Wowpedia is a Warcraft wiki, officially forked from WoWWiki as of 20 October 2010. It is hosted by Curse, Inc. which was separate from WoWWiki until 2019, when it merged with Fandom, the host of WoWWiki.
Background[]
WoWWiki originally started as an independent site, but moved to Wikia in 2007. Due to irreconcilable differences with Wikia, most of the administration and members of the WoWWiki community resolved in October 2010 that they would leave Wikia. Their preference at the time was to remove WoWWiki itself from the Wikia network, taking the domain and WoWWiki name with them, but Wikia policy is to not remove wikis from use when they leave. As Wikia refused to sell the domain name, a new site was set up, and Curse offered to host it.
Wowpedia's initial database contained a complete copy of articles from WoWWiki as of 18 October 2010. Edits made to WoWWiki after that date will not automatically appear on Wowpedia and vice versa. Due to this, articles should vary over time between the two sites, further differentiating them from one another.
Content deleted from WoWWiki before the fork can be undeleted at WoWWiki, but was not imported to Wowpedia, so doesn't exist there and can't be recovered unless it is undeleted at WoWWiki and then copied.
Copying content between the sites[]
Due to the shared CC-BY-SA license used by both sites (as of Jan 2011, at least), copying content from one site to another is allowed if proper attribution is given.
WoWWiki has directed users to use the {{Wowpedia credit}} template when copying content from Wowpedia.
Wowpedia did not have a process to attribute content copied from WoWWiki[2] from January 2011 to June 2011,[3] but now has a similar template to {{Wowpedia credit}} called Template:WoWWiki credit. Wowpedia however has so far not had the same need to copy content at the same extent as WoWWiki,[4].
Differences[]
There are a number of differences between WoWWiki and Wowpedia, some imperceptible to the lay user. The most obvious are that the sidebar is in its original place and there is no fixed width on Wowpedia.
Many of the new 'social' features introduced by Wikia, such as Facebook Connect, avatars and user blogs, do not exist on the new site. There are no plans to implement these social features in the future. Additionally, watchlists will remain private, which is contrary to Wikia's new implementation defaults of publicly followed lists (although there is a preference[5] that allows Followed lists to be made private).
Many automated bots that were previously running on WoWWiki are now instead running on Wowpedia.
Reception[]
The decision to move was unanimous among WoWWiki's administrators, minus Kirkburn, who is a Wikia staff member. Virtually all of the site's active users have transferred to Wowpedia, but you are free to stay with WoWWiki or even contribute to both sites. Among other Warcraft fan sites, reception was universally positive, with Wowpedia described as "a better user experience with accurate up to date information".[6]
On December 4, 2010, Blizzard Entertainment began to incorporate links to Wowpedia, as well as the database site Wowhead, into the new version of its World of Warcraft Community Site.[7] Though there was no mention of WoWWiki and Blizzard has no official position on the matter or desire to become involved, this has been viewed as a tacit endorsement of the switchover.
During the transition phase, there was a disagreement over WoWWiki administrators leaving messages to people informing them about the new site, but Wikia's initially heavy-handed response has since softened. However, Wikia policy remains that new users are not to be encouraged to migrate to Wowpedia, and messages to this effect are considered spam.
Future of WoWWiki and reaction among other Wikia sites[]
Wikia officially has no plans to close WoWWiki but has struggled to find people to administer the site, although one user, Fandyllic, offered to step in due to past conflicts with Wowpedia's administrators. Wikia started a giveaway in an attempt to attract people and hired a contractor to perform some updates. Some data has been imported from the new encyclopedia and vice versa (although Wowpedia has no specific mechanism for attributing content copied from WoWWiki);[8] the licensing of the content allows this in both directions. There have been some improvements such as restoring tooltip functionality (the iconic WoW descriptions of items, NPCs, etc. that appear when your mouse hovers over something - these were initially broken with the new Wikia skin) and a poll asking whether some of the more obnoxious Wikia features should be turned off.
Wowpedia was not the only Wikia site to decide to leave, and some of the smaller wikis banded together in the "Anti-Wikia Alliance" - a group of former Wikia members who are upset with the policy of keeping sites open when the communities decide to leave. Wowpedia is not part of this alliance and its administrators have discouraged the vandalism that accompanied the Wikia revolt, although a Wowpedia administrator[9] did try to mass recruit[10] users to Wowpedia soon after the split. It remains to be seen if the other breakaway wikis will enjoy the kind of success expected of Wowpedia.
Reclaiming your user name[]
In addition to WoWWiki's content, Wowpedia contains a copy of the user database and has a tool to 'reclaim' your user name. All you have to do is click on the 'Log in/create account' button and it should say 'Have a WoWWiki account?'[11] Once you click on the reclaim link and put in your information, the site will generate a code; you can enter this code in an edit summary on your WoWWiki user page to confirm your identity. Remember that the code must be placed in the edit summary and not the actual page. You must make some sort of change to the page for it to show up. If desired, you may add {{Delete my user pages}} which will flag the old page for deletion.
No edits made to WoWWiki (minus edits on deleted pages) prior to 18 October 2010 are lost. The entire history up to that point, including your user page and any subpages, will be intact.
References[]
- ^ a b As of 18-Dec-2013.
- ^ Wowpedia credit template on WoWWiki should be used instead section of Forum:Attribution of content from Wowpedia on WoWWiki at Wowpedia.org
- ^ Log of Template:WoWWiki credit at Wowpedia.org
- ^ [1]
- ^ See "Make my followed pages lists private" checkbox in first area at the top of "Followed pages" tab in preferences
- ^ Jason Zimmerman 2010-10-28. Wowpedia.org: Your New Warcraft Encyclopedia.
- ^ Blizzard Entertainment 2010-12-07. The New World of Warcraft Community Site.
- ^ As of March 2011
- ^ User:Gourra at Wowpedia.org is a Wowpedia administrator as of 20-Oct-2011
- ^ User talk: contributions by User:Gourra; more are not listed because they were deleted.
- ^ Reclaim user account page
External links[]
- Site
- News
- Wowpedia was back up as of 26-Jun-2011 4 AM.
Curse World of Warcraft News New WoW Community Site Launches, Includes Wowpedia Integration by Kody Dec 06, 2010