Doom Wiki transition post-mortem

Just wanted to say to everyone involved: Thank you, the DoomWiki is awesome. I had no idea of the amount and depth of content there. It has tons of images, and videos. It's fast, and has a pretty smart search engine. Great attention to detail too.

Thanks, again for everyone's work and dedication. Great job!

I updated a few things on the Doom Legacy page on Doom Wiki.
Noticed that the community -> source ports menu does not list Doom Legacy (which makes it a little difficult to discover the Doom Legacy Wiki page). Vavoom is listed and in spite of some opinions I think we have proved to have a bit more life than Vavoom. Have not discovered a way to add Doom Legacy to that menu.

I also like the way Doom Wiki comes up fast (dial-up modem).

wesleyjohnson said:

I updated a few things on the Doom Legacy page on Doom Wiki.
Noticed that the community -> source ports menu does not list Doom Legacy (which makes it a little difficult to discover the Doom Legacy Wiki page). ... Have not discovered a way to add Doom Legacy to that menu.

Are you talking about this category? It's listed as Doom Legacy.

wesleyjohnson said:

Noticed that the community -> source ports menu does not list Doom Legacy
Have not discovered a way to add Doom Legacy to that menu.

I think this means the menu in the left-hand sidebar.  Any text that appears on *every* page is considered part of the database software, and only admins can edit it, so I'm not surprised that it seemed obscure.  For things that clearly relate to the content (like a list of ports), however, it's usually no big deal to find an admin willing to help you.

In this case there have been similar edits recently to articles, "deprecating" Vavoom, so the change makes sense and I just did it.

According to another post someone just paid to keep the Vavoom site up.

As of Friday night, still no Doom Legacy in the menu.
Was that change supposed to have immediate effect.

Mmmhh, when Xeriphas posted about his edit, I went there to check and it was already there. Now it isn't. I guess someone didn't liked the edit and reverted it.

wesleyjohnson said:

As of Friday night, still no Doom Legacy in the menu.
Was that change supposed to have immediate effect.

Yes.  I could see it right away, but now I switch browsers and view the front page anonymously and it's still the previous list.  Weird.  Maybe some MediaWiki caching setting kicked in which Manc knows about and I don't.

Zed said:

Mmmhh, when Xeriphas posted about his edit, I went there to check and it was already there. Now it isn't. I guess someone didn't liked the edit and reverted it.

It hasn't been reverted, so it must be a caching issue.

Personally I use the monobook skin which does not use the same sidebar anyway.

Quasar said:

• Because the Wikia wiki cannot be removed and will not be allowed to carry links to the new one outside of user pages such as blogs or talk pages

Yeah, turns out that apparently, user talk pages are fair game for censoring too:
thanks robertATfm

Gez said:

Yeah, turns out that apparently, user talk pages are fair game for censoring too:
thanks robertATfm

Yeah I'm tired of seeing that kind of stuff (you need to change the link to doom DOT wikia DOT com to see what Gez is referring to, BTW; the revision does not exist on the link that was autochanged by this forum...)

When they started removing due credit to material that was taken from OUR wiki is when I blew my top and left a nasty post explaining that they can't do that. They can either attribute our material properly as per the CC BY-SA, or they can NOT USE our material, period. I don't think they understand or care though.

They are trying to destroy everything we are working so hard for. It's thanks to those guys that the old wiki is NOT rotting and we're in a constant state of competition and inability to further increase our SEO.

Not to mention wikia itself is doing things to counter us. Since doomwiki.org got content-sensitive meta description tags, I note that in the past month the doom.wikia site also suddenly has them, after every page previously being a generic "Come join Wikia" style blurb.

Somebody there is watching us and is trying to counter what we're doing.

Huh, I always figured the other wiki was still used just because people didn't know any better. Seems a shame that someone is actively trying to keep it alive.

Is RobertATfm some kind of wikia staff? Or just a "wikia enthusiast?" He seems to be a moderator on a lot of wikia pages.

plums said:

Huh, I always figured the other wiki was still used just because people didn't know any better. Seems a shame that someone is actively trying to keep it alive.

Is RobertATfm some kind of wikia staff? Or just a "wikia enthusiast?" He seems to be a moderator on a lot of wikia pages.

Probably a paid editor.

If he's a community member, he deserves to be shunned IMHO.

Quasar said:

When they started removing due credit to material that was taken from OUR wiki is when I blew my top and left a nasty post explaining that they can't do that. They can either attribute our material properly as per the CC BY-SA, or they can NOT USE our material, period. I don't think they understand or care though.

Seriously, what do you expect of a business that's more like organized crime?

They act like crooks and crooks never play honest. Shame on the fools that still use that cesspool.

What if we threatened legal action? I know the obvious question is "where do we get the money," but I would hope that being formally notified that they're objectively violating copyright law might make them think twice.

Regardless of funds, does anyone else think sending a legal threat is worth doing?

Sodaholic said:

What if we threatened legal action? I know the obvious question is "where do we get the money," but I would hope that being formally notified that they're objectively violating copyright law might make them think twice.

Regardless of funds, does anyone else think sending a legal threat is worth doing?

Do you really think that they are afraid of it? With all the money they got they'd probably ruin anyone trying to harm their criminal activity.

Sodaholic said:

What if we threatened legal action? I know the obvious question is "where do we get the money," but I would hope that being formally notified that they're objectively violating copyright law might make them think twice.

Regardless of funds, does anyone else think sending a legal threat is worth doing?

If content that you contribute to doomwiki.org is used without proper attribution, you are legally entitled to file a DMCA complaint with Wikia. Whether or not they will take action on it is out of anybody's control, but the entitlement still exists.

I would personally encourage any editors who find stolen material to do it. The last instance I found was so minor that it wouldn't have passed fraggle's favorite "de minimis" test, and also the attribution was removed by an admin whereas the original author of the material had tried to give proper attribution so I didn't press that one further.

One thing I have to say is that, being admin and part owner of doomwiki.org does NOT give me the authority to file a DMCA complaint on any other editor's behalf. If you are the author, you own the copyright so you have to file the claim - a DMCA claim can only legally be filed by the owner or a legally appointed representative thereof. For wikis that makes every individual editor responsible for enforcing claims on their own contributions.