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Crossing Over[]

Since Curse and Fandom joined forces, we are two platforms, one wiki host, and are currently working on creating a Unified experience for both sides.

Project Crossover aims to bring communities together, and rather than cannibalizing each others' audience and web traffic, helping them join forces and work for a common goal. We have had several notable successes thus far, including crossing over the Fallout wiki (GP to Fandom) and Warcraft wiki (Fandom to GP).

Both communities have only benefited from unification!

So, I'd like to know how all of you here feel about uniting with Fandom's Witcher community. If you decide to join forces, this wiki would be archived, preserving its content for reference, reuse, and importing, but will no longer be open for editing. A banner will also be placed at the top, like here, to help direct potential editors to the united wiki.

Note: No merger will take place if communities don't agree to it.

So, what do you think? Comment below. Tägäżïël 18:29, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm not very familiar with Fandom Witcher editors, besides also regulars who appear here too and who might give more insight into the situation there. From my perspective, this wiki gives better tools interface wise. Which is probably a bigger overarching difference between Gamepedia and Fandom in general. So I would find it a bad outcome if this wiki will be archived and all Witcher editors will be forced to move to the Fandom one. On the other hand, as you point out, combined effort can have more value, but it's also not a clear cut thing, given these wikis diverged on a number of topics in the past. Also, a lot effort already went into this wiki, and resolving all these differences would be non trivial.
If keeping both wikis is an option, I'd vote for continuing doing that and let the community decide which wiki they want to contribute to. — Gilrond (talk) 16:55, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
This of course offers the chance to improve things and maybe to clean up in general. What I don't like on the Fandom main page at the moment is the strong focus on the Netflix show and that for me terrible in-picture-nav-thing. — Encredechine (talk) 12:54, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
I'm all for joining forces; both wikis suffer lacks of editors and ending the fork will improve the situation significantly. A lot of guidelines would need to be consulted (e.g. approach to fanart images -- allowed here, disallowed on wikia) but I believe the merging has a potential to satisfy all persons involved. — SMiki5five (talk) 16:33, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
What about merging Fandom wiki into Gamepedia one? May be not a popular opinion for Fandom owners, but still something to consider. For me this wiki is unquestionably better. — Gilrond (talk) 17:36, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
Well, Gamepedia at least doesn't censor every single nipple, that's an advantage of sorts ;) I don't want to be the one to decide for the whole wikia's team though. — SMiki5five (talk) 20:21, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
Sure, I mean more as a possible option. If it is, may be it can be presented for Fandom/Wikia team. — Gilrond (talk) 01:25, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
Also to voice the opinion of Pangaearocks (he said he can't log-in to the wiki, may be someone can help with that), he'd prefer this wiki to remain open for editing. — Gilrond (talk) 17:43, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
By the way, wasn't there a new platform announced, intended to combine features from both Fandom/Wikia and Gamepedia? Would be probably best for me (editing is less bug-y here, message system better there) — SMiki5five (talk) 20:15, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
Given this, what will the new domain be for this wiki if is stays as a standalone one? I think the argument that it's not coming up well in search is not compelling at all, if the new domain will be confusable with witcher. one of the current Fandom wiki. — Gilrond (talk) 04:42, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
The UCP mentioned in the announcement is that new unified platform announced earlier, right? In this case, if all wikis from both Gamepedia and Fandom are going to end up using this engine, I see no reason not to merge. — SMiki5five (talk) 14:08, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
That depends on how it would look. I've seen wikis from Fandom migrated to UCP and I'm not at all thrilled about their design. As far as I understood this wiki already migrated to UCP too. — Gilrond (talk) 15:10, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
To clear up some of the confusion: Yes, the UCP is the unified platform. All Fandom and Gamepedia wikis already live on it and have for several weeks now, although it's hard to tell just by looking at them. Some things changed with the migration for Fandom wikis, but since Gamepedia wikis were already using the latest version of MediaWiki, and we have not quite yet reached the point where we unify the wiki skins, Gamepedia wikis still look and work pretty much the same.
Merging the Fandom wiki into the one here is not really an option, given that the Fandom wiki really does have several times the amount of traffic this wiki here is receiving. Traffic is not always the deciding factor - quality of content and the activity level of the local community certainly matter a lot - but in this case, the traffic difference is huge. The community over there is also very active, and the Fandom wiki is also official, though for the Netflix show, not the books or games. In addition, both this wiki and the Fandom wiki now use the same editors (though with some skin differences), so if you still find that editing is more bug-y on Fandom, I'd love to hear details - that sounds like something to follow up on.
Some time in the coming weeks or months, this wiki will have its domain migrated to fandom.com . Next steps in this process are explained here, if you're curious, although this wiki won't be part of that next batch yet since it has not merged with its Fandom counterpart in any direction. Feel free to follow staff blogs there if you want to be notified about further domain migration news. Eventually, since there already is a wiki at witcher.fandom.com, one of the two will have to have a domain change. This is not the same as crossing over, though. Crossover means one wiki gets archived, the domain migration means one wiki has its domain name changed while the other gets to keep it - but both remain open for editing.
(If Pangaearocks still can't log in, they really need to reach out to our support team - that's not a problem we can help solve otherwise!) — Mira Laime (talk) 01:24, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the heads up! How would the new domain name look after the migration or that's not yet decided? And I directed Pangaearocks to reach out to support. — Gilrond (talk) 00:57, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
The traffic isn't a problem if the chosen wiki will receive witcher.fandom.com adress regardless. As for other stuff: content-wise the fandom one is bigger now, so it would likely serve as a basis for the united wiki, and importing missing stuff from here would likely be added by bot, as on the Polish counterpart. A compromise between content policies could be easily solved via discussion. The two concerns people here have with merge are valid though:
1. Skin: Wikipedia-like layout is attractive for many, but that seems to be irrelevant if both Gamepedia and Fandom wikis will receive a united skin in the future. Giving the user an option to switch between skins would be probably best. However, there's a bigger problem with current Fandom engine: since the update a month or two ago, editing articles in source mode on Chrome Android has become extremely bug-y, which wasn't the case before. I am aware that neither now nor before was it officially supported, nevertheless it worked earlier.
2. Censorship: one of the reasons for the fork in the first place was Wikia/Fandom's change in policy that had resulted in mass-deletions of various images from the first game and book illustrations – even if not used in the articles. For now, Gamepedia serves as a safe archive for images that are otherwise deleted on the Fandom, but a legitimate concern exists that once the merge is finished, censor bots will run rampant again.
Regards, — SMiki5five (talk) 13:27, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
Two very valid points. The first one, as you already suspected, isn't going to be relevant for very much longer, since we're working on a new skin that combines elements from both the current Gamepedia skin and Fandom's skin into one unified skin. That'll replace current skins on both sides eventually, so the visual difference between Fandom and Gamepedia wikis will be mostly eliminated (though you'll still be able to recognize which wiki is a Gamepedia wiki vs. which one is a Fandom wiki). Supporting two skins and letting users choose which one they prefer would of course be ideal from the point of view of most users - but it would make building any new features much harder, and it would increase the amount of time and resources we have to spend on maintenance. Ultimately, it would slow us down long term, would mean users have to wait longer for improvements, there'd be more potential for bugs and in the end, no one wins.
The second point is something we've discussed internally before. We don't have a clear stance on situations like this yet, because we haven't revisited our image guidelines in a long time. We know they were made with Fandom wikis in mind and don't reflect that some Gamepedia wikis operate differently. This year, we're planning to revise our guidelines and come up with something clear that should apply to all. You are not the only community where this is a hot topic - for instance, a lot of anime communities also have heavy NSFW image content that is relevant to their fandoms, and where the fandom overall does have a place on our platform. For now, the way we deal with this on Fandom wikis is: We allow linking to off-site material (so long as it's not outright porn or similar), but don't allow embedded images that display on Fandom directly. Once new, updated image guidelines are in place, they will apply to Gamepedia and Fandom wikis alike. I can't say yet what exactly those guidelines will look like. So the question of what will happen to NSFW image content here on the wiki is an important one that we have to figure out - but it's somewhat independent from a potential merger. Hope that makes sense! — Mira Laime (talk) 22:09, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
Another point I mentioned above that SMiki5five didn't mention. You can't just migrate things with a bot when there are differences between articles. Editors on differnt wikis took different approaches to things in those cases. I don't think this is mergeable. — Gilrond (talk) 03:31, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
This is what editors ourselves should work on, ideally reaching a compromise that satisfies most, if not all. — SMiki5five (talk) 17:54, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
How about letting NSFW images stay in their respective categories but not adding them to articles? — SMiki5five (talk) 17:54, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
I can't say "nope" or "yes that would work" since we haven't yet decided on the new image guidelines yet. I know that's a pretty unsatisfying answer, but nothing more concrete can be said at this point. And yes, merging pages that already exist on both sides couldn't be easily automated and would certainly require quite a bit of active involvement from members of both communities. We can offer staff help, but only you know what content is best on both sides and would need to be on the active wiki, and only you could agree on shared guidelines going forward. It's been done before (e.g. when Nukapedia and the Vault merged back together), but I won't pretend reviewing that much content and merging it isn't a lot of work. To me, it seems worth the effort to have a united community and one resource rather than two competing wikis for years to come, especially if both are going to have more or less the same editing tools and layout anyway - but ultimately, it's up to you. — Mira Laime (talk) 01:40, 27 February 2021 (UTC)