Community Central:Merging


 * This is not an official Wikia policy - just a proposal - comment on Wikia talk:Merging

What to do with inactive Wikias?
The most propable reason why a Wikia becomes inactive is because it relates to a very specialised topic that attracts too few people. Usually there exists a more general active wikia that shares the topic.

Example: a wiki about 500 people town with ~3 articles and no editors for 6 months could simply be merged into http://cities.wikia.com.

Why do we need this at all?

 * Inactive wikis attract spammers as no one takes a look at the recent changes.
 * Fewer people will join a dead project and start editing.

Research
First find out whether or not there are still active editors. Try to contact the founder. If there is really nobody there, proceed. If not, ask the remaining Wikians, first! A hostile takeover is not very polite and should be avoided at all costs!

Transfer
As there are usually just few articles and all Wikias share the same account data, this can be done manually and does not take too much time:
 * Special:Export articles to create XML pages with author and page history
 * Special:Import them again (needs sysops rights)

Inform
You need to inform Wikia staff that a wiki can be shut down. You can do this by leaving a message at Special:Contact, including a request to merge, links to both the old and new Wikias, and confirmation that all of the content has been transferred from the inactive Wikia into the active one. A staff member will then close down the inactive wiki and redirect it to the new destination.

You should also inform other interested editors about the merge, in the following ways:
 * Prior to the completion of the merge, adding a message to the Main Page of the merged Wikia, stating that it has been merged and providing a link to the new site;
 * Adding Template:Merged to the Central Wikia description page of the merged wiki, by using the following code:
 * After a staff member has completed the merge, editing the Central Wikia description page of the merged wiki so that it redirects to the description page of the new destination.