Forum:Helping Wikia's Server Space and Ridding of Inactive Wikis

Hello everyone,

This is a nice suggestion that I wish to propose to the Wikia staff mostly, but I'm adding it here to the forums because I also want to get a bit a comments from other members of the Community. I thought about posting this in the Feature requests forum, but decided that this isn't exactly a feature. I'm not even sure how possible this might be for Wikia, but it is something to think about.

When observing the new wikis special page like I do a lot, I have noticed that there are constantly more and more duplicates of the same wiki topic being created. Examples I've seen include numerous The Last Airbender wikis, Star Wars wikis, Club Penguin wikis, etc, just in English alone. I'm sure Wikia knew this would be a problem when they offer free creation of sites like that, and they do support the idea of people creating wikis like that so they can run them their own way, but what's bad is that most of the time, weeks after a wiki is created it still hasn't seen a single edit, not even by the founder. And really it just adds up, I bet.

But what if Wikia added something to the wiki creation form that said something like, "When creating this wiki, you agree that there must at least some editing for the first week of the wiki's creation or it will be deleted without warning. Wikia would like to see your wiki grow to strive, but that can't happen unless someone is active.", and then followed through with it? For the inactive wikis that have already been created, say that if they have been inactive for two months or more, add a sitenotice that clearly says, "This wiki is inactive, and would like some help. You can adopt this wiki and help it grow again, before it has to be deleted!" and if it remains inactive for another week or so, it's free to delete.

I'm not sure how much work it would be to do something like this, or if it's even worth the trouble, but then the URLs are freed up for someone else to use later, and server space would be improved because there won't be a ton of empty sites just sitting around. And the process would continue. But because of my limited knowledge of how Wikia runs from the inside, that's why I posted this here for community comments. I just think that if possible, this might help some.

--† DustKateb  (Talk to Me!)† 03:24, July 26, 2010 (UTC)
 * I couldn't agree more. There's no point in not deleting 'empty' inactive wikis just to offer somebody (else) a chance to do something with the wiki after a couple of months. You could create a new one in a matter of twenty seconds. I too would rather start with a clean slate. If there's no content, there's also no point in adopting a wiki. I also like your idea of putting up a site notice on inactive wikis.
 * Duplicate wikis are a wasted effort IMO and even hurting existing wikis in an indirect way, but there's not much you can do about it if creating a new wiki is this easy. BramTalk/IGW 13:38, July 26, 2010 (UTC)


 * Or, a better option, have a topic box and if the keywords entered there are similar to that of an already created wiki, it could trigger a message saying something like "a wiki of that topic already exists. See it here: Link to the wiki". Or, just redirect the user to that wiki if they press create anyway since there is no point in having rival Wikia wikis. ☆ The   Solar   Dragon  ☆ 13:56, July 26, 2010 (UTC)
 * But there is. Maybe Wikia will HAVE to FORCEFULLY say NO, because it's real annoying having people make smaller wikis, thinking they're going to surpass them. Jeffwang16   (Talk)   (Contribs.)  Email 13:59, July 26, 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, Wikia does support the idea of multiple wikis because of the fact that they agree with people that create a duplicate and want to run them differently than the original, so they really don't need to forcefully say no. Just weed out the wikis that don't last is all I'm suggesting. --† DustKateb  (Talk to Me!)† 17:29, July 26, 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure the real issue is duplicate wikis so much as wikis with almost no active users that clog up search results and dubiously add to the pile of wikis Wikia uses to say they have lots of wikis. We could start an inactive wiki taskforce to identify inactive wikis (lets be generous and say 3 months) and mass request they be closed down via Special:Contact. I'm willing to start one if at least 4 other people are willing to send Special:Contact requests with me. -- Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 10:34 AM PST 26 Jul 2010

Why can't wikia just create some sort of program to do this? -- Light Daxter -  Talk  17:53, July 26, 2010 (UTC)


 * Because only Wikia staff could give it the permissions to do it's job and they would probably reject any automated request system as spam. -- Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 11:00 AM PST 26 Jul 2010
 * I just sent a request on behalf of Fandyllic. Jeffwang16   (Talk)   (Contribs.)  Email 18:19, July 26, 2010 (UTC)
 * P.S. The IWCF (Inactive Wiki Cleanup Force) probably needs around ten users, because there's alot of inactive wikis around here.
 * If this gets official, I'll be glad to help. I do think it should be a multi-step-plan, i.e. posting a notice like DustKateb's suggestion on the main page first and/or trying to contact the founder, waiting for a certain period and finally if no-one bites, reporting it. BramTalk/IGW 18:25, July 26, 2010 (UTC)