Proposal to fork Calendars to another MediaWiki Site[]
This discussion is about copying the Calendars Fandom site to a different site, such as Miraheze, and continuing to edit it there.
Pro[]
- We will have an active administration. The official admins of calendars.fandom.com are long gone and the Fandom process for involuntary change of admins is cumbersome.
- We will be able to give our site a contemporary look instead of being stuck with this awful yellowness.
- We will be able to remove off-topic spam and bot posts without waiting months or years for Fandom to do anything about it.
- Other hosts may display less annoying advertising and cross-wiki promotion which has driven away regular contributors already.
Con[]
- Copying the site is labor-intensive and requires a high level of team commitment.
- The Fandom site is massively linked on Google. It will take some time to get search engines to recognize the new site.
- A new site could become as obsolete as this one without ongoing dedication to its maintenance.
Please chime in and let us know what you think. JVRaines (talk) 16:35, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
I think it is a good idea. Can we redirect the important pages to the new site for Google?
Will the new site have a “Recent changes” page to see what changed recently? How will moderation work? Bredelet2 (talk) 19:47, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
- Redirects, links, or even mentions of the forked site, outside of this Forum page, are prohibited by Fandom policy. The mechanics of administration and moderation depend on the host we may choose. Exactly who is put into which role is something we need to come to agreement on. JVRaines (talk) 22:21, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
Alternatives[]
This section is for discussion of sites that we could fork to. Crissov has proposed Miraheze and done some work to start a wiki there. One thing to be aware of is that Miraheze is entirely supported by donations and this affects its future viability. See Miraheze Financials JVRaines (talk) 22:46, 12 September 2024 (UTC)
- Do we think that Miraheze is the best option then? What happens next? Bredelet2 (talk) 20:40, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
There is Wikidot, although the free tier is limited to 300 MB per site (max 5 sites). Bredelet2 (talk) 23:09, 13 September 2024 (UTC)
Groups.io, where the Calendars mailing list is being hosted, also offers a wiki feature, but it is quite cumbersome and porting the existing pages from Wikia/Fandom would be a lot harder than migrating to another host whose sites are powered by Mediawiki as well. Crissov (talk) 10:32, 16 September 2024 (UTC)
Would HandWiki be a good match? "HandWiki is dedicated to scientific knowledge (formal, natural and social sciences), with the emphasis on computing." Bredelet2 (talk) 22:26, 17 September 2024 (UTC)