The Anti Wikia Wiki Alliance Wiki

http://awa.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page

Roberto has struck on its servers too, hasn't he? Shoutwiki has encountered some heavier problems than Uncyclomedia has had. The wikis over there have been down since autumn last year, if I'm correct.

What's next? An Anti-Shoutwiki Alliance Wiki on wikkii.com?

Does somebody know more?

Shocking: Captain Obvious looks back on terrible past

2009 counts four numbers.
~ Captain Obvious

Was 2009 an experience to you?

No, not really. In the beginning -I'm talking about 2006- I was very popular, many users liked me, also other interwiki projects copied me. I appeared in almost every article on Uncyclopedia. You know, in that quotation column. But later, unfortunately, people didn't like me anymore and they started deleting my jokes from their articles... I mean the articles on the wikis, not in newspapers. So, yeah, 2008 and 2009 were kinda boring. I also felt it in my pocket: next year, I'm gonna be fired by Wikia. The so called "community" doesn't want to keep me any longer. The contract will be broken, it's that simple!

You're serious? Your future seems very bad, doesn't it?

Of course it is! I had almost a contract with Marvel to commercialise myself, you know, promoting. I can just forget it now. Thank you Wikia! ...(pause)... That was meant to be ironical. One positive fact is that I don't have to travel six hours from and to San Francisco any more, you know, that city north of LA, Los Angeles, not Angela no no... You can imagine: always in that same boring rush hour in the evenings. But I lost my fucking job now, and the only thing that remains is... my guitar!

Oh really? You play on the guitar?

Yeah, fun isn't it? I have some concerts next week in Salt Lake City, in a concert room in a bar. Everyone is invited by the way. I mean, children, adults... I have 20 tickets. Good enough to buy food for a month, you know, 30 days.

Captain, do you have a girlfriend?

No, I am not thinking about it yet. You know, a girlfriend is a girl, and girls can become pregnant. It will be to hard and to expensive for me. You know, money, I won't have a job any more, remember? You know, working brains... if you are remembering...

It was good to hear from you again. Thanks for the interview.

You're welcome. You know, I mean...

It's alright...

A year of independence: The Wikia debacle revisited

It's been one whole year since Illogicopedia moved from Wikia's servers, and it's verily shot by. Seems like only yesterday I was ranting my ass off at Wikia and their uncanny ability to cheese people off royally.

But for all that bad blood, I really don't think Wikia are that evil. The extreme views expressed within the pages of this weblog are all in good humour, you understand (or perhaps not: looks like we managed to fool one or two people with our Wikia-bashing along the way).

That's not to say I actually like Wikia: in fact, it's doubtful whether I ever did, even when Illogicopedia was with them. There's something about it that makes it all incompatible with everything Illogico, and by proxy I, stand for. Perhaps its the whole corporate image, or the fact it promotes profiting from volunteer spirit.

Yes, we were grateful when they took us on, but it was a means to an end. As has been mooted numerous times, it was always an idea for Illogicopedia to go it alone, so to speak, and moving to Wikia was simply a stepping stone.

It's still the ultimate goal for Illogicopedia to be self-funding, and maybe one day when I get a job that actually pays more than peanuts we may actually get to the point where we become the commercialised ones, with Illogico mugs and T-Shirts and the like. Oh, how the boot will be on the other foot then!

That's all in the future though. To mark Illogicopedia's first whole year of independence, I've posted a bit of an analysis over at one of those free-to-host places on the interwebs. It's a bit dry, but will hopefully bring to the attention of the general public the plight of small wikis such as ourselves. It's one of the bigger user-generated content sites, so who knows, maybe somebody from the mainstream media may read it.

The Crumbling Wikia Foundations

Why Wikia Sucks 101:

Wikia is dependant on its users, but it treats them like shit.

Wikia ought to start paying its users

I hear the cries of "you're crazy, yak," but hear me out on this.

It's the perfect way to get more active users - pay those that edit the most - employ them as workers for their site. You might say that this would never work, but why wouldn't it? Wikia ought to start doing the decent thing and start rewarding the people who are making the company money - i.e., us.

Instead of funding crappy copycat projects like WikiAnswers and Wikia Search -- the latter of which collapsed recently -- why not focus on the very thing that keeps the visitors coming - the editors?

And if they're so in love with advertisements, why not go all out on a 50-50 page advert to content ratio and financially reward the users; actually give something back to the very people who give up their own time, bandwidth and money to further the project.

Of course, it's never going to happen. But it would be a fun concept - paid wiki editing. I'm well aware that all the most successful wikis through time have functioned well enough with unpaid volunteers (Wikipedia et al), but is that because the founders were more interested in making money for themselves rather than rewarding their users?

Something to think about anyway.

BiblioClub the latest to leave Wikia

Something to keep an eye on over the coming weeks is BiblioClub's decision to leave Wikia. It's by no means a large wiki, but the resulting fallout is worth paying attention to.

A couple of days ago a bunch of content was deleted and since the 22nd March the main page has looked like this:


The official announcement was made on their blog on the 23rd March.

Will the redundant Wikia be kept open or, due to its relatively small size, deleted? We shall see. Good luck, Biblioclub, we wish you a pain-free future away from Wikia.

W*kia

Well, as nobody may have noticed, (except for Hindleyite, who seems to be nauseous from our latest laughing gas leak.) it appears that Wikia's ghost town of ?pedia has dropped off the google rankings of our sitename :D. Can I be the first to say "F*cking Finally!"

And now for an image of Duncan's goods.


So, also Hindleyite commented on a post he made to w*kia's ripoff of various other answers sites which beg for users to answer the questions the site owners cant be bothered to answer themselves. Well, it seems in an attempt to dodge the bullet, they have deleted the question. In typical style, it seems w*kia (or at least it's representatives) are willing to put their hands in their ears and pretend as though it never happened.

I'd finally like to say how grateful we are to Carl for providing us free hosting. And i unlike some users, am not going to look a gift-horse in the mouth over the downtime we get for about 10 minutes a night.

Wikiquestions: Why is Wikia such a sellout?

Wikia is never afraid of stealing other peoples' ideas and using them to their own advantage. At least Illogicopedia acknowledges its parodies - Wikia is becoming a parody of itself.

Also, get Jimbo's ugly fizzog out of my face!

Wikia renames old site as "Wackypedia"

http://wackypedia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page


Well, that should solve that then. Enough bashing Wikia, OK? Let's move on. :)

Complaint Wiki

A little bird told me that some people are getting a bit cheesed off with Wikia. OK, it wasn't a little bird and more like everybody who I've been talking to for the last three weeks. It's my personal opinion that Wikia's essential aims are noble but hugely clouded by advertisers and the need to please them. For this reason, I think people should have access to information which will help them decide whether Wikia really is right for them.

Complaints wiki does a good job in this sense: it's an archive of discussions relating to the Wikia situation with links to press articles and specialised sections for each wiki that has moved from Wikia. It must be noted that, although it is a wiki, it's more for reading than contributing to: feel free to leave your opinions in the comments section of this post.

Do Wikia care about us? I suspect not. However, read the complaints wiki and make up your own minds. Of course, we wouldn't want to influence your opinion in any way, would we? The Illogiblog does not wish to incriminate itself any further for 'forcing its views upon people'. So, forget you even read this post and I'll personally post some treacle toffee to your house.

Another essay on Wikia

I was lying when I said I gave you my final word on Wikia. The actual likelihood is that the closure saga might run on for longer than was originally expected, especially since the Wikia representatives have been rather quiet on 'their' Illogicopedia site recently.

Still, I've been immersing myself in past Wikia discussions in order to form a more informed opinion on the situation with Wikia as a whole. They do have their numerous vociferous critics but I am tempted to feel sorry for Wikia and the fact they are under constant pressure to pander to advertisers' wishes. After all, they are the middle men that have little real say in the big decisions - their financial situation dictates what goes on at the site, in essence. A pity, because the idea of a collective pool of knowledge that anyone can access and cite freely is an idea that even Henri de Saint-Simon would be proud of, and for all Wikipedia's well-publicised problems with accuracy of entries, for a free resource it's better than a kick in the teeth.

But the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, especially where big business is concerned. It is all too easy to take the view that each and every one of Wikia's actions are governed by their advertisers, but at some point along the line they must concede that their soul is slowly ebbing away with the inevitable community departures. It could be argued that ^{[weasel words]} it's time for Wikia to admit defeat - the list of disgruntled 'customers' (if you could call them that) grows by the day is only going to get larger as long as the advertisers have their way. And would the world be a worse-off place without the Family Guy Wikia? Or the Cheese Wikia? I'd guess for most people the answer would be 'no', after all, where these sites are concerned Wikia is just acting as a glorified web host, surely?

I disagree. It's my personal opinion that the wiki is an excellent invention, a wonderful tool for communities to collect their knowledge together in one place quickly and easily. And so what if there are adverts? Not everybody can afford their own private, ad-free webhosts. So, I say the following.

If you aren't too concerned about site design and having to give up ad space at the expense of information; if you aren't concerned about dealing with corporate representatives and their stock responses to queries, then go ahead, Wikia will be an excellent choice. Be warned, though, for invariably big business is a large, capitalist farmer willing to milk you for all you're worth and whose decision making essentially seeks to benefit themself.

I still maintain that, in Illogicopedia's case, Wikia could have been more trusting and respectful of the community. The backlash is likely to be a drawn-out one, and though things are likely to be resolved quicker than the Spanking Art (this link SFW, the wiki itself may not be) situation, the whole New Monaco/Advertising dispute can't have escaped the attention of the wider press. You must have gathered by now that this thing is much bigger than the Illogicopedia.

I bid you good day, and a happy Thanksgiving season if you're in North America.

Indie-logicopedia updatification

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last couple of weeks, it can't possibly have escaped your attention that Illogicopedia is going through some biiiig changes. We haven't 'officially' completed the move to the new servers yet as there are one or two images that still need to imported, in an ideal world. In addition, there are a few users that have yet to find the new wiki, so we intend to keep Illogicopedia.wikia.com open for a while.

I must say Wikia are being co-operative with this area of things, despite the anger currently being expressed in the Illogicopedia chatroom. Their representatives, though typically blunt, are being very helpful to the departing community. The ball's pretty much in their court when we leave: their plans for the future of the old Illogic are as yet undecided. Will it be renamed to 'Wackypedia'? Will the new community decide to delete a bunch of Illogicopedia-related articles? Will a new community move in at all? Keep your eyes peeled to see what happens to your content when we announce the move - probably in the form of some sort of email or post in the Wikia forum.

Personally, if Wikia plan to keep their wiki open long term, I object to my content being held there any longer but since they aren't legally obliged to delete it it's likely to remain in place. What can I do, eh? I'm screwed on that. I have a small amount of rights to the content under the GFDL... I should have read that blasted license when we joined, not when we decided to relicense Illogicopedia's content just a few days ago. However, I shall move on as this post is descending into personal views and, well, is starting to resemble a, er, blog post of some description.

Of course, you are free to suggest your input for the rebranded Wikia ?pedia at the appropriate places on the intah-net, or even on the back of Corn Flakes packets. Or, maybe at your local biscuit factory? Wherever you feel like it, really. Careful, though, because I hear walls have ears...

AID EPOC ILLOGI - Phrubub Nose the Cheese.

Illogicopedia is in transition - important news!

Well, it's taken... how many months? But the Illogicopedia independence drive has finally pushed forward apace this week. Carlb, owner of servers hosting the Uncyclopedia babel project, has generously donated webspace for Illogicopedia to set up independently of Wikia. The English, French and Dutch Illogicopedias are now kindly hosted by Mr Carl at the following addresses:

• English Illogicopedia
• French Illogicopedia
• Dutch Illogicopedia

Not everything is going smoothly yet though - many images still need to be uploaded, but we're working on it. Also, you will need to re-register under your old name. You can register under a new name, but you will lose all your old edits.

Expect the next month or so to be the hectic time we expected, with the transition taking place from illogicopedia.wikia.com to illogicopedia.com. We're in the process of moving images, edits etc. to the new wiki BUT... and this is a big butt.... ahem... some of the edits may be lost. For this reason, it'll be a case of locating those lost edits and moving them to the new wiki. Please don't try and copy the edits across yourself, the admins will do it for you if you ask them.

The address Illogicopedia.org will still work but direct you to the new wiki. And this is pretty much all you need to know for now! We ask you to make edits to the new wiki rather than the old one as it is phased out.

Oh yeah, almost forgot. Wikia seem to like 'hanging on' to their old wikis - it may be a long, drawn out process whereby they refuse to close the Wikia (judging by precedent) for ages, the wiki going stagnant and dying a death. We won't let them run the wiki concurrently, we'll try and get it shut down. But not right away, we've got some work to do yet.

AID EPOC IGOLLI!!!

Wikia IRC gateway

At last the Wikia gateway is working with ?pedia's channel, now Hindleyite can also join in on the empty chatroom. Oh what fun.