Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-5218827-20191127222756

Greetings,

I am the bureaucrat for the Top Gear and The Grand Tour wikis. For anyone even vaguely familiar with the history of both shows, they possess a shared origin which makes them very similar, in spite of being under the ownership of two different companies.

I agree with my supervisor (not sure if that's their role) Spongebob's assertions that it's confusing and unnecessary to include two pages on the same subject, and so have decided to come to a compromise. That compromise being that I feel it would be best to merge the two Wikis into one with a wider focus - car programmes based on Derek Smith's original idea he had back in 1977 when he created Top Gear. Top Gear and Grand Tour could still be mentioned on the front page, but the Wiki wouldn't be strictly centred on either. The URL, wiki name and logo would change as a result.

The only problem with my proposal is that Spongebob has spoken to other people, and they decide it would be best to keep the information on the two wikis totally separate, which I don't agree with. Now, I'd understand if it were disallowed to make Wikis based on IPs from two different companies, but may I direct your attention towards the Professional Wrestling Wiki, which is based on IPs from hundreds of companies.

Take the Hulk Hogan page for example. As you can see, he has wrestled for eight different companies during his career. The work he did for these companies is on one page and offers up a full chronology, since the Wiki is focused on pro wrestling as a whole. How the ultimatum I was given would apply in this instance is that there'd have to be eight different "Hulk Hogan" pages for each company he has wrestled for, each of these companies having wikis of their own, with zero reference to the work he did in another. I think this is an inefficient way of thinking.

Simply put, what I would like to do is as follows:


 * Close and merge The Grand Tour Wiki with the Top Gear Wiki, as I am the actively serving bureaucrat of both
 * Change the URL and name of the Top Gear Wiki to "Gearipedia" or some other name - turning it into a general car programme wiki

A year or two ago I would have been able to do this unimpeded, with perhaps some light objection before I made the decision. I do not see anything in the rules that expressly forbids Wikis centred on one IP to bridge out, especially a wiki that has been inherited from a previous owner. FANDOM works by allowing competition between wikis focusing on the same subject, so in the event someone wanted to make an exclusively Top Gear wiki, they'd be able to do so. Personally, I think it's in my best interests to remove the separation between Top Gear and Grand Tour, and merge it into one larger Wiki. I would like to know what objection prevents me from doing so. 