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)
 * I like Fandyllic's idea of forming a decent task force and presenting it to Wikia. And Bram's suggestion about it sounds good too. Any other supporters? --† DustKateb  (Talk to Me!)† 22:00, July 26, 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm in! Ω penBSDWiki 23:57, July 26, 2010 (UTC)

Is this cleanup force only for duplicate wikis? -Bluethunder Contact 00:32, July 27, 2010 (UTC)
 * Inactive wikis, but perhaps an emphasis on duplicates first. -- Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 5:51 PM PST 26 Jul 2010

IWTF
Hi again everyone. After seeing Fandyllic's idea, I already started the group and got the basics of everything created. While I did this, someone added a list of members and such here, so I just moved it to the main wiki: http://iwtf.wikia.com. If you're still interested, please read the various pages and sign up there. --† DustKateb  (Talk to Me!)† 02:57, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

reply
Hi guys. Let me point out a few things. Drive space is a trivial issue. If we were concerned about the tiny amount of space that these inactive wikis take up, do you think we would be allowing 350 to 400+ new ones to be made each day. It takes significantly more about of staff, tech, and server time to remove a dead wiki then it costs to leave it. Even if this taskforce gets going, a staff member still has to review each one to make sure theres no false positives, and then a member of the technical team has to take time to purge them from system after confirming their backup is completed and purged from the active system. Even if you can nullify the human interaction, theres still the server work. It takes server time to gather all the bits about a wiki (database, images, lots of other meta records, etc), and move them from the active system to the archive system (think of it like the recycle bin). The SEO impact of a inactive wiki is tiny, almost infinitesimal. The URL issue is also moot. If theres ever a wanted URL that a is tied to a dead wiki, any user can contact us to transfer it. Another issue to consider is this group would also take up even more staff time in managing and overseeing it, and even more getting it setup (drafting policies and what not). In short, it takes more worktime to cleanup then to not. I for one would rather have these resources being used to serve the current wikis, and to work on moving forward, not on worrying about the past. --Uberfuzzy 03:03, July 27, 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the notice, Uberfuzzy. When I originally started up on the idea, I figured it would be a pain on the side of the Staff, although I did not consider it much when I acted on the ideas given here to start the group. What you wrote makes sense. --† DustKateb  (Talk to Me!)† 03:12, July 27, 2010 (UTC)
 * There is also the issue of deleted community contributions, just because it's inactive in editing. It would significantly impact community contributions to do so. It ignores the wiki might be inactive in editing does not me it's inactive in being read. Just because it's stable does not mean it's dead. What you should be looking at is a merging inactive wiki's into relevant active wikis as a possible alternative to adopting. -- 04:11, July 27, 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think the original idea was to delete any 'stable' wiki's with rich content, but there are a lot of empty inactive wikis out there doing nothing. You could also tackle this problem in a more positive manner. If deleting empty wikis doesn't really help, I'd still suggest putting up a site notice on main pages to direct new and unsuspecting users, with links to an active related wiki, useful tips, the wiki adoption page, etc. I could even imagine myself doing some 'fostering' on a few similar but original wikis if that would help, as long as I don't have to adopt it or be the main contributor. In a similar way, you could also help wikis that do have content and active editors, but no admin etc. looking after. If you organize this properly, there still can be a suitable future for the so-called IWTF. BramTalk/IGW 06:18, July 27, 2010 (UTC)

Maybe, but what harm are these empty inactive wikis doing to you? By editing an inactive wiki, you render it now active, and are doing so under false pretenses then (not adding to the content/community), and while altruistic, your actions of trying to redirect users away from a wiki might in some small way seem bad. I think you dont understand the sheer volume of wikis there are at Wikia, check this. It would take far more then 10 people to do this, and the more people you have involved, the more complex it gets. The idea was a good one, infact, back when there was less then 10k wikis (and most were active), we used to have a standard template people would put on the front page (manually) to let people know that it was inactive, and could be adopted. We know there are many inactive wikis out there, many 'empty', but the volume of them is going to take a technical solution, not a human guided one. This is something we've been discussing for a long time, and are starting work on making both the finding and closing of mass amounts of dead wikis easier, and the adoption process of a active but admin-less wiki easier (there are many of these out there). These things take time, so you have to be patient. Spend all this energy in building better wikis that you are already a part of, and stop worrying about dead ones. --Uberfuzzy 08:09, July 27, 2010 (UTC)