Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25805649-20180830095121/@comment-9605025-20180831090905

reply to #6 Interesting. I was completely unaware that the Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikia had split off like that. It would certainly explain the decreased forum activity. Do you know where the split site is? I can certainly understand why larger communities would want to split off from Wikia since they already have an established system to manage their large volume of content. On the other hand, I have always wondered which hosting services they switch to; or how they fund and maintain their own server. Perhaps it just because I am not deeply involved in any such wikis, but it just seems like a lot of hassle for what is sometimes a cosmetic change. I mean, it isn't like Wikia is making them change the actual content. In fact, as you somewhat said, it is often the larger wikis that succeed in getting exceptions from changes. - reply to #7 Regarding the blog comment:

I believe the comment was not trying to say the blogs get more views than forum posts but rather that blogs are a more appropriate format for posting such a large body of information. Whether that is true or not is a different matter. - I agree with what Fandyllic said about quizzes. I can see the merit of championships for gaming wikis. Regarding badges, I know there is already a dev wiki script for I also think even a renovated achievements extension would help. Of course, since Wikia has neglected it for so long, I don't know whether or not it would be easier for them to just rollout a new equivalent feature.

I think the real issue is that many wikis don't have the luxury of a long-lasting topic. Sure, you can have wikis on broad topics like DC, Marvel, and Disney; but then there are only so many topics to cover. As such, most wikis are much more focused. The issue then becomes that the focus topic is relevant for only a short period of time. For example, you can make a wiki about a book series. But what do you do when the last book in the series has been out for over 10 years? There isn't really anything new to add. Similar issue for smaller video/mobile games and movie series.

For instance, I am still editing the Transformers Legends Wiki but only because there is a significant amount of catch-up and clean-up to do. However, once that is done, I don't know what is going to happen to the wiki. The game has been decommissioned so there is zero chance of any new content and absolutely no player base to even have community discussions with. So the reality of the situation is that, at some point, the wiki will be completely inactive barring vandalism or adoption (which would probably be an attempt to either get away with vandalism or just rack up a user's wiki count). And given inactivity, Wikia might decide to just take it down at some point.

Though I have used the wiki I edit as an example, this could/would happen to many wikis. In particular, the many small wikis dedicated to a particular TV series or anime that only runs for a season or two. I mean, that is typically only 24 half-hour (or less) episodes of material.