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m (→‎Patch changes: clean up using AWB)
 
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{{Forumheader|WoWWiki general}}
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[[Category:Requests for comments]]
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<!-- Please put your content under this paragraph. Be sure to sign your edits with four tildes ~~~~ -->
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|icon=INV_Misc_Gem_Pearl_04
 
|name=Essence-Infused Moonstone
 
|quality=Common
 
|bind=BoP
 
|unique=
 
|effect=Use: Set in the Raven's Claw in Sethekk Halls to unleash the essences of the hawk, eagle, and falcon and challenge the raven god.
 
|ilvl=1
 
}}</onlyinclude>
 
The '''Essence-Infused Moonstone''' is a key that allows druids to [[The Raven's Claw|summon]] the Raven God [[Anzu]] in a heroic [[Sethekk Halls]] instance run.
 
   
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On [[WW:IRC|IRC]] we've been bouncing around the idea (for awhile) of leaving Wikia, checking out options, etc... Wikia plans to [[Forum:Your First Look at the New Wikia|move us to a new skin in October]] (phasing out the old Monaco skin) and has already enacted rules limiting customization. Sadly, this leaves little control in the hands of WoWWiki users and admins to make the wiki look like WoWWiki always has and to maintain it in a way that reflect's WoWWiki's own interests. WoWWiki (and myself personally) have nothing against progress or change, but sadly the "new" look is not conducive to the wiki experience (you can see examples if you would like on other Wikia wikis) - the focus is on getting traffic to other Wikia wikis.
Summoning and defeating Anzu is the final step in the [[Swift Flight Form quest chain|druid epic flight form quest line]]. Once the quest line is completed, the druid will receive another moonstone that can be used in future runs through heroic Sethekk Halls. Only druids can use the key.
 
   
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In any case, I feel strongly that we need to investigate our options and see if there is another choice. One problem is getting Wikia to let go of the WoWWiki domain name - they own it and may be reluctant to let it go. Most importantly, I want to make sure we have consensus on this; if we "move" the wiki to another host Wikia policy is to continue it on their own servers, so if we move without getting consensus there will be a split involved in the userbase.
Note that the moonstone is treated as a key and is therefore stored in your keyring.
 
   
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Anyway, I would like comments on this. --{{User:Pcj/sig}} 00:10, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
==Source==
 
Contained in {{loot|common|Morthis' Materials}}.<br>
 
Rewarded from {{questlong|neutral|70|Eternal Vigilance}}.
 
   
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== Direct comments ==
==Patch changes==
 
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:I've been firing off emails of my own in preparation for this forum post (rather, the one I was planning on posting a week from now once more people had a chance to see the new skin)... The new ToU has decidedly pushed me away from the "let's see if we can fix it" stance I've attempted to carry until now. I'm nearly ready to fork at this point, to be quite honest.
{{Patch 2.3.0|note=Added.}}
 
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:I hardly expect wikia's going to give up the wowwiki.com domain -- we're 10% of their global page views! They would much rather we fork and split contributors than completely move away so that they can still have some ad impressions. (look at tfwiki vs transformers.wikia). Instead I've been trying to come up with a new domain name we can use that'll forward wherever the new wiki ends up.
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:Anyway, the skin still is beta and I'm going to try to hold out hope for sanity from wikia for another week or two before I start pushing my hosting proposals along. --<span style="border-bottom: 1px dotted;cursor:help;" title="WoWWiki bureaucrat">[[User:Kaydeethree|k]]_[[User_talk:Kaydeethree|d]]<sup>[[Special:Contributions/Kaydeethree|3]]</sup></span> 00:22, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
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::Well, if you want to pay for it - and preserve the whole database (all 87,000 articles of it, lol) - be my guest...but if it's a matter of looks, I honestly don't see a problem. As long as we can still read it, and still edit it...then does it matter? --[[User:Joshmaul|Joshmaul]] ([[User talk:Joshmaul|talk]]) 00:31, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
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:::The main problem outside of appearance is navigation is going to suck. I'm on the new skin right now and basically the only way to get around is to type in the URLs. The search box doesn't even show up the whole time. Plus, if we want a change, we're at Wikia's mercy - we can't change most things on the interface now. --{{User:Pcj/sig}} 00:33, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
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::::Hmm...I see where that would be a problem. And I apologize if my previous comment came across as rude - didn't mean to be so. I didn't see any other problem besides the potential for getting the crappy white Wikia backgrounds. *chuckles* --[[User:Joshmaul|Joshmaul]] ([[User talk:Joshmaul|talk]]) 01:44, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
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:::::Don't worry, I asked for comments. Anyway, next week you'll be able to try it for yourself on WoWWiki, but I wanted to get the ball rolling ASAP. --{{User:Pcj/sig}} 01:47, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
   
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::I am slightly more optimistic about retaining the domain name, though only about || this much. wowwiki.net essentially looks available if we really have to go that route (having a looksee at godaddy), and I think that would be a more appropriate TLD anyway, given our content.
==External links==
 
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::My question is: Where do we go? We have too many hits to just walk up to any old random provider and say "gief bandwidth". If we do, who knows how much in the necessary fees we'll need to come with? Who, of us, have the money? I don't expect much help from the community, but maybe I'm being doom-and-gloomy. Going the other way and finding us a random provider that would take us in for free, what will we pay for in advertisements?...
<!-- Read http://www.wowwiki.com/WoWWiki:External_links before posting your links here.
 
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::Then, of course, there's the route of "approach these companies which are familiar to the WoW crowd", which kd3 hints at [perhaps admins could get a summary via the email list about what exactly he's been emailing around about?], as well as those tossings around on IRC. I'm most favorable to this option as I know a few here who have previously discussed it are as well, but who would do so? We usually end up with "not a one", but we haven't really contacted (m)any of them...
Links that do not conform to the rules will be DELETED.
 
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::Yeah, this looks bleak to me. But I'm tired and stressed with schoolwork. --[[User:Sky2042|Sky]] ([[User talk:Sky2042|t]] · [[Special:Contributions/Sky2042|c]]) 04:10, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
Repeat violations may result in a BAN.
 
Have a nice day. :) -->
 
{{Elinks-item|32449}}
 
   
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:::If there's an issue about money, I would be able to help. But we'll see how this progresses, and how much it'll cost in the end. --{{User:Gourra/Sig2}} 06:06, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
[[Category:World of Warcraft key items]]
 
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[[Category:Druids]]
 
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::::I'll be sending a heads-up to the sysop list once I'm done with school today (9-10 hours from now). --<span style="border-bottom: 1px dotted;cursor:help;" title="WoWWiki bureaucrat">[[User:Kaydeethree|k]]_[[User_talk:Kaydeethree|d]]<sup>[[Special:Contributions/Kaydeethree|3]]</sup></span> 17:17, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
[[Category:World of Warcraft common quest rewards]]
 
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I'm not an editor here on the WoWWiki, but I thought I'd mention this here since you guys are probably the highest profile wiki considering moving: With regards to independent hosting, what about pooling resources with another few wikis who are considering moving? I'm not familiar with the current rates for hosting, but it seems like the cost would be a little easier to swallow if it were divvied up among several communities. I'm waiting until the 6th to talk with my community about migration, so I can't vouch for us yet, but there are already a few other wikis who could join forces with you if you do decide to move. -- [[User:Nonoitall|Nonoitall]] 09:08, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
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I do like the idea of banding together with other communities that are looking to move, if it means that we have to ask for donations from people then so be it. If we get as many page views as people have been saying, then it would only take a small percentage of people to donate relatively small sums before it all added up. Also, what do people think about asking for help from Blizz? I know that I use WoWWiki for everything, whenever I try and use the official WoW site, it seems clunky and not as informative as this site. Perhaps we might be able to talk to Blizz about becoming the official WoW encyclopaedia? [[User:Jeffajaffa|Jeffajaffa]] ([[User talk:Jeffajaffa|talk]]) 19:55, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
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:WoWWiki is already an official fansite. As for becoming ''the'' official WoW encyclopaedia, in the stead of the small one on the official site, WoWWiki is by no means perfectly accurate. I like to think that we are slightly more accurate every day, but it still contains content that was made up or misinterpreted by fans.--{{User:Sandwichman2448/Sig}} 20:55, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
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: I don't support banding together, only because it will add to the logistical quagmire. It sounds good in theory and emotion, but the complexity of the move will only go up. Also, people are cheap. Asking for donations won't last. They'll probably just go to some other resource.--<span style="font-size: 0.85em; padding: .2em .3em; border-top: 1px #504c50 solid; border-bottom: 1px #504c50 solid; background-color: #2C2C2C">'''[[User:Hobinheim|<span style="cursor:help;color:#D74706">Hobinheim</span>]]''' <small>([[User talk:Hobinheim|<span style="color:#F67A15">talk</span>]] · [[Special:Contributions/Hobinheim|<span style="color:#FFF310">contr</span>]])</small></span> 22:08, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
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::I agree with Hobinheim, if WoWWiki is going to go independent then it needs to be independent. We can applaud and advise other sites' efforts to leave Wikia, but I don't think we should provide monetary support. --{{User:Pcj/sig}} 22:15, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
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:::As much as I love the idea of us going independent, the question remains, how are we going to fund this? It seems whatever we do, we are going to need money. Whilst adds may be able to cover the running costs, any move to go independent is going to need a reasonable amount of start up cash. Perhaps people would be more willing to pay if they knew that once the start up fees had been covered, there would be no more need for donations. --[[User:Jeffajaffa|Jeffajaffa]] ([[User talk:Jeffajaffa|talk]]) 01:05, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
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::It doesn't sound like you guys understand the true cost of hosting this site. Unless you've got a handful of users each willing to drop thousands of dollars just for the initial move and set up - it won't work. But you've gotten way ahead of yourself - Wikia isn't selling WoWWiki. If the users, even the core ones, split off - this wowwiki will stay - and it'll still get most of the hits from the general populace. Trends will stay the same. The new forced skin is horrible for wikis, but sadly they've got this particular site by the balls - no matter how much people don't want to admit that.[[User:HooperBandP|HooperBandP]] ([[User talk:HooperBandP|talk]]) 01:03, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
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::: The only reason that this site is as popular as it is is because it is the best source of information for WoW. If there is a split, then it looks likely that the key members of this site would move to the new site, thus making it bigger and better, and leave this site to wither and die. If we can get a vote on how many people would stay and how many would be prepared to move, that might give us an idea of where to go from here. --[[User:Jeffajaffa|Jeffajaffa]] ([[User talk:Jeffajaffa|talk]]) 01:10, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
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::::True, the '''''"key members"''''' would indeed move, most likely, and continue to do great with a second site. But this site would still be here. And the common user would still come to it. And, especially with a new expansion looming, new users would fill the void. They may be slower to get even half as good as those that leave, but for every one person who is aware enough and goes to the new site, 100 will still come here. Its just how it is.[[User:HooperBandP|HooperBandP]] ([[User talk:HooperBandP|talk]]) 01:20, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
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:::::I doubt it, you are assuming other sites will stay the same in how they link to the current WoWWiki and ignoring word of mouth. --{{User:Pcj/sig}} 01:26, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
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::::::Don't think that most people would have the loyalty to stay with the "True" site? If the new site is better than what this site would become, then people will use it. --[[User:Jeffajaffa|Jeffajaffa]] ([[User talk:Jeffajaffa|talk]]) 01:29, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
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:First, to Hooper and true cost: We're getting estimates up there. The cost is high, we know. Ads would probably be required. :)
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:Second: We're not ahead of ourselves. We're actually operating under the assumption we don't end up with the domain. For hits in general (as well as new contributors!), we can do things to shift users away from here which are fairly non-malicious for Wikia. If the main contributors up and leave, this wiki will die. It's held up as it is by the threads of a select 30 or 40.
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:Third: We're already talking to WoW sites about linking elsewhere. They know what it means to have a community (else they wouldn't have userbases of their own), and that's what Wikia doesn't have. For all that Wikia has increasingly pushed the "social" aspect, that's not what community is.
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:Fourth for Mgg: Suffice it to say now that we have a secure option that is not Wikia and are looking at the ''others''/doing price checks for individual hosting. :) --[[User:Sky2042|Sky]] ([[User talk:Sky2042|t]] · [[Special:Contributions/Sky2042|c]]) 02:14, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
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::Yeah, hosting costs money but "thousands of dollars just for the initial move and set up" sounds a little exaggerated to me. If you got a few dedicated editors together who were each willing to commit a few bucks a month on their hobby, I don't think that hosting costs would be so high as to be unmanageable — even without ads. (Though ads could certainly help.) I'd certainly be willing to part with a bit of cash each month for my wiki. That's kind of why I suggested getting several wikis together. Bandwidth tends to cost less per GB when you're buying more of it, lessening the load for everyone in the group.
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::Still, I understand and appreciate the logistical complications of working in other communities, and I'm not criticizing if you guys would rather stand alone. -- [[User:Nonoitall|Nonoitall]] 02:30, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
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==Domain and Hosting Issues==
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So, if we do fork, there's no way wikia's going to sell us (our new host) the wowwiki.com domain. So, short of going to "wowwiki.net", which would be kinda shady in most users' (and google's!) eyes... what else could we use? --<span style="border-bottom: 1px dotted;cursor:help;" title="WoWWiki bureaucrat">[[User:Kaydeethree|k]]_[[User_talk:Kaydeethree|d]]<sup>[[Special:Contributions/Kaydeethree|3]]</sup></span> 21:50, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
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:The problem with domain names suggestions is people can grab them. :( --{{User:Pcj/sig}} 21:58, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
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Regarding the issue of hosting, it's a bit of a long shot but what about asking Blizzard to host? -- [[User:Dark T Zeratul|Dark T Zeratul]] ([[User talk:Dark T Zeratul|talk]]) 03:29, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
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:We are asking multiple places, it's a bit premature to go over options at the moment. Mainly we want to get users' opinions and solidify what we can do before presenting what we've got. Expect to see more details in the coming week(s) as the skin rolls out and we get more interest in moving off Wikia. :P Feel free to suggest ideas though, especially if you have contacts. --{{User:Pcj/sig}} 03:35, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
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::Get Curse to host it.{{User:Ackis/Sig}} 18:14, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
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:::I think not! --[[User:Joshmaul|Joshmaul]] ([[User talk:Joshmaul|talk]]) 18:40, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
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:::Let's keep our options open at the moment, Curse is a valid option but I agree with Joshmaul, let's not jump from one corporate overlord to another without considering our other options. --{{User:Pcj/sig}} 22:16, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
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OK, one of the users of Wikisimpsons contacted ShoutWiki and they said that they would have an option to upgrade to Monaco once they reach MediaWiki 1.16. It will cost though apparently. I am not sure if this is one instalment or monthly although I hope it is not the latter. Vector will be available once they update too. ☆<span style="font-family:Algerian">[[User:Solar Dragon|<span style="color:green">The</span>]] [[User talk:Solar Dragon|<span style="color:red">Solar</span>]] [[Special:Contributions/Solar Dragon|<span style="color:blue">Dragon</span>]]</span>☆ 06:16, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
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:ShoutWiki is an option, they're just getting started though so I'm not really excited about it but we'll see. --{{User:Pcj/sig}} 11:41, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
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Once we find a place to host this, we might consider asking Blizzard to give us a sub-domain. That is "wiki.worldofwarcraft.com" would be nice. Not sure they would go for it, but could solve some of our name change problems for the better. I still think that hosting it is going to be the major deal. I could do it easily at my place of employment. At least the technical aspects would be easy. Polictical, not so much. And would you want to tie into a "Free" hosting environment if it meant you had to move if I changed jobs? [[User:Mgg4|Mgg4]] ([[User talk:Mgg4|talk]]) 23:32, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
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:Do you work for a webhost or something? Any idea what it would cost without your "employee discount"? --{{User:Pcj/sig}} 23:37, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
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::I do web hosting, but it's for our own software as a service. We are not a "Web Hosting Company" in the way you would think of one. I could check into that if it becomes necessary, however, there are web-hosting services that we could look into, if we wanted to maintain the code/pages ourselves. Some of the other groups I belong to get some pretty good deals. Now the volume of this wiki might be a problem at some of those ISP/ASPs, but I'm sure something could be negotiated. Are we at the point where we want to start seriously looking at this yet? [[User:Mgg4|Mgg4]] ([[User talk:Mgg4|talk]]) 23:58, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
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:::We're at the point where we're considering the costs/benefits of each option so we can decide what is attainable vs. not, so yes I would say this would be a good time for that. --{{User:Pcj/sig}} 00:03, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
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I totally support moving it if puts power back in our hands. ::coughs up dust:: Timing it with the release of Cataclysm would be great. How much does it cost to keep a site like WoWWiki afloat anyway?--<span style="font-size: 0.85em; padding: .2em .3em; border-top: 1px #504c50 solid; border-bottom: 1px #504c50 solid; background-color: #2C2C2C">'''[[User:Hobinheim|<span style="cursor:help;color:#D74706">Hobinheim</span>]]''' <small>([[User talk:Hobinheim|<span style="color:#F67A15">talk</span>]] · [[Special:Contributions/Hobinheim|<span style="color:#FFF310">contr</span>]])</small></span> 04:00, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
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:Bandwidth would probably be the biggest concern - according to [http://www.quantcast.com/wowwiki.com] WoWWiki gets about 2 million pageviews per day. As far as space needed, the database size (not including images) is about 2.6 GB, including images is probably quite a bit more. And then room for growth. It could be a fair penny if we went independent, and then we would probably have to negotiate for ads to pay for it, which would be more work. Best option would probably be to get into some other existing system, but we shouldn't rule out the independent idea out if that sounds like fun to someone. --{{User:Pcj/sig}} 04:05, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
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:: I like the independent idea because it helps keep us out of messes like this. And a raw 2M hits per day won't be a big deal at the start since people will be initially confused and divided about the split. But once people start to get the message and Cataclysm comes out, all bets are off I guess. It doesn't sound like fun as much as it might be a necessary evil. Can Google ads at least put a dent in that? =)--<span style="font-size: 0.85em; padding: .2em .3em; border-top: 1px #504c50 solid; border-bottom: 1px #504c50 solid; background-color: #2C2C2C">'''[[User:Hobinheim|<span style="cursor:help;color:#D74706">Hobinheim</span>]]''' <small>([[User talk:Hobinheim|<span style="color:#F67A15">talk</span>]] · [[Special:Contributions/Hobinheim|<span style="color:#FFF310">contr</span>]])</small></span> 04:10, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
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:::Just a general FYI if anyone's still looking for me (pretty sure I've got all of the off-list emails answered): I'm crashing for the night--gotta open at work tomorrow (later today >.<). I'll be back around 14:00 EDT (18:00 UTC/10:00 PDT). --<span style="border-bottom: 1px dotted;cursor:help;" title="WoWWiki bureaucrat">[[User:Kaydeethree|k]]_[[User_talk:Kaydeethree|d]]<sup>[[Special:Contributions/Kaydeethree|3]]</sup></span> 04:14, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
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::::(oops, sorry hob. didn't mean to edit over you there. >.<) --<span style="border-bottom: 1px dotted;cursor:help;" title="WoWWiki bureaucrat">[[User:Kaydeethree|k]]_[[User_talk:Kaydeethree|d]]<sup>[[Special:Contributions/Kaydeethree|3]]</sup></span> 04:19, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
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::2.6 MM pageviews equates to what in terms of bandwidth. There are hosting companies out there that have certain limits on bandwidth, but those are limits like "700 GB/month". I suppose if we knew what the average size of a wowwiki pageview is, we could figure out what our average monthly bandwidth would be. Most of the hosting providers are going to allow 30-40 GB of storage with that level of account, so storage of the database shouldn't be a problem. [[User:Mgg4|Mgg4]] ([[User talk:Mgg4|talk]]) 00:07, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
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:::According to [http://s23.org/wikistats/largest_html.php] we have 48,231 images. Assuming about 600KB per image adds about 30GB of data. A blank, uncached page is about 800KB in bandwidth (on the wowwiki skin). Our biggest (by code) commonly-loaded page is [[Patch mirrors]] which is about 1.22MB. A big, popular page with lots of images is [[Thrall]] at 1.60 MB. --{{User:Pcj/sig}} 00:18, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
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::::So, if we look at a nice round number like 1.0MB/page, and 2 million hits per day, we are looking at about 2GB of data transfer per day, or about 60GB per month. I just pulled up one of the hosting companies I've worked with, and they have shared server solutions for about $25/mo, with 40GB of storage and 320GB of transfer per month. A Virtual Machine (VM) solution (still shared, but a bit more isolated and secure) is $100/mo and gives you 40GB of storage and 700GB of transfer. Additional disk storage is available on either plan for an up-charge. The "Shared" hosting is on a Linux platform (I believe they use RedHat), and the VM solution is available with either Linux or Windows Server 2003 (a bit old now, but still servicable). We would need to look into what the revenue stream from ads would look like to see if this was going to make sense financially. If the adds are not going to pull in the $$ to cover the costs, we would be well advised to stick with Wikia, regardless how bad they make our pages look. [[User:Mgg4|Mgg4]] ([[User talk:Mgg4|talk]]) 00:42, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
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::::: Your calculations are off by 2^10; assuming 1MB/pageview, the bandwidth figure is closer to 2 TB / day. -- [[User:Starlightblunder|foxlit]] ([[User talk:Starlightblunder|talk]]) 13:11, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
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:::::: Well, we also need to somehow account for cache and knocking off all the crap Wikia code adding to bandwidth. Knocking out all the common stuff in cache brings average page loads to 200 KB, which is closer to 400 GB daily (assuming we have 2.0M pageviews). --{{User:Pcj/sig}} 13:16, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
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::::::: My main point was that he was off by a factor of 1000; shaving off a factor of 5 still lands us in >10 TB / month land, which is basically infeasible without '''multiple dedicated servers'''. Furthermore, bandwidth is not the only consideration: concurrency and dynamically generated content hurts at this amount of page views. In short, we're looking at ''thousands'' of US dollars per month.
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::::::: That is not to say that self-hosting is not a fun thing to consider -- just that any individual saying "I'll pay for this out of my pocket!" is probably not estimating the size of the problem properly. -- [[User:Starlightblunder|foxlit]] ([[User talk:Starlightblunder|talk]]) 16:35, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
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:::::::: With self-hosting, you still have to consider ISP costs and their "unlimited" clauses. Also, I didn't know Wikia owned the domain name. That sucks, think of the countless thousands of links from external websites, especially addon hosting sites and the WoW forums. —[[User:Egingell|<span class="ajaxttlink">EGingell</span>]] ([[User_talk:Egingell|T]]|[[Special:Contributions/Egingell|C]]|[[Special:Following/Egingell|F]]) [http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Cenarion+Circle&n=Treader Treader of Cenarion Circle] 18:01, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
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::::::::: Getting links switched really wouldn't be a problem. The Blizzard community is quite close. Its not that difficult to go talk to an admin of any of the other fansites as most have IRC channels on freenode as well (wowuidev, wowhead, wowace, etc), even Boub from mmochamp idles in wowwiki's channel. It would be the work of maybe 10 minutes to talk to heads of each section of the community to ask them to begin to switch their links around, and/or ask Boub to post something on MMOChamp about a wowwiki split, and maybe send an email to WoWInsider to inform their readers as well. It wouldn't take long at all for an email to hit a Manager at Blizz (I do believe kd3 has multiple contacts there, as do other sysops/users) to tell them the move happened, and ask if they could change the Official Fan Site page to link to the new address. The biggest problem would be google - wowwiki.com would show up before the new site. :( [[User:Resa1983|Resa1983]] ([[User talk:Resa1983|talk]]) 18:30, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
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==Things that would change if we left Wikia==
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I'm going to compose a list of stuff that would change if we move off - no matter where we go. Feel free to add if you think of anything. --{{User:Pcj/sig}} 00:52, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
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:Not sure what section to put this in, go ahead and move it if you've got a decent idea: in moving, we would essentially enter a situation in which there are two WoWWikis: the new one, and the old one on Wikia. The consequences of this are... Interesting, to say the least. It would likely cause some confusion for awhile, and have a serious effect on both the current userbase and the previous one. As has been brought up previously, see http://tfwiki.net vs. http://transformers.wikia.com for an example of this. -- [[User:Dark T Zeratul|Dark T Zeratul]] ([[User talk:Dark T Zeratul|talk]]) 03:27, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
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::Part of the potential move to new hosting is that there would be all kinds of news posts/press releases getting sent out to the other fansites/news sites/et al about our "earth-shattering change wrought by the Cataclysm!" Links to the new site in the elinks templates... and so on. The user split has been my biggest fear behind all of this, but if we get the news out widely hopefully people will update their bookmarks. --<span style="border-bottom: 1px dotted;cursor:help;" title="WoWWiki bureaucrat">[[User:Kaydeethree|k]]_[[User_talk:Kaydeethree|d]]<sup>[[Special:Contributions/Kaydeethree|3]]</sup></span> 03:37, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
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===What we would leave behind===
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*Monaco would be gone - either way it will be gone in a month or so, but if we leave there's no way we're maintaining it. WoWWiki would switch back to the [http://www.wowwiki.com/Portal:Main?useskin=wowwiki old WoWWiki skin] or a re-color of Monobook or Vector (Vector and other skins as an option of course). We would not adopt Wikia's new look - obviously.
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*Problem reports are gone; again, either way, because Wikia is planning to phase these out too. But obviously we can still get things fixed, just the notification system will change.
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*Ads would be different - depending on where we set up shop we should be able to get something reasonable worked out. Most of our options currently look very reasonable.
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*Avatars, Facebook Connect, MyHome and the like, all of the Wikia social features would be gone.
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*"Following" would probably revert to "watching". Any remaining instance of "photos" would revert to "images" or "files".
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*The Rich Text Editor would be gone. CategorySelect (easy-add/remove categories) would be gone too.
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*Our domain name - sadly probably the thing we're all most attached to. As we mentioned above we would have to change the domain name. Currently we have no plans to move to a subdomain of another domain (like WoWInsider just did), but we still have to come up with something that we like and can agree on.
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*The domain itself and all its current content would stay with Wikia for use as they see fit. A copy of all content would go to the new site.
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*We'll probably lose some users - inevitable in a transition. Since we don't have the raw user database users would be required to re-register on the new site. All of the site history and images will carry over, however.
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*Unified login with other Wikia sites will not work.
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===What we would gain===
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*Things should work better - Wikia has been having some issues lately, and while obviously we can't promise 100% uptime (and the quality of service depends on where we go), removing a lot of the Wikia bloat can't hurt - WoWWiki would use only what it needs (we can trim almost 5 seconds off load time just by not having legacy Wikia code which they keep around to support other wikis and tools we don't use)
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*More direct control of the backend means better optimization of WoWWiki-specific code.
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*Site speed may increase if the wiki is centrally hosted instead of distributed across multiple cache servers - reducing DNS lookups reduces load times.
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===What would stay the same===
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*All of the content existing at the time of the split would be carried over. This includes edit history and images.
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*Relevant extensions will be kept.
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*Any relevant JS or CSS code.
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*Our relationship with Blizzard and other sites will probably stay the same. Depending on where we go it may even improve (for example if we enter an existing network of gaming sites).
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==Comparison of skins==
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By the way, I spent some time today customizing the new WoWWiki skin (it's a work in progress), and this is how the main page looks:
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<gallery hideaddbutton="true" >
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File:WoWWikiNewSkin-v1.png
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</gallery>
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I should note, improvements should be coming to reduce the height of the top areas, and exact colours are easily tweaked (e.g. making the buttons more "gold"). {{User:Kirkburn/Sig5}} 19:31, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
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:Very well, here are screenshots of [[Goodman the "Closer"|a content page]] comparing the new skin and my own customized version of the old Wowwiki skin, as well as the custom Monaco skin most users probably are on. Note that I've hidden the floating toolbar and the feedback button on the Wikia skin to get a clean screenshot, and it looks like one of the ads failed to load, but it is otherwise unmodified.
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<gallery hideaddbutton="true" >
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File:Goodman the Closer Wikia.png
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File:Goodman the Closer Wowwiki.png
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File:Goodman the Closer Monaco.png
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</gallery>
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:I definitely prefer the WoWWiki skin myself. --{{User:Pcj/sig}} 03:58, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
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==Some thoughts from Wikia==
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The new skin is something we have been working on very intensively over the last few months, and I know that several here have been heavily involved in the beta testing stage of the project. Right from the start we knew this was going to be a difficult move for many established wikis and long-term users. There are big changes in this skin, and the first look is a shocking one to anyone used to the old look. But I’ve been using it for a while now, and I can honestly say that it's now jarring to me each time I have to switch to Monaco.
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We've talked on the [http://community.wikia.com/wiki/Blog:Wikia_Staff_Blog staff blog] about why we are making this change. We want to make every wiki on Wikia the best it can possibly be. Your content is the biggest part of that, of course, but our part is in making an interface and features that attract people to the site and help them understand what it is and how they can take part.
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The new look will be something we will be working on well beyond the release date. The beta testing has been vital in developing this skin, and feedback as it's released and used by more people will be helpful as well. We'll also be watching very closely to see how it's used and what the effects of the changes are on editors and readers.
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Some of you have tried the skin, and hopefully will have seen how the beta version has changed over the last few weeks. For the others, I'd urge you to give it a go as it's released. I think that, like me, you’ll find this is a skin that will really take the WoWWiki interface to the next level. -- [[User:Sannse|Sannse]] ([[User talk:Sannse|talk]]) 22:06, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
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== Apathy ==
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I don't care either way. I just wanted to chime in with this: if you abandon Wikia, you will lose some features (Forums, My Home, etc.). You'd also, probably, pay out the ass for hosting since most website hosts that offer unlimited bandwidth and disk space also have a buried "within reason" clause that allows them to charge overages despite the literal meaning of "unlimited". —[[User:Egingell|<span class="ajaxttlink">EGingell</span>]] ([[User_talk:Egingell|T]]|[[Special:Contributions/Egingell|C]]|[[Special:Following/Egingell|F]]) [http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Cenarion+Circle&n=Treader Treader of Cenarion Circle] 03:04, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
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:Forums aren't a Wikia-exclusive feature. MyHome...I don't care about MyHome. At all. We're discussing the other things too. --{{User:Pcj/sig}} 03:05, October 1, 2010 (UTC)

Revision as of 18:30, 1 October 2010

Forums: Village pump → Should WoWWiki leave Wikia?

On IRC we've been bouncing around the idea (for awhile) of leaving Wikia, checking out options, etc... Wikia plans to move us to a new skin in October (phasing out the old Monaco skin) and has already enacted rules limiting customization. Sadly, this leaves little control in the hands of WoWWiki users and admins to make the wiki look like WoWWiki always has and to maintain it in a way that reflect's WoWWiki's own interests. WoWWiki (and myself personally) have nothing against progress or change, but sadly the "new" look is not conducive to the wiki experience (you can see examples if you would like on other Wikia wikis) - the focus is on getting traffic to other Wikia wikis.

In any case, I feel strongly that we need to investigate our options and see if there is another choice. One problem is getting Wikia to let go of the WoWWiki domain name - they own it and may be reluctant to let it go. Most importantly, I want to make sure we have consensus on this; if we "move" the wiki to another host Wikia policy is to continue it on their own servers, so if we move without getting consensus there will be a split involved in the userbase.

Anyway, I would like comments on this. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 00:10, September 29, 2010 (UTC)

Direct comments

I've been firing off emails of my own in preparation for this forum post (rather, the one I was planning on posting a week from now once more people had a chance to see the new skin)... The new ToU has decidedly pushed me away from the "let's see if we can fix it" stance I've attempted to carry until now. I'm nearly ready to fork at this point, to be quite honest.
I hardly expect wikia's going to give up the wowwiki.com domain -- we're 10% of their global page views! They would much rather we fork and split contributors than completely move away so that they can still have some ad impressions. (look at tfwiki vs transformers.wikia). Instead I've been trying to come up with a new domain name we can use that'll forward wherever the new wiki ends up.
Anyway, the skin still is beta and I'm going to try to hold out hope for sanity from wikia for another week or two before I start pushing my hosting proposals along. --k_d3 00:22, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
Well, if you want to pay for it - and preserve the whole database (all 87,000 articles of it, lol) - be my guest...but if it's a matter of looks, I honestly don't see a problem. As long as we can still read it, and still edit it...then does it matter? --Joshmaul (talk) 00:31, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
The main problem outside of appearance is navigation is going to suck. I'm on the new skin right now and basically the only way to get around is to type in the URLs. The search box doesn't even show up the whole time. Plus, if we want a change, we're at Wikia's mercy - we can't change most things on the interface now. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 00:33, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
Hmm...I see where that would be a problem. And I apologize if my previous comment came across as rude - didn't mean to be so. I didn't see any other problem besides the potential for getting the crappy white Wikia backgrounds. *chuckles* --Joshmaul (talk) 01:44, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
Don't worry, I asked for comments. Anyway, next week you'll be able to try it for yourself on WoWWiki, but I wanted to get the ball rolling ASAP. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 01:47, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
I am slightly more optimistic about retaining the domain name, though only about || this much. wowwiki.net essentially looks available if we really have to go that route (having a looksee at godaddy), and I think that would be a more appropriate TLD anyway, given our content.
My question is: Where do we go? We have too many hits to just walk up to any old random provider and say "gief bandwidth". If we do, who knows how much in the necessary fees we'll need to come with? Who, of us, have the money? I don't expect much help from the community, but maybe I'm being doom-and-gloomy. Going the other way and finding us a random provider that would take us in for free, what will we pay for in advertisements?...
Then, of course, there's the route of "approach these companies which are familiar to the WoW crowd", which kd3 hints at [perhaps admins could get a summary via the email list about what exactly he's been emailing around about?], as well as those tossings around on IRC. I'm most favorable to this option as I know a few here who have previously discussed it are as well, but who would do so? We usually end up with "not a one", but we haven't really contacted (m)any of them...
Yeah, this looks bleak to me. But I'm tired and stressed with schoolwork. --Sky (t · c) 04:10, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
If there's an issue about money, I would be able to help. But we'll see how this progresses, and how much it'll cost in the end. --g0urra[T҂C] 06:06, September 29, 2010 (UTC)
I'll be sending a heads-up to the sysop list once I'm done with school today (9-10 hours from now). --k_d3 17:17, September 29, 2010 (UTC)

I'm not an editor here on the WoWWiki, but I thought I'd mention this here since you guys are probably the highest profile wiki considering moving: With regards to independent hosting, what about pooling resources with another few wikis who are considering moving? I'm not familiar with the current rates for hosting, but it seems like the cost would be a little easier to swallow if it were divvied up among several communities. I'm waiting until the 6th to talk with my community about migration, so I can't vouch for us yet, but there are already a few other wikis who could join forces with you if you do decide to move. -- Nonoitall 09:08, September 30, 2010 (UTC)

I do like the idea of banding together with other communities that are looking to move, if it means that we have to ask for donations from people then so be it. If we get as many page views as people have been saying, then it would only take a small percentage of people to donate relatively small sums before it all added up. Also, what do people think about asking for help from Blizz? I know that I use WoWWiki for everything, whenever I try and use the official WoW site, it seems clunky and not as informative as this site. Perhaps we might be able to talk to Blizz about becoming the official WoW encyclopaedia? Jeffajaffa (talk) 19:55, September 30, 2010 (UTC)

WoWWiki is already an official fansite. As for becoming the official WoW encyclopaedia, in the stead of the small one on the official site, WoWWiki is by no means perfectly accurate. I like to think that we are slightly more accurate every day, but it still contains content that was made up or misinterpreted by fans.--SWM2448 20:55, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
I don't support banding together, only because it will add to the logistical quagmire. It sounds good in theory and emotion, but the complexity of the move will only go up. Also, people are cheap. Asking for donations won't last. They'll probably just go to some other resource.--Hobinheim (talk · contr) 22:08, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
I agree with Hobinheim, if WoWWiki is going to go independent then it needs to be independent. We can applaud and advise other sites' efforts to leave Wikia, but I don't think we should provide monetary support. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 22:15, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
As much as I love the idea of us going independent, the question remains, how are we going to fund this? It seems whatever we do, we are going to need money. Whilst adds may be able to cover the running costs, any move to go independent is going to need a reasonable amount of start up cash. Perhaps people would be more willing to pay if they knew that once the start up fees had been covered, there would be no more need for donations. --Jeffajaffa (talk) 01:05, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
It doesn't sound like you guys understand the true cost of hosting this site. Unless you've got a handful of users each willing to drop thousands of dollars just for the initial move and set up - it won't work. But you've gotten way ahead of yourself - Wikia isn't selling WoWWiki. If the users, even the core ones, split off - this wowwiki will stay - and it'll still get most of the hits from the general populace. Trends will stay the same. The new forced skin is horrible for wikis, but sadly they've got this particular site by the balls - no matter how much people don't want to admit that.HooperBandP (talk) 01:03, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
The only reason that this site is as popular as it is is because it is the best source of information for WoW. If there is a split, then it looks likely that the key members of this site would move to the new site, thus making it bigger and better, and leave this site to wither and die. If we can get a vote on how many people would stay and how many would be prepared to move, that might give us an idea of where to go from here. --Jeffajaffa (talk) 01:10, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
True, the "key members" would indeed move, most likely, and continue to do great with a second site. But this site would still be here. And the common user would still come to it. And, especially with a new expansion looming, new users would fill the void. They may be slower to get even half as good as those that leave, but for every one person who is aware enough and goes to the new site, 100 will still come here. Its just how it is.HooperBandP (talk) 01:20, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
I doubt it, you are assuming other sites will stay the same in how they link to the current WoWWiki and ignoring word of mouth. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 01:26, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
Don't think that most people would have the loyalty to stay with the "True" site? If the new site is better than what this site would become, then people will use it. --Jeffajaffa (talk) 01:29, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
First, to Hooper and true cost: We're getting estimates up there. The cost is high, we know. Ads would probably be required. :)
Second: We're not ahead of ourselves. We're actually operating under the assumption we don't end up with the domain. For hits in general (as well as new contributors!), we can do things to shift users away from here which are fairly non-malicious for Wikia. If the main contributors up and leave, this wiki will die. It's held up as it is by the threads of a select 30 or 40.
Third: We're already talking to WoW sites about linking elsewhere. They know what it means to have a community (else they wouldn't have userbases of their own), and that's what Wikia doesn't have. For all that Wikia has increasingly pushed the "social" aspect, that's not what community is.
Fourth for Mgg: Suffice it to say now that we have a secure option that is not Wikia and are looking at the others/doing price checks for individual hosting. :) --Sky (t · c) 02:14, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, hosting costs money but "thousands of dollars just for the initial move and set up" sounds a little exaggerated to me. If you got a few dedicated editors together who were each willing to commit a few bucks a month on their hobby, I don't think that hosting costs would be so high as to be unmanageable — even without ads. (Though ads could certainly help.) I'd certainly be willing to part with a bit of cash each month for my wiki. That's kind of why I suggested getting several wikis together. Bandwidth tends to cost less per GB when you're buying more of it, lessening the load for everyone in the group.
Still, I understand and appreciate the logistical complications of working in other communities, and I'm not criticizing if you guys would rather stand alone. -- Nonoitall 02:30, October 1, 2010 (UTC)

Domain and Hosting Issues

So, if we do fork, there's no way wikia's going to sell us (our new host) the wowwiki.com domain. So, short of going to "wowwiki.net", which would be kinda shady in most users' (and google's!) eyes... what else could we use? --k_d3 21:50, September 29, 2010 (UTC)

The problem with domain names suggestions is people can grab them. :( --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 21:58, September 29, 2010 (UTC)

Regarding the issue of hosting, it's a bit of a long shot but what about asking Blizzard to host? -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 03:29, September 30, 2010 (UTC)

We are asking multiple places, it's a bit premature to go over options at the moment. Mainly we want to get users' opinions and solidify what we can do before presenting what we've got. Expect to see more details in the coming week(s) as the skin rolls out and we get more interest in moving off Wikia. :P Feel free to suggest ideas though, especially if you have contacts. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 03:35, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
Get Curse to host it.Ackistc 18:14, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
I think not! --Joshmaul (talk) 18:40, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
Let's keep our options open at the moment, Curse is a valid option but I agree with Joshmaul, let's not jump from one corporate overlord to another without considering our other options. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 22:16, September 30, 2010 (UTC)

OK, one of the users of Wikisimpsons contacted ShoutWiki and they said that they would have an option to upgrade to Monaco once they reach MediaWiki 1.16. It will cost though apparently. I am not sure if this is one instalment or monthly although I hope it is not the latter. Vector will be available once they update too. ☆The Solar Dragon☆ 06:16, September 30, 2010 (UTC)

ShoutWiki is an option, they're just getting started though so I'm not really excited about it but we'll see. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 11:41, September 30, 2010 (UTC)

Once we find a place to host this, we might consider asking Blizzard to give us a sub-domain. That is "wiki.worldofwarcraft.com" would be nice. Not sure they would go for it, but could solve some of our name change problems for the better. I still think that hosting it is going to be the major deal. I could do it easily at my place of employment. At least the technical aspects would be easy. Polictical, not so much. And would you want to tie into a "Free" hosting environment if it meant you had to move if I changed jobs? Mgg4 (talk) 23:32, September 30, 2010 (UTC)

Do you work for a webhost or something? Any idea what it would cost without your "employee discount"? --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 23:37, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
I do web hosting, but it's for our own software as a service. We are not a "Web Hosting Company" in the way you would think of one. I could check into that if it becomes necessary, however, there are web-hosting services that we could look into, if we wanted to maintain the code/pages ourselves. Some of the other groups I belong to get some pretty good deals. Now the volume of this wiki might be a problem at some of those ISP/ASPs, but I'm sure something could be negotiated. Are we at the point where we want to start seriously looking at this yet? Mgg4 (talk) 23:58, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
We're at the point where we're considering the costs/benefits of each option so we can decide what is attainable vs. not, so yes I would say this would be a good time for that. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 00:03, October 1, 2010 (UTC)

I totally support moving it if puts power back in our hands. ::coughs up dust:: Timing it with the release of Cataclysm would be great. How much does it cost to keep a site like WoWWiki afloat anyway?--Hobinheim (talk · contr) 04:00, September 30, 2010 (UTC)

Bandwidth would probably be the biggest concern - according to [1] WoWWiki gets about 2 million pageviews per day. As far as space needed, the database size (not including images) is about 2.6 GB, including images is probably quite a bit more. And then room for growth. It could be a fair penny if we went independent, and then we would probably have to negotiate for ads to pay for it, which would be more work. Best option would probably be to get into some other existing system, but we shouldn't rule out the independent idea out if that sounds like fun to someone. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 04:05, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
I like the independent idea because it helps keep us out of messes like this. And a raw 2M hits per day won't be a big deal at the start since people will be initially confused and divided about the split. But once people start to get the message and Cataclysm comes out, all bets are off I guess. It doesn't sound like fun as much as it might be a necessary evil. Can Google ads at least put a dent in that? =)--Hobinheim (talk · contr) 04:10, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
Just a general FYI if anyone's still looking for me (pretty sure I've got all of the off-list emails answered): I'm crashing for the night--gotta open at work tomorrow (later today >.<). I'll be back around 14:00 EDT (18:00 UTC/10:00 PDT). --k_d3 04:14, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
(oops, sorry hob. didn't mean to edit over you there. >.<) --k_d3 04:19, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
2.6 MM pageviews equates to what in terms of bandwidth. There are hosting companies out there that have certain limits on bandwidth, but those are limits like "700 GB/month". I suppose if we knew what the average size of a wowwiki pageview is, we could figure out what our average monthly bandwidth would be. Most of the hosting providers are going to allow 30-40 GB of storage with that level of account, so storage of the database shouldn't be a problem. Mgg4 (talk) 00:07, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
According to [2] we have 48,231 images. Assuming about 600KB per image adds about 30GB of data. A blank, uncached page is about 800KB in bandwidth (on the wowwiki skin). Our biggest (by code) commonly-loaded page is Patch mirrors which is about 1.22MB. A big, popular page with lots of images is Thrall at 1.60 MB. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 00:18, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
So, if we look at a nice round number like 1.0MB/page, and 2 million hits per day, we are looking at about 2GB of data transfer per day, or about 60GB per month. I just pulled up one of the hosting companies I've worked with, and they have shared server solutions for about $25/mo, with 40GB of storage and 320GB of transfer per month. A Virtual Machine (VM) solution (still shared, but a bit more isolated and secure) is $100/mo and gives you 40GB of storage and 700GB of transfer. Additional disk storage is available on either plan for an up-charge. The "Shared" hosting is on a Linux platform (I believe they use RedHat), and the VM solution is available with either Linux or Windows Server 2003 (a bit old now, but still servicable). We would need to look into what the revenue stream from ads would look like to see if this was going to make sense financially. If the adds are not going to pull in the $$ to cover the costs, we would be well advised to stick with Wikia, regardless how bad they make our pages look. Mgg4 (talk) 00:42, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
Your calculations are off by 2^10; assuming 1MB/pageview, the bandwidth figure is closer to 2 TB / day. -- foxlit (talk) 13:11, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
Well, we also need to somehow account for cache and knocking off all the crap Wikia code adding to bandwidth. Knocking out all the common stuff in cache brings average page loads to 200 KB, which is closer to 400 GB daily (assuming we have 2.0M pageviews). --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 13:16, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
My main point was that he was off by a factor of 1000; shaving off a factor of 5 still lands us in >10 TB / month land, which is basically infeasible without multiple dedicated servers. Furthermore, bandwidth is not the only consideration: concurrency and dynamically generated content hurts at this amount of page views. In short, we're looking at thousands of US dollars per month.
That is not to say that self-hosting is not a fun thing to consider -- just that any individual saying "I'll pay for this out of my pocket!" is probably not estimating the size of the problem properly. -- foxlit (talk) 16:35, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
With self-hosting, you still have to consider ISP costs and their "unlimited" clauses. Also, I didn't know Wikia owned the domain name. That sucks, think of the countless thousands of links from external websites, especially addon hosting sites and the WoW forums. —EGingell (T|C|F) Treader of Cenarion Circle 18:01, October 1, 2010 (UTC)
Getting links switched really wouldn't be a problem. The Blizzard community is quite close. Its not that difficult to go talk to an admin of any of the other fansites as most have IRC channels on freenode as well (wowuidev, wowhead, wowace, etc), even Boub from mmochamp idles in wowwiki's channel. It would be the work of maybe 10 minutes to talk to heads of each section of the community to ask them to begin to switch their links around, and/or ask Boub to post something on MMOChamp about a wowwiki split, and maybe send an email to WoWInsider to inform their readers as well. It wouldn't take long at all for an email to hit a Manager at Blizz (I do believe kd3 has multiple contacts there, as do other sysops/users) to tell them the move happened, and ask if they could change the Official Fan Site page to link to the new address. The biggest problem would be google - wowwiki.com would show up before the new site. :( Resa1983 (talk) 18:30, October 1, 2010 (UTC)

Things that would change if we left Wikia

I'm going to compose a list of stuff that would change if we move off - no matter where we go. Feel free to add if you think of anything. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 00:52, September 30, 2010 (UTC)

Not sure what section to put this in, go ahead and move it if you've got a decent idea: in moving, we would essentially enter a situation in which there are two WoWWikis: the new one, and the old one on Wikia. The consequences of this are... Interesting, to say the least. It would likely cause some confusion for awhile, and have a serious effect on both the current userbase and the previous one. As has been brought up previously, see http://tfwiki.net vs. http://transformers.wikia.com for an example of this. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 03:27, September 30, 2010 (UTC)
Part of the potential move to new hosting is that there would be all kinds of news posts/press releases getting sent out to the other fansites/news sites/et al about our "earth-shattering change wrought by the Cataclysm!" Links to the new site in the elinks templates... and so on. The user split has been my biggest fear behind all of this, but if we get the news out widely hopefully people will update their bookmarks. --k_d3 03:37, September 30, 2010 (UTC)

What we would leave behind

  • Monaco would be gone - either way it will be gone in a month or so, but if we leave there's no way we're maintaining it. WoWWiki would switch back to the old WoWWiki skin or a re-color of Monobook or Vector (Vector and other skins as an option of course). We would not adopt Wikia's new look - obviously.
  • Problem reports are gone; again, either way, because Wikia is planning to phase these out too. But obviously we can still get things fixed, just the notification system will change.
  • Ads would be different - depending on where we set up shop we should be able to get something reasonable worked out. Most of our options currently look very reasonable.
  • Avatars, Facebook Connect, MyHome and the like, all of the Wikia social features would be gone.
  • "Following" would probably revert to "watching". Any remaining instance of "photos" would revert to "images" or "files".
  • The Rich Text Editor would be gone. CategorySelect (easy-add/remove categories) would be gone too.
  • Our domain name - sadly probably the thing we're all most attached to. As we mentioned above we would have to change the domain name. Currently we have no plans to move to a subdomain of another domain (like WoWInsider just did), but we still have to come up with something that we like and can agree on.
  • The domain itself and all its current content would stay with Wikia for use as they see fit. A copy of all content would go to the new site.
  • We'll probably lose some users - inevitable in a transition. Since we don't have the raw user database users would be required to re-register on the new site. All of the site history and images will carry over, however.
  • Unified login with other Wikia sites will not work.

What we would gain

  • Things should work better - Wikia has been having some issues lately, and while obviously we can't promise 100% uptime (and the quality of service depends on where we go), removing a lot of the Wikia bloat can't hurt - WoWWiki would use only what it needs (we can trim almost 5 seconds off load time just by not having legacy Wikia code which they keep around to support other wikis and tools we don't use)
  • More direct control of the backend means better optimization of WoWWiki-specific code.
  • Site speed may increase if the wiki is centrally hosted instead of distributed across multiple cache servers - reducing DNS lookups reduces load times.

What would stay the same

  • All of the content existing at the time of the split would be carried over. This includes edit history and images.
  • Relevant extensions will be kept.
  • Any relevant JS or CSS code.
  • Our relationship with Blizzard and other sites will probably stay the same. Depending on where we go it may even improve (for example if we enter an existing network of gaming sites).

Comparison of skins

By the way, I spent some time today customizing the new WoWWiki skin (it's a work in progress), and this is how the main page looks:

I should note, improvements should be coming to reduce the height of the top areas, and exact colours are easily tweaked (e.g. making the buttons more "gold"). Kirkburn  talk  contr 19:31, September 29, 2010 (UTC)

Very well, here are screenshots of a content page comparing the new skin and my own customized version of the old Wowwiki skin, as well as the custom Monaco skin most users probably are on. Note that I've hidden the floating toolbar and the feedback button on the Wikia skin to get a clean screenshot, and it looks like one of the ads failed to load, but it is otherwise unmodified.
I definitely prefer the WoWWiki skin myself. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 03:58, October 1, 2010 (UTC)

Some thoughts from Wikia

The new skin is something we have been working on very intensively over the last few months, and I know that several here have been heavily involved in the beta testing stage of the project. Right from the start we knew this was going to be a difficult move for many established wikis and long-term users. There are big changes in this skin, and the first look is a shocking one to anyone used to the old look. But I’ve been using it for a while now, and I can honestly say that it's now jarring to me each time I have to switch to Monaco.

We've talked on the staff blog about why we are making this change. We want to make every wiki on Wikia the best it can possibly be. Your content is the biggest part of that, of course, but our part is in making an interface and features that attract people to the site and help them understand what it is and how they can take part.

The new look will be something we will be working on well beyond the release date. The beta testing has been vital in developing this skin, and feedback as it's released and used by more people will be helpful as well. We'll also be watching very closely to see how it's used and what the effects of the changes are on editors and readers.

Some of you have tried the skin, and hopefully will have seen how the beta version has changed over the last few weeks. For the others, I'd urge you to give it a go as it's released. I think that, like me, you’ll find this is a skin that will really take the WoWWiki interface to the next level. -- Sannse (talk) 22:06, September 30, 2010 (UTC)

Apathy

I don't care either way. I just wanted to chime in with this: if you abandon Wikia, you will lose some features (Forums, My Home, etc.). You'd also, probably, pay out the ass for hosting since most website hosts that offer unlimited bandwidth and disk space also have a buried "within reason" clause that allows them to charge overages despite the literal meaning of "unlimited". —EGingell (T|C|F) Treader of Cenarion Circle 03:04, October 1, 2010 (UTC)

Forums aren't a Wikia-exclusive feature. MyHome...I don't care about MyHome. At all. We're discussing the other things too. --PcjWowpedia wiki manager (TDrop me a line!C207,729 contributions and counting) 03:05, October 1, 2010 (UTC)