Forum:Uncyclomedia's complaint on Wikia

Dear Wikia, Staff and community,

I look at this site community.wikia.com for maybe the 101rst time in my life. Not for watching anything, nor for editting or any kind of contributing. No, I'm here to solve a problem (again). Not only a problem, it's a problem which has been there for years (since 2006). Like B. Obama says: "it's time for a change". In my opinion it's time here too. I'm not going to beat around the bush anymore, and to explain the truth well, you should read this in detail. You may believe it or not, but I swear that this is the fact about Uncyclopedia.ORG. Facts should be taken seriously, and facts cannot be distorted. If so, people tell lies.

The following text is a letter which I sent on June, 24 to community@wikia.com, Angela Beesley, Jim Wales and Gil Penchina (by user mail). No one has ever replied, but Angela (after I had left a message on her talkpage). She wrote that it isn't "her" business and referred me to Lisa Carter (see below).

Letter
 Dear Wikia Staff,

Since 2006 Uncyclomedia.org has assisted the Uncyclopedia-concept in multilingual coordination, it has served as a central wiki to request adoptions and creations of new languages. Sadly, Uncyclopedia moved to Wikia, but Wikia abused (and still does) the concept by giving people the opportunity to create new languages and by commercialising the concept. That was no part of the deal. The umbrella organisation is Uncyclomedia (often abbreviated as UnMeta), Wikia stole Uncyclomedia’s role for its commercial purposes. Also, Wikia just took over Uncyclopedia’s domain name .org. As Wikia is commercial, the company has no right to use such domains. Unfortunately, indeed, many wikis moved to Wikia and new languages were created on it. Many people got very angry about this injustice against Uncyclomedia and some Uncyclomedia users started up Complaintwiki.org, where they posted their complaints about Wikia. I refer to the license Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Generic, that the work may not be used for commercial purposes. The ‘work’ also includes de concept itself, so Wikia is not even allowed to create new languages.

I, CartoonistHenning, have had very bad experiences with Wikia.com, according to the fact that I made a lot of efforts to let close some copied Uncyclopedias/Illogicopedias in other languages. The Uncyclopedia-concept is meant to be a Wikipedia parody, which also includes the freedom of ads (non-commercial), the freedom of users (bureaucrats cannot do on their wiki what they want to do) and the default skin (no Monaco). On page two of this letter I explain why Wikia Inc. never deserved the acquisition of the Uncyclopedia-concept.

Therefor we postulate that the abandoned Uncyclopedias in other languages on Wikia will be removed and that Wikia will no more accept new Uncyclopedias in other languages. Wikia should no more be involved with the Uncyclopedia-concept in other languages, except the wikis that asked for a move and that are active on Wikia. The same goes for another non-commercialised project, like the Illogicopedia-group, which will not be afflicted by Wikia anymore, despite the rude copy which is today called Wackypedia. To make sure that this requirement is confirmed by Uncyclomedia users - who share the same opinion -, people can read this document too and tell in a forum if they agree, like a petition.

Sincerely,

Henning VD, CartoonistHenning

-- page 2 --

Reasons and arguments why Wikia does not care about a project concept, but only (ab)uses projects to make money out of them and the people. §1. The agreement concerning the hosting is unilaterally enforced: Once people want to make a new language of the Uncyclopedia-concept, for instance, (ignorant of the truth about the fact that Uncyclomedia is the real hosting) they make a domain for free on Wikia, but they do not realise that A: they commercialise the name of (the) Uncyclopedia(-concept); B: if they do not want to have the Uncyclopedia-version on Wikia anymore, they are planning to move, or they start realising Wikia commercialises the concept in a unfair way, it is too late to start over again. Wikia let projects never go and (ab)uses the Wikia wiki as a direct competition, kept by Wikia users who requested the adoption for the wiki. The content of the abandoned wiki will remain, so Wikia does not give people the freedom in what they do. Users should read a kind of manual before creating a wiki on Wikia. But no, the green inviting button above each wiki “create a new wiki” leads you directly to the creation scheme, without any warnings. C: they even have never heard about the Uncyclomedia Foundation, because Wikia is so predominant in Google, that they didn’t find any information about the real organisation. This is actually all about selling your soul to the devil: once in Wikia, never out. §2. Wikia is playing a game with people when they talk about the ‘community’: “Our community wants you; we are happy to see you joining our community...” and nonsense. This horse manure is a typical trick to attract people to Wikia. The company claims that you and your early community will be safe with your Uncyclopedia-version and you and your community can decide everything on your project. In fact, Wikia means with ‘community’ something totally different than you expected: the community is the team of janitors and staff members who control you, your wiki and your community to lead everything like ‘they’ want to. A clear example is the complaint according to a fight between User:D. G. Neree and User:Manticore about home rules on the creator’s wiki, a complaint which can be found on Complaintwiki.org. Janitors and staff members just come over to your wiki and do inappropriate edits. Administrators are chosen in the understanding that they know the wiki’s general policy very well, but these janitors and staff members do not seem to worry about that wiki’s policy. They have their own rules, haven’t they? It appears that Wikia has a goal to become the largest communistic society on planet Earth, as they claim to love a big and grand community of hard working people, but actually gain money on these volunteers, who eventually have nothing as compensation (except irritating ads, no freedom in ruling their wiki like they want, etc...). Maybe you can interpret ‘community’ in two different ways, as following: - a large group of volunteers that is oppressed by the company, to make as much money out of them as Wikia can. You will join this ‘community’ and be a small part of the commercial company yourself, without receiving any compensation for it. That is why Wikia wants you. - Wikia itself, which includes the staff, the janitors and everyone who gets paid for the volunteer’s work. The ‘community’ decides? Certainly not: the staff members and janitors do! §3. Wikia has no respect for the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license: I will not explain it over and over again. The license does not allow to use/copy non-profit organisations for commercial purposes. Wikia Inc. is commercial. Obviously, Wikia is a very crafty business.

"Reply"
So, I contacted Ms. Carter on her talk page and she replied me back by the community@wikia.com mail. This is what she said:

This is no answer on Uncyclomedia's complaint. Therefore, I like to have a reply which is organised, well-answered on any argument and question in the letter. AND I like to have an answer on the things UnMeta postulates.

Notes from Carlb
Carlb is the hoster of almost all non-profit Uncyclopedias in other languages.
 * On Uncyclopedia.wikia.com:
 * If Wikia is going to engage in overly-aggressive attempts to market itself to wikis with perfectly-good existing non-Wikia servers, they should leave the name of the English-language Uncyclopedia out of this. A pitch that "you should turn over project ownership of your language's uncyclopedia to Wikia because en: and a few others already have" is highly misleading as the en.uncyclopedia.org domain name being sold out from under us was something done by one individual (not a sole founder, as Uncyclopedia has multiple founders) in secret and without the consent of anyone else in this community.
 * The wording of the license is "4c. Restrictions - You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3 above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation...". While that brings the nebulous question of intent into the definition (and determining primary motive beyond a reasonable doubt is like trying to nail gelatin to a tree) the inevitable reality is that anything which is not "...primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation..." would be unsaleable to investors. Uncyclopedia (when originally launched as an independent) had no outside for-profit investors to appease and likely was not intended to do anything more than break even or operate at a slight loss. The same is not true of any Wikia-owned entity, or of anything else where outside venture capitalists are in control; they want their money back with interest, and that's their only interest in the project. Nature of the beast. This and the non-commercial CC-BY-NC-SA license cannot be reconciled; there's more hope of oil and water successfully mixing (something BP has been working on for months now...). CC-BY-NC content should not be here.
 * As the second-largest member of the Desciclopédia® family, we are in no position to claim that "this is the main Uncyclopedia". Nonetheless, I am concerned that the issue of en: content being crossposted (as-is or in translation) to other wikis under an incompatible license has remained unresolved since mid-2005 (if that's when the original request to create fr:Désencyclopédie was rejected by Wikia because of their unwillingness that it be created under an Uncyclopedia-compatible non-commercial license). I have more than 10,000 edits here (which used to be a large number back in the days when en:  was still the largest Uncyclopedia) and do not appreciate being turned into an unwilling, unpaid employee of some for-profit enterprise through my non-commercial contributions to the original en: being reposted under commercial licences for-profit in some other language. A translation of a copyrighted work is still subject to the original copyright; the same is true of the hundreds of pages which were dumped from Babel: namespaces to individual wikis over the years. As for the separate userlists? That's a question that had been raised repeatedly on en: (as our separate userlist had long been something that Wikia was seeking to take away from us) and there has traditionally been very little support for a system that renders names unavailable just because a similar name is in use on some other wiki with precious little or nothing to do with en.uncyclopedia.
 * The effort to "get hold of communities" goes well beyond blindly looking the other way while a random "someone" creates a wiki with a similar name to an existing non-Wikia project. There have been complaints from everyone from 백괴사전 (Korea) to Oncyclopedia (Netherlands) that Wikia staff had been aggressively approaching admins or even users on various projects, attempting to get them to leave independent hosting and turn ownership of the site and userlist over to Wikia. Evidently these are worded in such a way as to make it appear that Wikia is offering to "host" the site, not disclosing that Wikia's intent is to "own" domain name, user list, inbound links, project name and anything else over which it can gain control for commercial purposes. Not all take kindly to being asked to hand over the fruits of a community's hard labours for free in this manner, although to Wikia control of a site's web traffic is commercially valuable to the point where it has made backroom deals with individual founders on sites to buy domains for several tens of thousands of dollars. Uncyclopedia is neither the only case or the worst case; a look at the history of guildwiki and its now-disgraced guildwiki:user:gravewit is worth looking up as it's an eye-opener. GuildWiki was, like Uncyclopedia, built by many and protected by a non-commercial license. Worse yet, much of its early expansion was funded by donations from individual members of the community. The domains and database were sold out from under the community by one person, who then promptly left the project. Sound familiar? The contractual details: for a price in the upper five-figures, this one individual agrees to sell and turn over to Wikia the domain name, database and userlist and then delete all files from his servers. He is contractually prohibited from saying anything publicly about the deal or what has happened, with the exception of vague and general praise for Wikia. He is prohibited from starting another site on the same or similar topic for years to come. The contractual details are to be withheld from the community, while the names of every user who'd ever registered on the site are sold to Wikia as nothing more than a commercial commodities, so that Wikia can claim to advertisers "we have n registered users" with no regard to whether these users want anything to do with Wikia or its hijacking of their community.
 * The end result was a strongly-alienated community and a loss of most of the users to competing project wiki.guildwars.com; Wikia attempted to buy back the respect of the community by repaying some of the donated money, but at that point it was too late as the damage had been done. I only mention the incident because it explains much of what had gone wrong here in Uncyclopedia a few years ago; Germany used to be on its own domain (uncyclopedia.de), but inexplicably its founders shut it down and turned the domain and data over to Wikia. The move was presented as Wikia hosting the defeated master race out of the goodness of their hearts, but what happened next? The Germans turned over the database and images, then deleted the originals. The copy of the images as turned over to Wikia turned out to have been corrupted somehow, and the deletions meant that there was no recovery. Wikia staff then start popping up on other wikis in the series, asking that we try to dig up images to re-illustrate and re-Bild the German wiki. Other, stronger German-language projects such as Kamelopedia are meanwhile laughing their Aryan heads off at the mess that Wikia has made of their longtime rival - images missing, ads everywhere, formatting of many pages broken badly. It wouldn't take even the level of intelligence in an average Stupidedia page to see that something is wrong, but why did this happen? A look at the contracts Wikia was imposing on founders as they betrayed their communities is telling... the document requires that the original founder delete absolutely everything after handing everything from database to trademarks to domains over to Wikia. We have no idea what (if anything) was actually signed as the German document of surrender, but in retrospect something just doesn't look right. And yes, Stupidedia and Kamelopedia have long since left de.Uncyc in the dust. Perhaps there are advantages to being in the West, outside the wall and free...
 * On Illogicopedia.org:
 * When Wikia manages to alienate a contributor or group of contributors (in Illogicopedia's case, that would've been pretty much all of the active authors on this site) eventually those contributors will take their content and go elsewhere. Not that I blame them, evidently. At that point, expect to see Wikia, Wikia's staff or Wikia apologists offer nonsense along the lines of "they're not members of the community anymore, they left... so their concerns may be ignored" and possibly even removal of information as to where all those once-key contributors had moved. At that rate, what is the "Wackypedia community" in Illogicopedian terms? Sounds like the sound of one hand clapping. The only difference between nonsense like "In regards to seniority, I definitely have more than you seeing as how I haven't only edited on my talk page or in forums that are anti-Wikia for several years. I know the full history of the site and even how you actually made a single feature. I've also put some of your articles on VFD before. That's what all those red links are on your page. I'm thinking of rewriting everything you've ever made just to spite you now." (on en.uncyc's version of this discussion) and Wikia staffers' claim that "the community" at the now-abandoned Wikia verson of Illogicopedia just conveniently is anyone except those who moved here after Wikia destroyed the site with forced, ad-heavy reskins is that Wikia would have omitted the counterproductive personal attack and just stuck to the (albeit implausible) pretext that "the community" may be skewed to mean "the community, ignoring a long list of regular contributors who are leaving or have left because they have been alienated by what we have done". Amazing what one can do statistically if you can choose whatever self-selected sample serves your ends, no?
 * The petition text probably could've focussed more specifically on the one specific issue: Wikia's use of claims that "other Uncyclopedias, including en:, are hosted there" in their repeated attempts to pressure individual admins or even individual users into turning ownership of various non-Wikia projects over to them is dishonest, as en: did not choose to have their domain sold out from under them. That was done in secret, by one of the founders (not a sole founder) at UnclePete, and met at the time with very strong objections from users and contributors. It was not appropriate that one individual act to undermine what was the work of many. That those objections have consistently stopped just short of forking the entire project to move the site elsewhere is not the point; read the archives, this is still a rather serious matter and Wikia might want to consider simply leaving en.uncyclopedia's name out of their over-aggressive sales pitches as this borders on deliberately misleading.

Discussion
I continue with this till Wikia takes consequences. UnMeta (which includes any non-profit Uncyclopedia in any language) is not happy with the current situation | CartoonistHenning 17:14, July 20, 2010 (UTC)


 * Hi there. I'm sorry, but I think you're in the wrong place: this is the Community Central forums, we provide editor-to-editor support for other wikians across the Wikia network. Your complaint/statement above addresses Wikia staff, we, other members of the community, are unable to help you with that. That said, the only places you can go to contact Wikia itself is to use Special:Contact or [mailto:community@wikia.com email community@wikia.com] directly. There is nothing anyone on these forums can do other than refer you to one of those two methods. Sorry, but I hope you can resolve your problem through the appropriate channels. Joey (talk) 17:39, July 20, 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, I'll mail them once again through the contact form. But don't delete this. I cannot write that long textes in mails, you see... CartoonistHenning 17:43, July 20, 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay, First, you cant create uncyclopedia.org because you do not fully own uncyclopedia, it is under Wikia Inc's control therefore you cannot have that domain, however you can try to talk to the staff and have Uncyclopedia.wikia.org, Second you are under the CC-BY-SA and dont try to change that cause you will be violating copyright rules and if you do violate the copyright rules uncyclopedia may be terminated and your user banned. Third if you dont like Wikia Inc's policys and domain and any other problems you may be having with Wikia, then ask for deletion of the uncyclopedia and then create a new uncyclopedia using media wikia software.--Andrew Schlieffen Executive Administrator of Modern Wikia and Valkyrie Movie Wikia 17:55, July 20, 2010 (UTC)
 * No, you don't get it. Did you read this carefully? Uncyclopedia is already created. I want to have it removed from Wikia. I never talked about owning a domain for myself. It belongs to UnMeta. The point is that Wikia should never had bought the domain of J. Huang, because the company was never allowed to buy it from Huang (because of our license) | CartoonistHenning 18:07, July 20, 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, i see, if you want it removed, then just ask staff using special:contact and they will gladly remove it, just be sure you use a good reason to remove it.--Andrew Schlieffen Executive Administrator of Modern Wikia and Valkyrie Movie Wikia 18:39, July 20, 2010 (UTC)
 * Sadly, that's not going to be easy. Wikia generally doesn't remove wikis | CartoonistHenning 18:41, July 20, 2010 (UTC)
 * Then I can only supply you with 3 options:
 * 1) Violate the terms of service and copyrights
 * 2) Permanently remove it by destroying all of the CSS
 * 3) Ask the staff to remove it and leave a good reason
 * --Andrew Schlieffen Executive Administrator of Modern Wikia and Valkyrie Movie Wikia 18:47, July 20, 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not an admin on Uncyclopedia.wikia.com | CartoonistHenning 19:02, July 20, 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry CartoonistHenning, unless you take your argument to the admins of Uncyclopedia, you will get no sympathy from me. Without some constructive action, most of the above is just a pure rant. -- Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 1:11 PM PST 20 Jul 2010
 * Baseless rant. Wikia acquired Uncyclopedia.  If the contributors had a problem, they could of prevented the sale.  They did not.  Wikia is not required to do anything.  It seems you're having problems with wikia due to a Me attitude, when wikia is a Us company.  23:10, July 20, 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, baseless rant. Apart from the license, there is nothing he can do. With the license, there may be an issue. -- Random Time  23:17, July 20, 2010 (UTC)
 * I went over to "their" site and really don't see what the problem is. The licensing is actually fine, because when Wikia takes over a wiki they keep all the history of those versions the same.  This rant has nothing for a wikia staff member to waste their time worrying about.  The more I researched it, the more it just looked like a sense of ownership entitlement on a user's end.  03:09, July 21, 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry Hooper, but the your argument only applies if the complaint violating the "BY" of the license. but that not complaint, it's the NC (Non-Commercial) -- 03:51, July 21, 2010 (UTC)
 * That would take a courtroom to decide, as defining the extent of any possible commercialization is something that we can't quantify until there is legal precedence. 04:04, July 21, 2010 (UTC)

My 2 cents
GuildWiki, my primary wiki - is another CC-NC-SA wiki that was purchased by Wikia. This caused, understandably - a lot of drama. We, the users are - fairly content with the deal we got, which is an arangement by Wikia to host the wiki. A lot of the features that Wikia has added have been, annoying. Forced monaco was met with more annoyances, particularly as we received a message during the settlement of the sale to wikia that "We want to offer you some new features and skins, but that's never mandatory" (Jimbo Wales, GuildWiki talk:Wikia Move). The content, however - has remained the same. GuildWiki hasn't had any branding issues to speak of (we're not as high traffic as Uncyclopedia) - and I'm not too sure about the spesifics of the Creative Commons license (the way it was explained to us was, adverts are to pay for the hosting).
 * As for the things we were promiced, they never arrived. Monaco was forced on us. It's true, most of the other stuff wikia puts in can either be disabled, or asked to be disabled, or simpialy ignored. It was stated that:
 * "We will publish an annual report on the revenue and costs of running the guildwars wiki. Revenue can easily be tracked by ads sold.  Costs can be calculated by the total cost of running all wikis and selling their advertising (servers, bandwith, engineer’s salaries, QA for bug fixes, ad sales, accounting, customer support, etc) and then calculating the percentage of total page views generated by guildwars vs. the rest of Wikia to determine the portion to be allocated to guildwars.  Any profits will be taken at the end of the year and spent on give-aways to guildwars visitors or users" (Gil Penchina GuildWiki talk:Wikia move.
 * However, this never happened - I can only assume that Wikia is still making a loss on GuildWiki, but I can't say that with certainty, nor have I - or indeed any other sysop ever followed it up. TBH, we're not that fussed.


 * 1) Addressing the points by the OP, Wikia does own Uncyclopedia, and all the branding associated, from what I can gather, which means they can do what they want with it, it might not be in the spirit of what you want to do, but in the end, it is what they're doing, and I think it's unreasonable to demand nobody can start a wiki with the word Un in front of it without asking you.
 * 2) Perhaps I'm a sucker, but I genuinely believe Wikia is community oriented. Sure, they're a company, and they have there bottom line to think about (as we saw with monaco, a skin created primarily for advertisers' benefits), but with no community comes no wiki edits, so - wikia does help foster communities.
 * 3) I'm not sure about the CC licence, to be honest. If Wikia makes no money off of it, it might not be classed as "commercial" - but, even if Wikia does make no money, it could be argued that UC draws attention to the Wikia brand, and makes money that way (I don't know, don't have data about the amount of money Wikia makes). GuildWiki had advertising on it before it joined Wikia, to pay for the hosting, that - we assumed, didn't break the license - as it was helping to fund the hosting. The content is still free (libre) - you can take the content and do what you like with it, even start a parallel wiki with it, if you felt so inclined, as long as the licence remained with the proper attribution.
 * It seems more straightforward to go with the direct wording of the licence. The content may not be used "in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation...". Now, it could be argued that Wikia purchaced UC for purely philanthropic reasons, and just wanted to sustain the hosting (and recoop the costs of that hosting) for the site. This, of course is bogus. Wikia Inc. is a company, and they purchace things to help the company succeed in buisiness. Therefore, wikia's use of the content is "primarily intended for... commercial advantage".
 * I really don't know what I'm arguing for here, I've just re-read this and it's not very clear. I'll post it, anyway - as I've taken the time to read it.
 * Tl;dr;


 * Wikia's purchace of UC (and GameWikis) was for commercial reasons, even if these reasons are indirect), this could potentially break the NC clause of the CC license.
 * Wikia is not evil.
 * I can't make a good argument
 * -- Random Time  22:52, July 20, 2010 (UTC)


 * With the way Wikia treats the Community Central Forum, I think the sense of "community" is diminishing. I would say more, but it would probably just get me into trouble. -- Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 6:40 PM PST 20 Jul 2010