The Sims Wiki:Miraheze migration

The Miraheze logo.

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!)
• Ensure all interwiki links continue to work (since some interwiki codes have been modified on Miraheze that aren't backwards-compatible with Wikia)

At all times we need to make sure that we are not violating the terms of the CC BY-SA license that we use by making sure we provide proper attribution to our edits. This can easily be accomplished by exporting and then importing the page histories of our Wikia wiki correctly, and by providing a URL if that is not possible.

Differences between Wikia and Miraheze

This table will cover the differences between Wikia and Miraheze as it pertains to The Sims Wiki.

Aspect	Wikia	Miraheze
Software	Wikia uses MediaWiki version 1.19.24, which went out of support in May 2015. Wikia heavily customizes their version of MediaWiki, to the point where a version upgrade will be extremely difficult.	Miraheze uses MediaWiki 1.41.0 (5498056) and constantly updates its software, as seen in Special:Version. It strives to upgrade to the latest stable release of MediaWiki whenever possible to ensure that all communities are able to enjoy new features to the wiki software.
Skins	Wikia only offers one skin for desktop, called Oasis, and one for mobile, called Mercury. Wikia used to offer Monobook, but this was removed in May 2018.	Miraheze offers six skins by default that users can enable as they please in Special:Preferences. The Sims Wiki has opted to use the Vector skin as its default skin, which is the same skin used on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects. In addition, Miraheze utilizes the MobileFrontend extension, which delivers a rich, easy to use interface on mobile devices.
System messages	Wikia does not allow free editing of the MediaWiki namespace, only allowing a select whitelist of pages that can be edited by administrators. Changes to any other system message must be reviewed by Staff. Wikia cites "security issues" as the reasoning.	Miraheze allows all wiki administrators to edit the MediaWiki namespace freely by default, allowing for virtually unlimited and unhindered customizability of the site's appearance.
JavaScript pages	JavaScript code that is submitted to community JS pages (which load JavaScript code for all users on the wiki) must be reviewed by a review process before they take effect. This process can take several days. Only JavaScript pages in the MediaWiki namespace are freely editable by administrators. In the userspace, users may only edit the common.js, Wikia.js, or global.js pages; edits to any other JavaScript pages in their userspace are denied.	Miraheze does not enforce any restrictions on how administrators can edit the community JavaScript pages on the wiki. Changes made to these pages take effect immediately after being saved. Users can edit any JavaScript pages in their userspace freely.
Namespaces	For technical purposes, the Fanon, Fanon talk, Game guide, and Game guide talk namespaces have namespace IDs 112, 113, 114, and 115, respectively.	For technical purposes, the Fanon, Fanon talk, Game guide, and Game guide talk namespaces have namespace IDs 3000, 3001, 3002, and 3003, respectively.
Footnotes	If <ref></ref> tags are added to a page without <references /> or {{Reflist}} at the bottom of the page, a cite error message will be shown. When editing and previewing a section with <ref></ref> where <references /> or {{Reflist}} does not exist in the same section but elsewhere in the article, a cite error message will also be shown, even though said message will not actually appear once the page is saved.	If <ref></ref> tags are added to a page without <references /> or {{Reflist}} at the bottom of the page, the contents of the footnotes will appear at the bottom of the page. When editing and previewing a section with <ref></ref> where <references /> or {{Reflist}} does not exist in the same section, the footnotes will appear below the previewed page content. The cite error message will still be shown if <ref group="n"></ref> tags are used without a corresponding <references group="n" /> tag.
Accounts	Wikia's accounts are global across all Wikia wikis. When a user registers for an account, an entry is created in the account creation log only on wikis where the user first registered their account in, meaning that if a user creates their account on Wiki A and then visits Wiki B, the account creation log on Wiki A will record their account creation, but not Wiki B. Users can see which wikis they've contributed to at Community Central.	Miraheze's accounts are global across all Miraheze wikis. Miraheze uses the CentralAuth extension that Wikimedia also uses. When a user registers for an account, an entry is created in Special:CentralAuth that lists the date and time their global account was created; this global account is what users log in to, and will be connected to any local account on individual wikis that belong to the owner of the global account. If a user visits a wiki while logged in where they do not have a local account on yet, the CentralAuth system will automatically create a local account on that wiki for that user to use. These local account creations are logged in the account creation log on every wiki where a local account was created. A user's global account status, along with any local accounts they have attached to that account, are listed in Special:CentralAuth and is publicly viewable by anyone.

What to do with the old wiki

Wikia won't allow us to close the old wiki, nor will they provide means to let us redirect pages from the old wiki onto the new. This means that migrating our readerbase will be difficult.

We may need to take cues from other wikis that have migrated and see how they managed to do it. The Sims community is very widespread, so this will be a difficult process. We'll need to see if other websites are willing to update their links to point to the Miraheze wiki, and we'll have to contend with the fact that there will probably always be some links still pointing to the Wikia wiki, given how we've been there since 2005.

While Wikia won't let us replace entire pages pointing to the new wiki, we might be able to discreetly point to our new wiki, though how we'll be able to do this is up for debate.