Why there are so many forked wikis?

So, we have two Doom wikis, two Half-Life wikis, two Fallout wikis...
Why the hell there're so many forked wikis? I mean, it's just so confusing! I, for instance, for a long time was reading the 'wrong' Doom wiki. And why doomwiki.org is the right wiki? I mean, the other Doom wiki shows on the search engines first, so it's better, no? Can't just people have one wiki and live in unison? So many questionsss....

PS: I also noticed, that when you link to the 'wrong' Doom wiki, it automatically changes to that of the 'correct' wiki. Now that was a discovery!

Because wikia turned out to be horrible. More info here: http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_Wiki:Departure_from_Wikia

They forked because Wikia is kind of crap. The old wikis still exist because Wikia doesn't allow you to get rid of them, since they're still making ad money from them. It makes a total mess of search results, but there's not much anybody can do about it, it seems.

Aha, so it's all about ads.. well, I didn't really care about ads because I for a long time have been using adblock. When I was writing OP, I visited Doom Wikia (without adblock) and yeah, it's full of ads.. well, now I understand.

It's a shame, but it looks like Wikia version is still more popular than the correct version...

Since it's richer due to the ads, it might allegedly buy better search engine rank for itself (correct me if it's just a myth). That's why it seems "popular".

ChekaAgent said:

It's a shame, but it looks like Wikia version is still more popular than the correct version...

Because it's a Wikia site, which brings its rankings up just by being Wikia. Wikia obviously has enough capital to game the SEO systems.

DISCLAIMER: I'm about to be a jerk here...

I do not recommend the Wikia Doom Wiki for one main reason: the people who run that wiki now are usually outside of the Doomworld community, some of the editors have been banned from other communities, and are "fans" of Doom - not fanatics (Heck, one of the admins of doomwiki.org has his own source port!).

And before you go "What makes you think Doomworld is the Doom community?", I have to say that it is de facto, not de jure. It's like Atariage being the "Atari community" when there were tons of mailing lists and offshoot sites in Europe that were equally as important at some point.

Basically the hardest-working doomwiki.org editor sees Doom source code in his sleep, and I trust that guy to maintain the most accurate Doom info, and not some kids who play a few rounds of Brutal Doom and consider themselves Doom "experts".

Doomwiki.org is more up to date and is maintained by the community.

ChekaAgent said:

Aha, so it's all about ads.. well, I didn't really care about ads because I for a long time have been using adblock. When I was writing OP, I visited Doom Wikia (without adblock) and yeah, it's full of ads.. well, now I understand.

It's a shame, but it looks like Wikia version is still more popular than the correct version...

It isn't all about ads. Wikia also imposed new skins repeatedly, each more objectionable than the last, demonstrating a complete unwillingness to compromise in their designs even when posting supposed requests for such feedback, proceeding to ignore it all and press forward anyway. Protesters who took it too far had their entire wikis locked down and their admin rights stripped. The treatment of the admins of some of the larger wikis that left was completely despicable.

Wikia started to and, since we left, has continued to implement many objectionable features:

• Forum-style discussion threads at the bottom of pages. We had disabled these on the Doom Wiki since they did not fit our encyclopedic mission. Most other wikis are not so lucky. Wikis are supposed to keep discussion on talk pages.
  
• User blogs, which are outside the mission of a wiki.
  
• Automatically generated content sections that we could not control - the "Read more" footer is not an editable part of the page on Wikia. It is generated by what wikia's SEO database considers the most likely pages people will click on next if shown, in order to maximize ad impressions. Not to improve wiki quality.
  
• Obnoxious integration with social media (liking/rating pages, multiple icons for share, like, tweet, etc) to which some members of our community objected due to them being API-based and therefore bringing in tracking beacons.
  
• Bots that forge posts in the names of wiki admin users encouraging anonymous editors to register an account.
  
• Disabling or limiting external video embedding to replace it with a 3rd party service with which they have a monetary arrangement.
  
• Covering a large portion of the page with "Recent pictures", "Relevant videos", etc.
  
• Wikia staff members breaking their own rules and posting content which does not meet fair use criteria or even in some cases has been plagiarized from other sources.
  
• Adding large banners, sidebars, and footers which attempt to drive traffic away from the current wiki and disperse it across all of wikia's subsites.
  
• Changing the terms of service arbitrarily. At the time we left, the largest objection was their adding of a term that forbade editing of the site's CSS or JavaScript (an ability we were previously allowed) in order to mitigate any part of the disaster that was the new Oasis/Wikia skin. As of late, they have modified their Terms of Service such that they can ban people who use AdBlock!
  
• Unofficially instruct admins on wikis (like doom.wikia) to forbid linking to or mentioning fork sites like ours, even to the extent that they end up stealing our content by breaking the terms of the CC BY-SA license.
  

Their newest abominable sin is the creation of fandom.wikia.com, which is:

• Not a real wiki. It consists of commercial content provided to or produced by wikia for the promotion of 3rd party media (games, movies, TV shows, etc) - mainstream media.
  
• Not free content - anything you create here is owned by wikia solely and is NOT allowed to be reused or reposted anywhere else without their permission.
  
• Given saturated linking all over wikia to try to pull people away from the wikis and toward this profit-generating content.
  

This latest move represents a first baby step in something I earlier predicted, which is that eventually wikia will stop fighting the losing war of "making the wiki model profitable" which Jimbo prophetized would eventually pay off, and shift more and more toward locked down, curated content. If they go as far in this direction as I predict, it'll be similar to when AOL stopped offering internet access and turned into a lame half-assed search engine and news site.

Everyone else has the Doom Wiki/Wikia issue covered, but to answer the heart of the original question: There are so many forked Wikis for the same reasons that people don't all hang their toilet paper the same way.

ChekaAgent said:

So, we have two Doom wikis, two Half-Life wikis, two Fallout wikis...

I love that this forum's filter automatically fixes wrong Doom wiki links. :)


The Fallout wiki on Gamepedia is, if I'm not mistaken, the original Fallout wiki. It used to be independently hosted. They moved to getting hosted by Wikia when fighting spambots became a losing proposition. They had approached the UESP to try to see if they could be hosted there first, since Bethesda had bought Fallout, but that didn't pan out.

Speaking of which, another reason why there are plenty of wikias out there is also that they encourage people to create wikis there, even if an official wiki already exists. You have the UESP which has been around since before wikis even existed, but sure enough, you'll find a parasitic elderscrolls.wikia that never had a real reason to exist independently. Or, look at Terraria, where the original discussion forum (before the developer got their own official forums) always had a prominent link to the official wiki right at the top, but did that stop anyone from creating terraria.wikia? Nope.

When Wikia started (originally as Wikicities), creating a new wiki was something that required approval. They moved away from that to a model where you can create a new wiki on anything you want in a couple of clicks. There are plenty of dumb, useless and redundant wikias because of that.

Gez said:

There are plenty of dumb, useless and redundant wikias because of that.

Here is perhaps the funniest I've seen so far: http://animebaths.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

kuchitsu said:

Here is perhaps the funniest I've seen so far: http://animebaths.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

I don't know what you're talking about. I can't even remotely imagine a subject more deserving of a wiki than this one.

Somewhere on the internet, there is *someone* (other than the creator of that specific wiki, of course) who has interest in bathing scenes in anime.

I wonder how many other sections of wikia involve niches like these. I can think of at least one.

I wonder if the Star Wars Wiki will ever see themselves moving. They probably don't because A) Waaaaay too much content to port over and B) the site has a long time regular who, while not quite a member of the Wikia staff, is still very closely connected to them, and I think he has managed to pull strings or favors to keep Wookieepedia from going down similar, dark paths. Official recognition from the Star Wars website and LucasFilm/Disney also could bring about caution when dealing with that specific wiki.

But that's all mostly speculation.

You know, guys, what I've just found out? That the Wikia Doom Wiki is actually run by no one other than Doomguy 2000 himself! Lol.

Oh dear...

I wonder if he plans to...

no, I'm not going to say it...best not to give him any ideas.

Gez said:

original discussion forum (before the developer got their own official forums) always had a prominent link to the official wiki right at the top, but did that stop anyone from creating terraria.wikia? Nope.

I was fine living under the Terraria Online forums whilst linked to the official Wiki, made life easy... One day before the official Wiki was linked, people usually ended up at the Wikia... Oh.. You REALLY don't want to know how pissed I got at -that- wikia. It was ran by (not there now) Admin named HER0, and he made youtubes, big whoopty doo baaasel, but it really escalated for the worse...
[/RANT START]
He:
Is a cheater, he doesn't play Terraria legit, always using his dumb mod to cheat shit in. I don't see how people still like him despite his assanine tactics.
Terrible at being an admin for the Wikia, the fact a spammer went around ruining articles... And he kepts banning and the guy circumvented, and then at some point, looked at me thinking I was him while I WAS CORRECTING THE RUIN THE SPAMMER DID TO THE PAGES only because of "Similar name and time stamping yadayada bullshit"... Then again his staff sucked in general.
He's just plain out terrible to even talk to. I still have a vandetta against his "mistake".. [/RANT OVER]

But otherwise.. There used to be other sources before Wikis were up, but they became more popular as site management got easier to handle.. Why the forking? Pissing contest, I dunno.

It should be clear by now that Wikia is run by Organized Crime.
The way they act has nothing to do with honest business.

And it looks like they have paid off Google.

ChekaAgent said:

You know, guys, what I've just found out? That the Wikia Doom Wiki is actually run by no one other than Doomguy 2000 himself! Lol.

is this even remotely true, or is it just a rumor?

Doomhuntress said:

is this even remotely true, or is it just a rumor?

His page on Wikia even says that:

Wikia said:

Doomguy 2000 is an infamous author and notorious troll best known for Doomguy's Warzone and 30,000 Levels. He is also known for making purposely bad joke WADs to irritate people, or in this case trolling. Other examples of these joke WADs include: The Worst Level Ever Made, The Most Impossible Difficulty Ever!!!!!, and Seizure Doom to name a few. Besides being banned from the Doomworld Forums, he considers negative attention to be synonymous with popularity. Currently, he runs this wiki under the alias Justice Infinity.

The last sentence.

ChekaAgent said:

You know, guys, what I've just found out? That the Wikia Doom Wiki is actually run by no one other than Doomguy 2000 himself! Lol.

Oh dear Lord.

I'd encourage him to make the Doom Wikia the official Terrywad wiki, and to delete from it every non-Terry article as being out of scope.

Gez said:

I'd encourage him to make the Doom Wikia the official Terrywad wiki, and to delete from it every non-Terry article as being out of scope.

That would actually be plausible, if all the pages were renames and blanked/messed up/terry-fied. The pages would still probably appear as the first results for searches otherwise.

That wikia is a terry wad. To be honest I've never stayed longer than it takes me to push the back button when I see the clusterfuck start to load. The mobile experience soured me to it early on.

I'll take .org over .com any day. The motives are very different from each other and it really shows.

Mithral_Demon said:

I was fine living under the Terraria Online forums whilst linked to the official Wiki, made life easy... One day before the official Wiki was linked, people usually ended up at the Wikia... Oh.. You REALLY don't want to know how pissed I got at -that- wikia. It was ran by (not there now) Admin named HER0, and he made youtubes, big whoopty doo baaasel, but it really escalated for the worse...
[/RANT START]
He:
Is a cheater, he doesn't play Terraria legit, always using his dumb mod to cheat shit in. I don't see how people still like him despite his assanine tactics.
Terrible at being an admin for the Wikia, the fact a spammer went around ruining articles... And he kepts banning and the guy circumvented, and then at some point, looked at me thinking I was him while I WAS CORRECTING THE RUIN THE SPAMMER DID TO THE PAGES only because of "Similar name and time stamping yadayada bullshit"... Then again his staff sucked in general.
He's just plain out terrible to even talk to. I still have a vandetta against his "mistake".. [/RANT OVER]

But otherwise.. There used to be other sources before Wikis were up, but they became more popular as site management got easier to handle.. Why the forking? Pissing contest, I dunno.

Can confirm everything about Hero. He was "part of the beta" for 1.3 but never did a single thing, and only showed up once or twice to whine about limitations on an old game that could not sate his ultra HD boner. Then he fucked up the 1.3 launch, urgh. What the hell were the bosses thinking?

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