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Proposal to Fork from the FANDOM owned Wikia to a new YGOrganization Operated

YUGIPEDIA

Intro

Around 5 years ago, the idea to fork the Yu-Gi-Oh! Wiki was discussed on this very forum. The initial decision back then, was that the community were against it. This thread will be used to discuss those events and why this idea is a lot better now.

In the time since then, Wikia has rebranded itself as FANDOM, which is representative of the changes we've seen so far: ads taking over the entire screen, autoplaying videos, and mandatory Fandom junk at the bottom of every single page.

What are we proposing? The wiki should 'fork' over to different ownership at a different url, in order to shed itself of the current wiki design practices that the admins here have no final say on. A new wiki would be created, copying all of the content that currently exists on this wiki. For better or for worse, the wiki at yugioh.wikia.com would continue to exist alongside it, since Fandom refuses (virtually always) to close a wiki after it has conducted a 'wiki fork'. As a result, the Fandom's YGO wiki would retain a big advantage over us in many ways. Fandom's SEO would remain high for a long time, which would be difficult for the new wiki to override. We would also expect to have rather low numbers in terms of views compared to the current wiki, at least initially.

However, YGOrganization[Notes 1] would be in support of the new wiki, linking to it from their articles. The new wiki would continue its affiliation with The Organization and the use of their translations. I cannot speak as to what the existing wiki would do in regards to that.

I fully intend to work with the admins, and never mandate or force any decisions through on the platform. I recognize that no one person knows what's best for a community this size for a game this size, and that nobody is as passionate about this game and its anime as you guys. Our biggest goal is making the wiki not only a bearable experience on mobile, but as enjoyable an experience as the PC version of the site. The problem with mobile is that Fandom gives you guys absolutely no ability to customize it. No CSS, no JS, nothing. This would not be true on our proposed fork, Yugipedia.

The relationship between the Wiki and the Org has always been great. It’s also been rather one sided. Some stats from the week of December 15th to 22nd: Sent TO wikia via 623,473 views: 6975 Received FROM wikia via 5,557,400 views:983

Every week I receive complaints about the wiki in one way or another. They are not only common, they're diverse in their context. The admins of this wiki can attest to me being the only person in the admin channel of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia Discord server as a consult specifically for both the quality and quantity of the feedback and ideas I give to them on a regular basis.



As already implied, this fork is not going to happen without community support. Several administrators are currently in support of the fork, so they'll go ahead and discuss that for themselves in this thread. We're hoping to listen to and work with the members of this passionate community, so make your voices heard here. I will attempt to answer any questions as best I can myself as well.

Pros

More control over ads; no video ads

Other skins

Full support of the Organization

More control over back-end things

Will be unaffected by any further changes Wikia/Fandom makes.

Mobile experience both existent and useful

A primary focus on content rather than revenue, prioritizing the user experience instead of income. Maximized effort to ensure something like this doesn’t happen





Cons

Loss of viewership by virtue of Wikia's SEO

Loss of any users who do not choose to contribute to the forked wiki

No direct support from Wikia. We would have a team in place for such issues on the new wiki, but Wikia has a good track record of helping us here, make no mistake

(Notes)

DanParkerYugioh (talk • contribs) 16:59, January 1, 2018 (UTC)

Support

Vortexdome

Now, I would have stayed at Wikia for its great visual editor UI, but now I can be sure that the migration (or forking, I dunno) is a correct move. The main reason is I've been pretty angry with the fact that Fandom staff posts irrelevant videos in pages about Booster Packs (see the Circuit Break page for an example; and the quality is horrible to say the least, video content is inconsistent with the page's text). Also editors do not get to pick what video is going to be featured on said pages.

Another issue I've had with Fandom is that (again, with the videos) their staff made the appears on top of the page. This makes the user have to scroll down to actually read the info they want. Sure, a video is a great tool for acquiring information, but when it's misused, it can be a disaster. Vortexdome (talk • contribs) 13:43, February 23, 2018 (UTC)

UltimateKuriboh

I have been wanting this move since January of 2017, specifically when I saw this 1 Fandom/Wikia staff blog post. "High-impact direct ads, like banner ads with video, are the standard in the ad industry. They are also how we will be able to improve the overall ad experience on Fandom." No thank you. In the blog post, they admit that they know some ("SOME" >_> ) users will dislike it, but that since other websites are doing it, it's fine.



Since then, you may have seen "special" pop-up videos that appear for some articles, such as Mekk-Knight. Note the incorrect pronunciation ("LIGHT Physic monster") and the already-outdated term "Jack-Knights". This indicates that quality is not their primary concern here, just potential ad-revenue from the videos. If you are an editor, you may have ads disabled in your preferences, meaning you won't be able to see the long ads that appear in front of these videos for the many-more casual viewers who browse this wiki. Note that Wikia/Fandom literally stole a Youtuber's video content to accommodate the slow-paced, info-hollow dialogue that can already easily be read on the "Mekk-Knight" article page.

This was also done for the Legendary Dragon page: note the incorrect pronunciations of " Walking the Dragons" (about 0:10), and "Creetias" (about 0:25). (Critias is not pronounced that way in the anime). The video content was stolen from here. I can also confirm that neither "Youtuber" was notified of, or asked permission for, the use of their video content for Wikia/Fandom's videos. There may be nothing inherently wrong with this, but it's certainly an aggressive "could-care-less" attitude. This has also been repeated on at least 1 other wiki.

the Dragons" (about 0:10), and "Creetias" (about 0:25). (Critias is not pronounced that way in the anime). The video content was stolen from here.

I'm also not fond of the Fandom-sponsored content that you see at the bottom of any page, since their article titles reek of clickbait, but at least it seems that they only load if you scroll to the bottom of the page. I'd rather not associate with that though.



My final point can be seen by way of Fandom's employee reviews on glassdoor.com. If you look at them by "Popular" (the default order), you'll see that the 4 most recent 4 reviews are positive overall, but 3 of them note that there are problems with upper management. If you look at the older reviews following them, you'll see that they elaborate on them, insinuating that they generally ignore complaints/advice from staff who have a more intimate understanding of Wikia/Fandom's needs (by working with it on a user's level). It's an interesting read if you decide to continue to page 2 or 3.

In conclusion, I'll note that we had a previous forking discussion 5 years ago. In it, one anonymous editor left an interesting comment:

This whole discussion boils down to the fact that certain people feel they're entitled to have total control over the look, feel and policy of this site. Guess what: If you wanted that you should've hosted this site yourself. Of course that wouldn't be possible for a project of this size, which is why you have to accept the policies, ads, skins, and everything else which Wikia has the right to change on the fly and of course as corporation has the right to sustain itself with and make money from. The free hosting is what you bought into, and therefore Wikia's decisions are what you're stuck with if you're interested in being a part of a site that won't be essentially dead within 6 months.

My main point here is that I do not want to wait until Wikia/Fandom's upper management drives their product into the ground in pursuit of profits over quality. YGOrganization is an entity that serves as the primary source of OCG info for the English audience, and as a result, has vast community outreach. While converting viewers from the Fandom-owned Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia will be a long endeavor, YGOrganization's influence makes this fork proposal a lot more feasible than the previous forking attempt.

P.S. In response to the last link in Becasita's post, I encourage you to read this heavy-handed approach to any opposition to PIs. Why would you need Fandom staff to continually patrol the wiki? Such a response can only be indicative of being aware that this is an extremely unpopular decision, or really being scared of a few users willing to ban-evade to revert these changes (of which there have been no signs of). --UltimateKuriboh (talk • contribs) 17:26, January 1, 2018 (UTC)

Dan

My name is Dan, and I’m the owner and operating manager of YGOrganization.com where I’m in charge of advertising, analytics, audio, billing, community management, customer support, digital distribution, HR, recruitment, marketing, monetization, PR, QA, and User Acquisition.

It’s likely most of you have never heard of me, and therefore have no reason to believe my intentions for running this fork are founded in anything, so I’d like to offer again that thread from the start of this year that more clearly illustrates what started a lot of this. My reply to one of fandoms proposals, as well as their reply to my input.

I work regularly with members from Konami and 4K Media as well. They have already directly supported my endeavours, and even the current wiki, through me. I’ve passionately played this game for 17 years, since I was only ten years old, and continue my commitment to bettering it wherever possible, and the wiki is one such place where that is extremely possible.

We have seen some pretty dramatic policies and ideas from Fandom, and an even more dramatic implementation of them. Things like portable infoboxes not only being near-unanimously voted against on this site, but enforceable if only one member of the administrative staff greenlights it (and one such member did). For more than 5 years now Wikia/Fandom have demonstrated that they are not a company that are even possible to work with let alone easily or functionally.

To quote this wiki’s founder: “Wikia has made is plainly clear that they are not interested in the userbase of the Wikis; the New Wikia skin was introduced (which dramatically reduces available article sizes) was rolled out, despite objections across the Wikis…. ...Wikia [is] a very untrustworthy hosting partner.”.

Even if these statements were no longer true, they’re an example of a consistent and ever worsening behavior from a company that has been forcing more and more changes on its largest community. They have demonstrated time and time again that you are not their priority.

All Wikia efforts are focused on earning more revenue. This makes sense, and I don’t blame them for that. The issue taken is that that priority is put before their communities or the experience of reading/editing their wikis. The largest difference between our two camps will be that they’d rather have an audience of 1000 that makes 3 grand, instead of an audience of 3000 that makes 2500. They’re running a forked version of MediaWiki 1.19 released in 2012 that has no official support since 2015. They backported some new features from more recent versions of MediaWiki, but still lack many of them. There’s also been hints suggesting Wikia want to leave MediaWiki entirely, too.

The idea of Portable Infoboxes is not primarily rooted in enhancing mobile view, but to have the ability to place ads within those infoboxes. This would mean that they’d also block pages from being read if your browser is blocking ads (or if your browser is old and doesn’t support the JavaScript features to make the ads work).

Naturally, I wouldn’t expect any of you to blindly go with this if we couldn’t put our money where our mouths were. That’s why I started this back in January but am only now bringing it up. I’ve paid for a server with absolutely no revenue consistently for 1 year as a pledge of commitment and intent. I’ve bought the domain name, and we’ve prepared a demo wiki for you guys to look over at Yugipedia which I encourage you to check out.

You’ll notice giant glaring bars where the ads will be. I make no effort to hide the fact that this new wiki will indeed need to generate income to stay open forever, especially if it increases in userbase, but I also make no effort to hide where the ads will be or how the rest of the wiki will look despite even the most distracting possible rectangles I could stuff into the spaces. Feel free to look around and see for yourself the full extent of the ad placements. I want to be completely open about this process and commit to never mis-using those spaces or misrepresenting my intentions. DanParkerYugioh (talk • contribs) 17:01, January 1, 2018 (UTC)

Becasita

Becasita here; admin of this wiki. I wholeheartedly support this fork. I've been supporting this project since I first heard about it, in January 2017. Wikia/FANDOM has been great, but lately I've been annoyed by some of their policies. The annoying ads, the videos, which are very poorly done, given you can clearly see that people who made them have 0 knowledge on what they're doing and they don't even try to contact the wikis to find someone from there, who has knowledge on the wiki's matters, to make them. Which brings me to the next point: I've been hating how Wikia/FANDOM has been preventing more and more customization. I get it; they're a company, they want to have a standard layout, standard standards, let's say. But one good thing is that users could customize their wiki, give it an identity. It used to feel like a more familiar company. Now, it seems we're reaching the pure business company. That's bad, in my opinion. So, no customization in more places. No mobile customization. Everyone knows how horrible the Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia looks on mobile, right? We can't use any CSS (styles) or JavaScript to customize the mobile skin. The result? Crude, unorganized display. Why don't they allow it? Because they are developing Portable Infoboxes (PI). They allege PIs are the way to go to make content portable. What does it mean? From what I've seen and from what Wikia/FANDOM was able to show me, it means they have more control over the layout being displayed on mobile. That is, to me, "where should we put ads?". Ads in the middle of an infobox is a disgusting thing, I gotta say. No one wants to be scrolling on mobile and have an ad in between two rows of info. It's the future, they say. I understand ads are a must. We will have them too in the fork. We need them to keep the site running for you to read it and edit it. But we will try to place them in proper place, without cutting the user experience. The best part is: if we're doing something you don't like, we will try to adapt. We want to listen to our user base, to try and come up with the best experience for all that we can. Which brings me to the point: Wikia doesn't do this. They are a company, I get it. Like I said it seems they more and more go to the pure business way (profit over whatever). It's fair, I guess. Not my approach of choice, though. I think listening to the users will make a project/company more able to grab their users and provide a more pleasant, happier environment. There were several issues with Wikia/FANDOM about this; about the fact the users complain but they say "we have statistics saying [stuff that contradicts what every experienced user says]", but they never show them... So yeah. With this, I don't want to paint Wikia/FANDOM as evil, I don't. But, heck, I'm unsatisfied. I am. Having a staff member coming to our Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia and start implementing PI just because they want, even if the majority of the community (at least of the admin's team) does not consent, with the excuse "one admin said yes and he is the founder" (talking about TwoTailedFox), it's rubbish, if I may say. Here's a link as an example. Ok, there's probably more, but I don't want to leave a huge wall of text that will push people to not read it. Any more stuff, I'll add later. Too long don't read version: I've been unsatisfied with several Wikia/FANDOM's policies and enforcements. We will have full control over the fork. I support this fork! Best regards, Becasita Pendulum talk • contribs) 17:04, January 1, 2018 (UTC)

XBrain130

I support the proposal. I have been on this wiki for 5 years, and the recently-enforced changes truly made it worse. I hated the look of the Portable Infoboxes ever since I first saw them (and soon realized at times they were functionally flawed), and I agree that the autoplay videos at the top of some articles are truly horrendous and meaningless.

I admitely use mobile very rarely, but this wiki does look pretty bad in that regard for a site that was allegedly being all about winning mobile traffic in the recent months. And those ads between every paragraph truly ruin everything.

I am frankly one of the most active and dedicated contributors this wiki ever had, but this new project still inspires more than this old, declining place. --XBrain130™「 Ｘ ( エックス ) ブレーン１３０」 18:19, January 1, 2018 (UTC)

Lightning Laxus

Much of what I wish to say has already been stated above (especially in regards to FANDOM's annoying videos), so I'll keep it short: I am supporting the fork. Lightning Laxus (talk • contribs) 18:51, January 1, 2018 (UTC)

Cheesedude

I am in support of the fork, though it pains me. I have been a member of Wikia's Community Council for years (a group of users that have access to/can test new features before others), I have visited Wikia's HQ in San Francisco twice, flying in from across the country on their dime. I have several staff members I consider to be friends. Despite all this, I cannot condone the video ads or the ads that will end up in Infoboxes. Ultimately, Wikia/Fandom is a company and they must do what they can to be successful. I have believed for years they do have the best interests of the end user in mind, but somewhere along the way, they have lost sight of that. So yes, I am support in of this community forking away from the company. This community is like a home to me and I can unfortunately can no longer negotiate with the landlords. I can continue making minor edits to other wikis without protest, but I cannot let this stand on my home wiki any longer. Cheesedude (talk • contribs) 19:36, January 1, 2018 (UTC)

Golden Key

The quality of FANDOM wikis has been getting steadily worse. As these many users have stated, the site is garbage on mobile, and intrusive videos are quite possibly the dumbest idea imaginable. While I was one of the individuals strongly opposed to forking the last time the suggestion was made, the benefits now outweigh the negatives. One fear in the past was that we would not be able to get users to make the move, but since then The Org has established itself as a leader of distributing information. Working with them, I have little doubt that we will succeed. --Golden Key (talk • contribs) 19:55, January 1, 2018 (UTC)

Sanokal K-T

Given that the site is...testy on mobile (to the point that I need to use the desktop skin just to make it function when I'm there) and the additions to it in the forms of ads are...testy at absolute best, then yeah, I'm all for this. I'm already a fan of independent wikis like Bulbapedia and BS01, so I'm used to the new navigation anyway. Plus, there's way too many people that I respect speaking out against this for even me to ignore. And it'll be fun for multiple reasons. It's a shame overall, since I've had some good experiences with Wikia/FANDOM, but this recent exchange has severely coloured my opinions. So yeah, that's my ten cents. Sanokal K-T (talk • contribs) 21:34, January 1, 2018 (UTC)

The-Psychid

At first, I thought I'd be against this, especially since it'd be one of those Wikis where any links to the proposed Yugipedia would appear as external hyperlinks, which would be a bit distracting to the especially picky (like myself). But after XBrain pointed out a way to resolve this issue, combined with the negative criticisms about Wikia/FANDOM I've just discovered, I suppose making Yugipedia would be a change for the better. Can't wait to see the final product. -- Yes, it's THE-PSYCHID! He talks! He does stuff! 23:10, January 1, 2018 (UTC)

ZGWOlf

As a person who uses the wiki frequently but has not made a contribution since wikia redesigned itself X years ago, I fully support moving away from wikia. ZGWolf (talk • contribs) 23:49, January 1, 2018 (UTC)

Erdvilla

Completely on support for a cleaner site, with no nonsense and still all the juicy info of the game we love. Which can only be achieved by game enthusiasts in control of the site not bounded by third parties that have to keep ads all over the place and the always inconvenient 2/5s of the screen taken by empty or add bars. --Erdvilla (talk • contribs) 23:35, January 1, 2018 (UTC)

GustaphMax

Hello there! Happy new year everyone. I was asked for an opinion and despite the fact I'm not an admin, I've been editing pages here for almost 4 years (I used other 2 profiles, but due to user name issues and a problem with the notification e-mails that I wasn't recieving anymore, I created this account, that I intent to keep forever lol). All of my edits are made regarding Tips, Trivia, and pages of archetypes, so I'm not really up on all that intricacies regarding ads (I ♥ Adblock) and how the FANDOM staff deal with the admin staff of this Wikia. Anyway... I read the intro and most of the opinions here and I couldn't agree more with the points made by you guys, specially by UltimateKuriboh (that Mekk-Knight video is shameful in too many levels). I totally agree with the fork. I think that my only concerns would be with the Wikia's SEO being difficult to override and how the new site would be in terms of layout. When it comes to the community, I think that the ones that truly take this Wikia seriously and edit the pages frequently would be divided into those ones that prefer the Wikia's general design and therefore would remain here, and those ones who will follow the consensus of the current admin staff, whose work makes this Wikia a place to be taken seriously. I remember when Ygorganization dropped the Disqus platform and it became a little more difficult (or less practical) to interact with the posts, that used to have a comment section very easy to use; I tried to be an avid commenter, but since that change, my laziness made me not create an account to participate actively on the newly-introduced YgOrg-owned forum. This being said, I think that a new site would have a raise in the general quality of the editors, that would be those ones I said that really takes this seriously; all the trolls or newbies-that-add-dumb-trivia-and-tips would remain here, at least initially. GustaphMax (talk • contribs) 00:19, January 2, 2018 (UTC)

PS: I'm totally baffled with the experience and know-how of Dan and Cheesedude. I could never imagine all that. You guys are amazing. That's what I meant by "admin staff whose work makes this Wikia a place to be taken seriously".

GMTails

I support forking to a new domain. As an editor, I don't experience the same ad-filled pages that non-registered visitors do, and knowing this will only get worse, I agree that the right thing to do is to think on our numerous viewers. This Wikia is used as the main source of content and information for many people in the Yu-Gi-Oh! community, from people who are just discovered this franchise, to content creators in sites like YouTube. And there was that one time when even an official livestream [1] used this site to get their images. Concluding, it's best to put our community above FANDOM's interests, so a fork is definitely a good choice. GMTails (talk • contribs) 00:38, January 2, 2018 (UTC)

NeoArkadia

Ark, the guy who writes a lot of articles for YGOrg, and recently handling most of the Duel Links' content there. I've worked with plenty of the staff here at request when they've asked translation questions. I have honestly nothing to gain for or against doing this fork and despite being with YGOrganization, I'd like to view myself as a mildly neutral party.

Anyways: I basically agree with everyone else here. I don't know much on the Mobile site end, or the malware/harassing ads since I use multiple Adblock and Anti-Script extensions to make my internet experience safe, but. I can say one thing:

I really don't like these videos auto playing at major group topics such as Circuit Break. They're intrusive, teach me nothing, and probably slow down my searching. The site seems to get more cumbersome, ugly and intrusive each month. Friends both in YGOrg and outside of them are unable to look at images without opening new windows, the intrusive ads prevent them from using the site altogether.

As said by others, FANDOM has the right to monetize and make a buck off what they're doing, but their desperation to keep things financed, they've made the user experience so toxic that normal people who aren't wearing multiple layers of anti-script/anti-adblock Kevlar are, for lack of a better word, getting screwed. The first thing you have to remember at the end of the day is the little guy, in this case, the End Users reading the site.

And of what can be seen from multiple anecdotes and confessionals here and what I'm stating here, the Little Guy's experience is being made awfully miserable.

Also stolen fan content from YouTube is bad, especially with no concern for quality of what they're taking.

So, I support the fork unless FANDOM and Two-Tailed Fox are willing to do a Hail Mary touchdown to completely refresh this growing fiasco. And as of right now, they look to be very disinterested in doing so. --NeoArkadia (talk • contribs) 01:55, January 2, 2018 (UTC)

ChaosGallade

Admin here, and I also support this change. Sometimes I surf Wikia on my phone and the layout is terrible. On my laptop, the mini videos can get in the way of whatever I'm looking at. ChaosGallade (talk • contribs) 04:58, January 2, 2018 (UTC)

KyrusDarkblade244

I can't say much that hasn't already been said by a lot of people here, but I certainly support this change KyrusDarkblade244 (talk • contribs) 08:51, January 2, 2018 (UTC)

Aeron Solo

I'm not exactly active around here but for my part I wanna affirm that the wiki is basically unreadable on mobile. Many card images are so large that they blot out the infoboxes so you can't read effects. Then there are the pages where the effect infoboxes are missing entirely for no reason whatsoever. It's completely unacceptable, and hearing what has been said has confirmed for me at least that we won't see anything get better in this department by staying here. Aeron Solo wuz here (If you wanna talk) 16:24, January 2, 2018 (UTC)

Cardsknower

I also support the fork as it's not right for Fandom to steal YouTube content without permission and not taking concern over the quality. While I do not suffer the ad problems mostly due to my computer using ad block, the fact that Fandom cares more about profit than the wikia's overall quality in pages and experience is something that I won't tolerate like many of the admins here.Cardsknower (talk • contribs) 17:16, January 2, 2018 (UTC)

Missign0

I'm also supporting the fork. --Missign0 (talk • contribs) 17:41, January 2, 2018 (UTC)

TwoTailedFox

TwoTailedFox, Founder.

What I'm about to write I do with a heavy heart. Like Cheesedude, I have had the privilege of working with Fandom for many years, and with that in mind, I want to openly declare my support of this fork.

Now, we had a discussion roughly a year ago regarding a fork; I was against it, for the following reasons:

I disliked the idea of fracturing the community and leaving behind a wiki half/non-maintained. Fandom's SEO is all-conquering (ask Wowpedia, WoWWiki still returns as the primary search result even after the fork several years ago) I don't like risk and uncertainty; a fork brings both of those in abundance.

Those three points still remain valid, however, I have seen and heard many things in the last 12 months that have made me reconsider my stance of 12 months ago.

The outright stealing of content from YouTube, without attribution, is unforgiveable. The content that it was then repurposed for was full of mistakes and errors; worse, this was not even community-developed content. Nobody, not even myself or the Admin team, was in any way consulted on this. While I don't get ads due to account settings and an ad blocker, they are a totally valid complaint, especially the video ones.

Now, as has been pointed out above, I greenlit the use of Portable Infoboxes above that has been fiercely resisted. I did this for several reasons:

The markup is a big focus for Fandom, as it unifies the user experience across wikis, which is important when you consider inter-wiki linking. This was, eventually, going to become mandatory. I figured getting started early would prove more productive than delaying tactics. I believe the markup has its merits, and for me has solved numerous problems on other projects.

However, lack of ability to customise the mobile CSS has left the Wiki looking like its lost its identity on mobile; cards should have their colours, after all. No matter what happens with the markup, this customization isn't coming. The ads that were screencapped from within a Portable Infobox, while genuinely an error, does demonstrate that it can be done.

On other forums, such as Reddit, Fandom continues to have a poor reputation, a fact I pointed out when I first went to Wikia's HQ in 2013. As is the case here, the overwhelming community consensus is that Fandom is no longer the right fit for them.--TwoTailedFox (talk) 19:10, January 2, 2018 (UTC)

TueYugi

Completely on support for a cleaner site.--TueYugi (talk) 15:49, January 10, 2018 (UTC)

Gaspar

Having a clear and uniform database is vital, especially when it comes to this franchise. It generates an absurd amount of content and links due to characters, cards, gameplay terms, and so on... And that is before we get into specifics.

I support the fork, but I want to note I do it begrudgingly - I cannot ignore the information monopolization project going on in the background, and I am absolutely against it. But I want people to be able to have a good Yu-Gi-Oh resource. The Gaspar (talk • contribs) 18:56, January 29, 2018 (UTC)

Dread

Anything to get rid of those irritating videos, I can't turn those off or block them with addons somehow. As long as this doesn't come at the cost of content and quality at the very least.

Dread (talk • contribs) 01:43, January 31, 2018 (UTC)

Oppose

Fensterhoff

After carefully reading everything I would like to express my sincere disappointment. Unfortunately since there is no turning back now that most of the team have made up their mind, my statement is more of an abstention than an opposition. At this point whatever decision is made will only result in unneccessary waste of time for admins and the rest of editors alike. Let this be an important life lesson for everyone here. Nobody is safe from making mistakes, no matter how experienced they are. The sad part is that these mistakes could have been prevented, yet the unwillingness to cooperate and work towards a solution that would be acceptable for everyone led to this situation where nobody truly wins. Fensterhoff (talk • contribs) 19:08, January 7, 2018 (UTC)

Hi Fensterhoff. Could you elaborate on some points, please? At this point whatever decision is made will only result in unneccessary waste of time for admins and the rest of editors alike Why? Because people will visit and edit both wikis after the fork resuting in conflicting information that should be supervised and having two databases means doubled efforts will be required to monitor their activity. Fensterhoff (talk • contribs) 11:08, January 8, 2018 (UTC) the unwillingness to cooperate and work towards a solution that would be acceptable for everyone led to this situation where nobody truly wins I don't know to whom you're referring to. We had some discussions with Fish Tank, for instance, regarding PIs. We were told mobile CSS and JS (a.k.a., mobile customization) won't ever be a thing. The videos are there and we are not the only ones unhappy with this; yet, they'll remain there because Wikia staff says it's the future and it's all about videos nowadays, etc.. So... What are you referring to exactly? What are you saying? Becasita Pendulum talk • contribs) I'm saying the Wikia staff had to lose a big chunk of their audience to even consider catering to its needs. Once they see the error in their ways though it will be too late to correct anything as nobody will be willing to switch back to Fandom. I would completely support this fork if any future edits here would get automatically synchronized with Yugipedia and vice versa so that it would essentially become a mobile version of this Wikia, which inturn would attract more users and increase the amount of contributions. Not to mention the new name will create conflicts with an already well estabished deckbuilding mobile app. If you ask me, any name that doesn't contain "yugioh" in it will further decrease its popularity. Fensterhoff (talk • contribs) 11:08, January 8, 2018 (UTC)

Fandom no longer takes opposition regarding their big changes (from editors) seriously, because their higher-ups have to be convinced that what they're doing is wrong (and they won't be convinced easily - the bottom line they see is profits). If Fandom does actually change their behavior, it'll probably be because of their popular wikis actually forking, and not because of how loudly editors complain. Fandom has the inherent advantage of arguing that "Wikia wikis are popular, so how could a fork possibly succeed?" to dissuade forking, which allows them to rollout whatever changes they want - they "know" that editors wouldn't have the courage to go for a fork. Fandom's upper management is too greedy for ad revenue, so blame them. I don't want to lock-in casual viewers to an experience that Fandom (and not the editors) dictates. --UltimateKuriboh (talk • contribs) 01:01, January 8, 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

I haven't been following portable infoboxes to any great degree, is there any evidence to suggest that ads are intentionally being inserted into infoboxes now or in the future? I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade, but if this or this (original discussion) is the source then the explanation I was given was a bug occurred with advertising - "brand new ad tag (like, new that day) happened to be the same as one of the PI markup tags.". This isn't to say I approve of the way PI has been deployed in some cases.

In addition to that, Featured Videos has apparently been a catastrophy in multiple instances and advertising has seemingly become worse over the years despite claims that improvements are coming (did they ever arrive?). I left the council after becoming frustrated with how genuine concerns were ignored when it didn't align with the current direction of a given project, so I'm not surprised this is a the second large wiki to be having this discussion in the past few months. cqm talk 21:30, January 3, 2018 (UTC)

Yes, those examples let me know they can easily do that. And despite Wikia's claims that it was an accident, looking at how things have gotten worse to me and to several other users over time, at this point, nothing guarantees me Wikia won't do something like that, whether on PIs or page content (I've spotted some CSS classes with weird suggestive names). That's a risk I'm not willing to take. One could argue they could do that already; they could, indeed, with other types of infoboxes. But with PIs, in the end, everything will be more structured and standardized, everywhere; it'd be easy to alter everything as they want. Becasita Pendulum talk • contribs)

I'm rather new to this wiki (joined last summer), but since then quite active. I really like working on the wiki and gathering and compiling data and information about the cards. About 2 years ago I've started working on the german YGO Wiki. It still has this old Wikipedia design, which really distastes me, and only a couple active editors, so it takes a long time until all the card and set pages for the new releases have been created. That's why I've moved to this wiki. I like the Wikia design (at least in the desktop version, I don't use the mobile, but I know how awful it is) and I like how they standardized their wikis. It makes browsing in different wikis more convenient.

I usually have my adblocker disabled on most pages across the web to support the team that hosts the page. Except for the totally unrelated poorly made autoplay video ads on some pages with high traffic, that annoyingly stick to the side of your screen when you scroll down (kinda reminds me of the ads on adult pages...), there wasn't much that bothered me since I've joined here.

I'm rather skeptical regarding the fork. I've always been a supporter of centralized and standardized data and there is nothing I dislike more than doing the same work twice or expending useless effort.

If it should come to the fork I'll probably first watch how the new wiki and how this wiki develop after the team behind it split and if the new wikis design appeals to me and then decide if I stay here or join the new one.

To me it's most important to have one complete YGO database. It doesn't have to be the most popular, as long as it's the best. Zustel (talk • contribs) 12:10, January 5, 2018 (UTC)

I concur with Zustel. Especially concerning the "Wikipedia design" and duplicity issues. --AzureKesil (talk • contribs) 01:07, January 6, 2018 (UTC)

I can understand your points. Especially the one about centralized data, excluding the personal tastes ones, of course, since those are about personal taste. By moving to the new wiki, you'd just have to edit there; not there and here :p To me it's most important to have one complete YGO database. It doesn't have to be the most popular, as long as it's the best. That's precisely what we are trying to offer here. Becasita Pendulum talk • contribs)

Question before move?

Hi Guys, LeafGreen Ranger here, I would before a move to be better for mobile and such, but I have a few questions that I would like answered before I make my decision, first of all, I'm a very on top of everything at times, got a job and very busy, so Tables, CSS, mean nothing to me in terms of what they are to me, but here is my biggest concern what will happen to Yugiohprices.com, they get all their data from us, and I use them to make good listings on eBay, will they be left behind as this wikia crumbles or will they move and use the new fork edition? thank you--LeafGreen Ranger (talk • contribs) 05:43, January 7, 2018 (UTC)

I'll be forwarding this to people that could eventually more easily get in touch with YGO prices. But the idea is to move everyone with us. With the support of the YGOrganization, we have a chance to achieve that (reddit is changing already). Becasita Pendulum talk • contribs)

Whoa, I know I'm not that active for an admin anymore but I never thought I'd be dead-last to learn about this. After reviewing the arguments, I have to say... I'm a decided "unsure." The ads are annoying, yes, and FANDOM's practices seem rather scummy in some cases, but I really am concerned about losing viewership, since the common internet-goer won't know that the site has been forked and that it's actually the NEW one that's being run by the original staff. The new one would face a MASSIVE uphill battle due to this. Rod (talk • contribs) 21:34, February 2, 2018 (UTC)

The server blows. Literally can't load the website half the time, and when I do, it takes a good minute to load the page (My connection isn't the best, but it's definitely above average, given where I am at the moment). For someone who very frequently uses the Yugioh wiki just to scroll through cards, this is hilariously upsetting.--Sergey Volkov 13 (talk • contribs) 15:56, February 23, 2018 (UTC)

Question regarding edits

Until when will Yugipedia plan to scrape edits made from Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia, and apply it to the site? As of now, its harder to edit on Yugipedia since my connection to the site seems to be less stable than Wikia, so I'm still editing the Wikia. Since I assume that at this phase, content from Wikia is still automatically scraped to Yugipedia, that's why I'm only doing edits for Wikia as for now. Dark Pride (talk • contribs) 14:20, January 14, 2018 (UTC)





Unsure

Honestly, I'm on the fence about this. It could be better but I don't know how editing there compares to here. It seems my account doesn't transfer to there so that's a minus and if it's harder to edit than here, that's another minus and will probably prevent me from being able to edit properly. --MasterMarik (talk • contribs) 02:52, January 26, 2018 (UTC)