Forum:CT:French interwiki links and what to do with them

Forums > Consensus track archive > CT:French interwiki links and what to do with them

This page is an archive of a community-wide discussion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made in the Senate Hall or new Consensus track pages rather than here so that this page is preserved as a historic record.
The result of the debate was: No vote held. General consensus was to leave it as is and potentially revisit issue in the future.. Grunny (Talk) 03:44, September 19, 2009 (UTC)

Hello, all.

I present an issue which is more-or-less on the periphery of the everyday functions of most users. As someone who lurks over at our French sister site, I became aware about three months back of a movement among some of the most active users to move from the wikia-hosted site (fr.starwars.wikia.com) to another site, called Wookiepédia, which had been established as an offshoot by the user Trazeris. The purpose, from what was expressed by the administrators, was to rejoin those who had established the independent site to create a "free" encyclopedia. The questions is, should we ask wikia to update our interwiki links to support this change? Let me explain what happened and what I see as the pros and cons to a change.

Politics of the French wiki:

Basically, a handful of users abandoned the French wiki for another independent site. I provide details so that we can discern whether or not to associate with the new site and how to handle any discussion with Wikia about our decision. It was, in some ways, an organized exodus. Now, I use the term abandon intentionally, because those who participated in the departure never went through the proper channels with wikia to fuse the two sites together as they originally intended and not all the users left. A site-wide vote was held after a marginal discussion and those in the community who voted agreed to merge the sites—save for the two schism-minded admins who voted to blank the wikia-based site. Rather than contacting wikia, they simply blanked the main page and replaced it with a message of departure and expected everyone to follow. Angela reverted the edit and provided an official response from Wikia. Their intention is to keep the wiki open in spite of the other users abandoning it because there was no attempt to resolve the issues or to merge the sites.

Reasons to change the interwiki links:

  1. The most prominent reason is that Wookiepédia is now the most active French-language Star Wars wiki. I waited to bring this up because at first very few articles exist. That said, it now has 1,149 articles.
  2. A handful of these articles have higher standards and are written better than their counterparts on the wikia-hosted site. Consider Alliance Rebelle verses Alliance pour la restauration de la République and Yoda verses Yoda.
    Another significant reason is that a little over two hundred pages are marked as plagiarized from another French fan site called Holonet.fr. I will be going through our interwiki links and removing the ones that link to plagiarized material if any exist. Of course, if they are not plagiarized pages, I will remove them from that category over on the French wiki. It should be noted that Trazeris was the user who created this category and it appears to have been part of the process to conscript and persuade other users.
    I have gone through and deleted all the articles that were plagiarized. There were a few that were salvaged, but most were in direct violation of copyright law. I am currently working on some images, as well. Some have already been deleted. (Updated by Fiolli 20:25, 27 August 2009 (UTC))
  3. This is trite, but they do link to us. After all, we are the largest English language wiki for Star Wars.

Reasons not to change the links:

  1. First off, not all the users left the Wikia-hosted site for "greener pastures." We probably should not abandon them as they had been by their fellow wikians. Again, Wikia has expressed their intentions to leave the wiki open for new users as they come around.
  2. In spite of its problems, the new wiki is neither on the path toward complete nor gaining new users. There are many missing templates and the number of edits to the wiki are not substantial save for Pemon uploading images. In reality, it is basically the few people who departed which are doing the work on a very sporadic level.
  3. Ironically, one of the reasons for outright abandoning the Wikia-based site, as expressed by Emojo in his response to Angela, was plagiarism. The new site takes material from sites such as ours and simply translates them, possibly by machine, and tacks them into their pages. (See Obi-Wan Kenobi.) This runs into a problem, in my opinion since Wookiepédia uses GFDL as its license, while the wikia-hosted site uses CC-BY-SA.
  4. Lastly, I see no marked change between the two wikis other than a couple articles being sourced better and more properly written. Images are still not properly sourced on either site; most articles are not vast improvements; it does not, contrary to what the admins there would tell you, have a more notable rating with search engines; and, it appears that any potential momentum that was gained by leaving has left.

All that said, I open the floor for discussion. Voting will begin after a period of discussion. This issue may not especially important to the overwhelming majority of the site, but I would like it discussed first, before we start voting.

Thank you, all. — Fiolli {Alpheridies University ComNet} 15:47, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Discussion

For the record, I am torn about what we should do. It appears there are advantages to associating with the new wiki, but we are a Wikia-based wiki and there may be some responsibility to continue to support the growth of our French sister site. Consider the floor open. — Fiolli {Alpheridies University ComNet} 15:47, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

  • See Forum:SH Archive/There is yet another: in Polish, Forum:CT Archive/New Polish sister site and Forum:Ossus.pl - New Polish sister site for a similar case with the Polish wiki. -- I need a name (Complain here) 16:02, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
    • I agree it is similar, save that the new Polish wiki was far better than the existing one. As I said, most of the articles on the new French wiki were copied directly over (fanon and speculation included), and majority of differences are marginal at best. Sure, the new wiki has a nicer interface and a few more images, but both are incredibly deficient. — Fiolli {Alpheridies University ComNet} 16:38, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
  • I'm inclined to support any wiki that leaves Wikia just as a matter of principle, since Wikia's behavior in those situations is invariably reprehensible. -- Darth Culator (Talk) 18:29, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
  • I wish you guys had spelled it Wookieepédia, with two e's, like the spelling of Wookiee and fr:Wookiee. —Xwing328(Talk) 23:06, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
    • I too find it ironic that the article is even spelled "wookiee" as well, especially considering this line: «Dans les traductions françaises, la syntaxe Wookie est préférée à Wookiee, alors que c'est considéré comme une faute en anglais.» Of course, this was originally on the Wikia-based site and copied directly to the other latter. — Fiolli {Alpheridies University ComNet} 03:06, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
  • I think Fiolli's reasons on why not to change the links make much stronger points than why we should change the links. Though I agree with Culator that their bold actions are to be admired, the new wiki simply sounds somewhat unprofessional and as Fiolli said, far from complete. Chack Jadson (Talk) 23:11, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
  • If, in the future, the offshoot site grows significantly beyond the Wikia site, I would see a much stronger argument for turning to them. As is, I don't see enough compelling reasons to abandon the Wikia site. Havac 05:18, 27 August 2009 (UTC)
  • Per Havac. Keep it as it is, and revisit this later if, and when, the new wiki becomes obviously superior. SoresuMakashi(Everything I tell you is a lie) 07:02, September 6, 2009 (UTC)