Thread:CzechOut/@comment-3281304-20190915183647/@comment-188432-20190916203756

When we on the adoptions team refuse a request on the basis of wiki inactivity, that's the end of the road. We don’t then say, "... but if you do x, y and z, we'll reconsider."

The hope is that by decisively “calling time” on wikis that have flatlined, people will focus on more active wikis.

We’re not doing that lightly. Nor are we attempting some form of reverse psychology to spur you into activity to try to “save” the wiki. We’re doing it because, in our experience of watching thousands of wikis over the years, once wikis flatline like Wars Wiki has, they aren’t salvageable in the long term.

We’re also able to see something that most users can’t. We can tell if there’s a natural readership for the topic. The key factor is not the number of pages a wiki has — though my statement that fewer than 50 pages had been created in the last almost-decade does reasonably suggest general inactivity. Rather, the important thing is how many people have viewed the wiki.

And what’s indisputable about Wars Wiki is that no one has seen it other than those few people who have edited in the last 24 hours. In fact, in the last seven days, four have been without any page views at all, while the other three haven’t been statistically different to zero. Before this week, there’s only been one day since mid-August with any page views at all.

That's pretty obviously not great -- and why our adoption guidelines regarding inactivity definitely apply.

Finally, due to issues of scale, we’re not typically able to give advance warning when we delete inactive wikis. However, the refusal of an adoption request is itself a pretty big clue that deletion is definitely an imminent possibility. Of course, when wikis are deleted, the database is downloadable for about 30 days afterwards, so, yes, it’s backed up. But you may want to grab any images while you can, since those are trickier to work with later.

Of course, you can try again by starting a new wiki. But the ten years of evidence we have so far on this topic suggests that there has not so far been a natural appetite for this material on Fandom. So it might well be that a year from now, the new attempt is equally unpopular and it would face deletion, too.

That’s why I think it’s fair to advise you to put your efforts towards topics that have clear audiences.