Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-13301-20170502181922/@comment-168424-20170504181845

Cqm wrote: @above: For what it's worth, I spoke to staff and go no promise that this wouldn't happen to RuneScape Wiki (and thus MLP, COD, etc.). The option of not having PI didn't seem to be on the table, but perhaps that's a misinterpretation on my part. In general, I find most staff members to be reasonable people, so let us hope there can be a proper discussion with all options on the table should the event ever arise.

I have concerns about the suitability of PI in complex scenarios - simple use cases shouldn't have too many pitfalls during conversion other than CSS. For RS, the complex instances are also the richest in data, so doing it badly doesn't do the data service and could do more harm than good.

As a purely speculative point, I do wonder why edit warring over the conversion to PI is considered a ToU violation and why conversion itself is considered part of Fandom operations. My theory is that having everyone using PI enables Fandom to sell the data and work with third-parties who may want to utilise it. It could put a potential partner off when discovering that the top wikis, and thus the most desirable, do not make their data available. As ToU violations tend to come into play when it involves the Fandom brand and/or advertising, i.e. revenue from advertising, this is the most likely reason in my mind as to why there's been an expansion in the scope of ToU. As I mentioned, this is speculation and I may be proved wrong, but I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be correct.

Your analysis is extremely good. The summary is that Fandom has priorities they don't want to explain that clearly in public, but they don't involve diplomatic negotiation with the community, but more of "my way or the highway" process. The ToU is just general enough that many things could be a violation... or it could end up being a "hey, your tail light is broken... *smash*" situation.

I suspect the Runescape wiki has better relations with some Fandom insiders, so they are protected at some level for a period of time before forced conversion happens. Aka politics. We'll see what happens down the road.