiki, as they are not required}}

* Create localized help pages (a lot of them! you can find some guidance on [[mw:Help:Contents]] and [[wikipedia:Template:Wikipedia help pages]]. [[Help:Contents]] and [[Help:Directory]] has some redlinks you can fill in.)

* <s>Import a database dump from the Wikia wiki into here; we'll need to contact [[m:Staff|Staff]] for help with this.</s>

|As of November 2022, Wikia uses MediaWiki 1.37.6. At the time of this article's introduction, Wikia used MediaWiki version 1.19.24, which went out of support in May 2015.<ref>[[mw:MediaWiki 1.19]]</ref> Wikia heavily customizes their version of MediaWiki, to the point where a version upgrade will bewas extremely difficult, requiring a project called UCP to be finally implemented. It was controversial, leading to the scrapping of many features, and switched Gamepedia wikis to use the Oasis skin.

|Wikia only offers one skin for desktop, called OasisFandomDesktop, and one for mobile, called Mercury. Wikia used to offer Monobook, but this was removed in May 2018.<ref>[[wikia:whttps://community.wikia.com/wiki/Thread:1456214]]</ref>

|Wikia uses banner advertisements, usually injected at the sides of articles or at the very top of page. Inline advertisements have also been reported. Advertisements on Wikia are described as being annoying, disruptive, distracting, and at times malicious, as there have been reports of advertisements redirecting users to inappropriate websites.

|Miraheze does not have advertisements whatsoever, and rely on a [[m:Donate|donation]] model for funding. Because there are no advertisements, there is no chance of having bad ads redirect you to inappropriate places. Having no ads also improves site performance significantly for those without adblocking software.

|Miraheze offers all of the standard namespaces and the wiki-style forum namespaces, and allow for custom namespaces to be created using a web interface. There is no limit to the number of custom namespaces that can be created. This means that {{SITENAME}} can create as many namespaces as it needs, whenever it wants.<ref group="n">For technical purposes, the Fanon, Fanon talk, Game guide, and Game guide talk namespaces on The Sims Wiki on Miraheze have namespace IDs 3000, 3001, 3002, and 3003, respectively.</ref>

|Wikia employs full-time paid staff that are not selected by the Wikia community at large. Staff members say they only intervene with local wiki communities in certain circumstances, such as ToU violations, although they have been known to take actions outside of that scope, including forcibly enabling extensions without community input, changing URLs for SEO purposes without notification,<ref>httphttps://community.wikia.com/wiki/Thread:1572365</ref> and even removing local wiki administrators that object to forced changes.<ref>httphttps://community.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Ciencia_Al_Poder/Portable_Infoboxes,_the_first_step_into_Wikia_taking_control_over_our_content</ref> Wiki communities are not considered to have control over their own site; if they migrate, they are not permitted to redirect the old site to the new one. Wikia Staff may appoint new administrators after removing old ones if a wiki community migrates, as is the case with the Runescape Wiki. Wikia Staff will find ways to forcibly continue to run a wiki even if the old community leaves.

No, unfortunately. This is a difficult decision we've had to make. Since there are ''thousands'' of users that have edited The Sims Wiki, we cannot be 100% sure that all of the usernames used on Wikia are not already being used on Miraheze. To avoid issues with edits being attributed to the wrong users, most edits that have been imported from Wikia are not attributed to any Miraheze account. Your username is still listed on those edits, but they will not link to your userpage. They will appear as '''sims>Username''', or as '''imported>Username''' (e.g. '''sims>k6ka''' or '''imported>k6ka''').