Talk: Domain name

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Feedback

Please try and bear in mind this is just a URL change, and try and stay calm. This isn't going to be happening immediately, and there is still a fair bit of time to let people know. For the vote (or whatever) on the domain to move to, a sitenotice will probably be appropriate. Finally, please do not try and turn this into a vote - constructive comments please! Thanks. Kirkburn  talk  contr 20:49, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Contrary to what Wikia claims to have "done for us" (and as you, Kirkburn, are an agent of Wikia, I find it hard to believe you when you say it hasn't been "take, take, take"), the only positives I see are they keep the wiki version up-to-date and allow Blizzard to advertise on us - who is to say Blizzard wouldn't be advertising on us without Wikia (ignoring the fact that Wikia is quite obviously - and graciously - providing the webhosting)? Other than that, they've forced a new skin on us, forced us to merge our usernames, forced us to be bogged down with useless extensions and crappy JavaScript, all while appearing to not care what the users want. Woo, WikiaStats - big deal. Wikia Help - big deal. Yes, SEO is cool, but I remain unconvinced they've done anything which qualifies anywhere near balancing out to not being "take, take, take" on their part.

The move is certainly reasonable from the point of view of helping Wikia, but I don't see it helping WoWWiki.

On a side note, I personally hope the blog thing stays separate from the rest of the site. WoWWiki should remain encyclopedic no matter where it is. --PcjGamepedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!•

CSpecial:Editcount/Pcj contributions and counting) 21:05, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Need I point out the number of things that have gone through WoWWiki:Server requests since Wikia took over? This is stuff that would never have happened had we stayed independent (with the traffic we have, that would have been impossible anyway). If you have requests for the future, let me know, or put it on that page. Out techies have limited resources, but we do try and get as much done as possible. Kirkburn  talk  contr 21:11, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

PS. Don't read too much into the blog stuff atm. It's still in fairly early stages - it won't, however, interfere with any other wiki activities. Kirkburn  talk  contr 21:14, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Most of the stuff on Server requests are simple changes to LocalSettings.php, installing extensions, and repairing broken extensions. On a wiki separate from Wikia, this would probably be more simple for someone to manage. I wasn't here when Rustak managed things and I don't know how quick he was to make those sorts of changes, but generally speaking it looks like most of those were simple changes. The more advanced requests (i.e. my armory thing, Adys's OpenWDB idea, and extensions with difficult installs) were denied. --PcjGamepedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!•

CSpecial:Editcount/Pcj contributions and counting) 21:19, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Not to put too fine a point on it ... he didn't. He kept the server up, and did rare upgrades, but that's all. I don't blame him, it was expensive, hard to reach the server and he was busy. But we seriously did have very very little support. Kirkburn  talk  contr 21:24, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the more advanced requests - it would require dedicated techie time to implement. I wouldn't say they're denied, it's just a "not at the moment" thing. The techies just have more important things to work on that affect all Wikia. It's still possible for the future. Kirkburn  talk  contr 21:28, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Very well, for the domain name thing, I am resolved to vote "not at the moment", of course pending any future developments. Not denied, just not now. Don't call me, I'll call you. You understand. --PcjGamepedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!•

CSpecial:Editcount/Pcj contributions and counting) 21:32, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I understand. I am absolutely open to requests for new projects for the techs, especially given my new job title. Kirkburn  talk  contr 21:38, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I really don't like the idea of a blog for RP'ers on WoWWiki. The way I see it is that people will use WoWWiki as a blog instead of a site that is, you know, actually a blog site. It will probably generate more pageviews for Wikia to use as statistics, 'cause that's all they care about, despite that we have a page about Wikisquatting. But hey, we sold ourselves to Wikia, so we'll just have to take it. User:Gourra/Sig2 21:17, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

As long as we have rules regarding what people can post about (e.g. must be WoW-related), it would run just like other pages. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work - but not trying is silly. Anyway, as I said blogs are very much in the development phase. Kirkburn  talk  contr 21:24, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

The way it is described, I do not think the domain really matters. A free vote would only work if the only people who care to vote are the more experienced users who know what they are talking about (myself possibly not included), but it usually works out that way. I assume this "blog style addition" is similar to Halopedia's, but regardless, if WoWWiki is not a forum, why are we making it a blog? There are certainly some users who I will not obviously name who use WoWWiki for such things, but I feel if this is emphasized the resulting corruption will spread greatly. Am I reading too much into it?--User:Sandwichman2448/Sig 21:33, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Okay, enough questions about the blog thing now :P It would be similar, but better developed than the Halo thing (and lessons learned from it are being taken into account). However, for us I think it would be targeted at the RP community alone, so they can do more for their character's stories without worrying about where to put it - not as a general "blog about your day" thing.

I do want to hear about what domain name we choose though. I personally don't have a strong opinion about any of the three I listed (wow.wikia, wowwiki.wikia, warcraft.wikia), though I think I lean towards warcraft.wikia.com as a long term name. Kirkburn  talk  contr 21:43, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't have much time, but here is my feedback about it:

• Ha ha ha ha ha.

Ady_s 16:08, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to say this, but after over a week of thinking about this, I have to say that I think it's a very bad thing overall for WoWWiki. Although it's a free site, community driven, WoWWiki is a significant brand now, and this type of change is neither beneficial, necessary, or helpful to the brand. By all means discreetly and subtley use the brand to promote Wikia (i.e. without horribly changing for the worse). In the worst case, this change could be extremely damaging to the brand. There is a strong status to having www.<brand>.com, especially when that is a well established, popular, and respected brand. I'd even go as far as to say that it's a downright stupid change.

If the advertisers can't cope with aggregating a major independent brand alongside the Wikia brand, someone isn't doing the sales, marketing, and negotiation properly, and it's time that someone more suitable took over that role. It could also be very damaging for Wikia in the future - other non-Wikia wikis that could be a source of new business may find changing the primary domain to be a show-stopper and look elsewhere. Personally, I'm beginning to question the merits of having Wikia supporting WoWWiki - maybe it's time that WoWWiki looked elsewhere for sponsorship and support. --Murph (talk • contr) 16:07, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I've been thinking on that last as well... However, we're pretty big. I have an idea for one or two, but I don't know if it would go anywhere... --Sky (t · c · w) 15:05, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Vote and timeline

Undoubtedly WoWWiki has benefited from Wikia, but Wikia has forced alot of change on WoWWiki in a relatively short period of time. I do think we should have a vote among users to pick the subdomain. This would at least be a nod to choice, unlike quite a few of the recent disruptive changes by Wikia. I think even Wikia can admit they didn't handle the new-skin/advertising change very well. If they had waited a few weeks longer after getting feedback to make the change, alot more folks would have probably either supported it or not as actively opposed it. However, the largely negative reaction did result in some changes to the implementation that Wikia can be given credit for doing (turning of ads for logged in users in some cases and when editing).

Here are some concrete suggestions I would give to lessen the negative reaction and make participants feel less like the change is just something foreced without feedback:

• Vote on the primary subdomain. Start with some basic choices (wow.wikia.com, wowwwiki.wikia.com, warcraft.wikia.com, etc.) and ask for some alternatives from users for 1 week before voting starts. I would prefer super-majority wins (>60% or something) rather than simple majority. We should also try to figure out a good minimum number of votes (50?), so it doesn't seem like a small group has railroaded the vote in a short time.
• Wikia should put some work into an "FAQ for domain name change" that explains any usability differences after the change, because despite assurances, there will be differences. This means Wikia needs to do some research, but WoWWiki users should and probably will point out differences beforehand (problems with cached search stuff? templates that are parsing and expect the old-style domain for some reason?).
• Wikia needs to be less vague about timelines so any things like voting can be planned to fit to the expected change (assuming it isn't like in a week which would be VERY BAD). Both admins and users could use a drop-dead date for feedback.

-- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 2:51 PM PST 20 Oct 2008

I've split this into a new section - my intention wasn't to make feedback be the title for everything - just my first comment :P To answer your points:

• I do agree with pretty much everything. We could have handled the ads better - unfortunately, being a very new business style with no-one to follow, it does result in some stumbles. We are still working on ads, refining and improving how we present them. As for how the skin and ads came at once - I would also have liked these to be spread out over a longer time to allow it more time to settle, but it was the nature of how the skin and ads are linked that it had to occur that way. I should be able to reassure that we've no other scary changes to launch upon users like this - now it should be mostly new tools, bug fixes and upgrades.
• As for what a user could expect: we have done this before, and we know what to expect - there should be no changes for the end user, apart from a URL change. Google might take a short while to reindex under the new domain, but this is something we should be able to notify them of directly.
• As for a timeline - weeks, rather than months. I should be able to give better dates fairly soon, but for now, there's plenty of time to take a vote.
• A supermajority vote with as many voters as possible sounds sensible, though it would be best to start with a discussion of which is "best", so it's not a reactive vote based on who can recruit the most support.

Kirkburn  talk  contr 22:04, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Provisional timeline

We plan to do the move on December 1st, should give us plenty of time over November to decide what address is best, whilst avoiding the expansion release. Kirkburn  talk  contr 18:25, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

How about a poll? User:Gourra/Sig2 18:28, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm wary of that as a "final" method, as it could be abused, and it only allows a limited style of feedback. Seems reasonable for getting a general insight though. Kirkburn  talk  contr 18:33, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, I think the three most obvious choices are warcraft.wikia.com, wow.wikia.com, and wowwiki.wikia.com. Any others? --PcjGamepedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!•

CSpecial:Editcount/Pcj contributions and counting) 18:45, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Update: Any move won't occur until at least January now. Regarding choices, I think between the three mentioned above seems fair. I haven't thought of any others since then. Kirkburn  talk  contr 14:00, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

So, what you're saying is that there will not be any discussion or consideration of staying with www.wowwiki.com? In my opinion, that is an outright abuse of WoWWiki by Wikia. Changing the domain provides absolutely no benefit whatsoever to WoWWiki, is entirely unnecessary, and is extremely detrimental to the WoWWiki brand. It will also most likely help drive future potential business away from Wikia. The justification for the move is at best flimsy, and at worst non-existent. So my vote is to leave wowwiki.com alone, fire the people who are responsible for sales, marketing, and negotiation with advertisers, and hire some competent people to perform that function. --Murph (talk • contr) 04:59, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

Update

The date is now set for January 7th, so we need to start working out what address we should move to. The three candidates so far are:

• wow.wikia
• wowwiki.wikia
• warcraft.wikia

As previously mentioned, a vote may be a sensible idea (though the result wouldn't be binding). Kirkburn  talk  contr 16:20, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

If this is the appropriate page to start the non-binding vote, please do so. -Howbizr (talk) 16:36, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Not too pleased that Wikia is giving less than 2 weeks to finalize the name change. Kirkburn, you should start the vote, since you're Wikia's representative. -- Fandyllic (talk · contr) 11:56 AM PST 29 Dec 2008

Sure, I'll set up something later or early tomorrow. Probably a text version (for arguments and discussion), and one using the extension (as a quick popularity guide). Kirkburn  talk  contr 19:28, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Whatever it will be, and not Wowwiki.com, I'll be leaving. User:Gourra/Sig2 00:20, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm a WoWWiki admin, not a wow.wikia admin or whatever alike. Demote me when the change happens. Ady_s 00:30, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Again, only the URL changes, as you know. I'd be surprised if most people noticed. It does not affect content or community. Kirkburn  talk  contr 00:47, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Are you kidding me or what? I've been using Gmail for years and I still notice the mail.google.com redirect. Everyone will notice, you know that just as much as everyone else in here opposed to the move. Whatever. Ady_s 01:34, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Lump me in with the "rather ticked off" camp. Wikia sure has a knack for pissing off its community of late. Didn't they say they were explicitly trying to avoid that? --k_d³ 02:01, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

And so it begins, the demise of WoWWiki, cya!  D ♠ T ♣ C ♦ I ♥ WP 02:16, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

See update from Gil: http://www.wowwiki.com/index.php?title=WoWWiki_talk:Village_pump&curid=23440&diff=1723415&oldid=1723299 Kirkburn  talk  contr 12:34, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

This is just silly, +1 for keeping wowwiki.com, -1 to any *.wikia.com. Fully agree on what pcj said, I think most of us regular editors were 90% only concerned for hosting/bandwidth. Neither the added fluff nor the user merge was in any way a big "benefit" for WoWWiki. If it wasn't for load problems, I bet the number of editors from 2006 could still cope with the growing amount of info that needs to be updated. We're here for technical reasons, not for socializing with some furry wiki editors or players of other MMOs Armagone (User_talk:Armagone Special:Contributions/Armagone)  00:29, 31 December 2008 (UTC)