Nukapedia and Fandom discussions

As you know, Sakaratte and I (With Jspoel observing) had a discussion with Wikia (T/a Fandom) on Friday. This isn’t intended as minutes so some things might be slightly out of order, but it covers the major points.

Notes of meeting

We started by asking Wikia if they were indeed committed to the Wiki platform (or Communities as they call it). We highlighted their interest elsewhere, and the atrophy that the platform has seen in the past few years. We were told that they see the wiki platform as the central part of the company.

We stressed that our interest in this wasn’t just limited to Featured Video itself - this is just the most immediate example of the line between us and them on content being breached, and we cannot continue without a firm understanding of where that line is, and respect for it.

Wikia wanted to understand what our objections on featured video were. We pointed out that it took control away from us - what we choose to put and where, that the autoplay is data intensive, and that the form is intrusive.

They asked whether we saw any value in the trailers, given that they through they’d be the least objectionable content. We pointed out that they hadn’t added anything to the page - the trailer was already there, in the place we (the community) felt it was the most appropriate to be. As such the feature itself holds no value to us.

We took them to task for releasing this on the Fallout 76 announcement day, pointing out that it highlighted the toxic relationship with us. We pointed out that that this was not the action that we would expect from having a good relationship - they could have offered assistance with a refreshed look, with help with spam management, or getting folk into E3 or developer access. Instead they took an action which was guaranteed to cause nothing but a distraction when we could use it the least, and offered no positive assistance at all.

“It was a risk” is what we were told in response. I found that to be quite an incredible response… If I may editorialise a moment It wasn’t a risk, we knew this would happen, we knew they’d start in this way and we knew exacly how it would go down… This wasn’t a “risk”, it was a certainty. We pointed out that we’d been telling them for over 18 months that this wasn’t going to work for us and they hadn’t listened at all.

We were then asked about email that Wikia had sent us in March, asking for feedback on a proposed video. They claimed not to have received any response from us, when we know we had responded. We provided them with that response, and concluded it was lost on their end inadvertently; I’m required by our requirement to presume good faith to accept this explanation.

We were asked if disabling Autoplay was enough. This was presented as if it was some major concession and some major technical change was done on their end to enable this. We told them that doesn’t cover what the actual real problems are - editorial control, and our current toxic relationship… that specifically it takes letters to the CEO and press involvement to actually get people to listen - even when we’re asked for feedback.

We then talked about the future. We pointed out that despite saying they’ve got wikis at the core of their existence, they’ve, in our view, lost some of the important traits that make a wiki a wiki, like consensus. they indicated a desire to be work more collaboratively in the future.

We can’t get them to remove video (yet at least). They indicated they’ll now be changing track back to moving their attention away from sponsors and onto the communities again, and expect this process to take a few months to come up with a new understanding between wikia and communities.

We told them that this was not acceptable. We cannot have this ongoing distraction further, and that we expect concrete proposals in the next couple of weeks, not months.

They do however plan to show us some roadmap of the road head within the next few months.

We also talked about what we’d learned from Gamepedia’s relationship with their communities. That they have dedicated named “account managers” looking after each community supporting them, enabling them but not deciding content.

We also indicated that Gamepdia do not operate a “Hotel California” policy, holding the risk of a continuity wiki continuing over the communities head against a split. We told them that this risk was hardly a good way to ensure a positive relationship with the community (despite Nukapedia only existing because of it).

They indicated they were willing to learn more about how Gamepedia’s relationship is different to see if there is more they could learn there.

We stressed that despite being perhaps the most “Pro Exodus” voices, our primary priority is to stay with Wikia for fear of the risk of another split. But we did advise them if we have no choice but to act, then we would, and prior mistakes were not repeated. We also indicated that if we did stay we hope to continue to use the exodus platform to enhance the wiki experience… and their out of date technology has to be addressed.

We were asked what could be offered as a show of good faith. Semantic Mediawiki has now been enabled on this wiki, and they are apparently talking to Bethesda’s “sales teams” about early access to content.

Semantic mediawiki might not mean much to many of you, but this is a very powerful tool we can use to keep pages in sync better, and in some cases basically self-create pages from information held in other pages.

Next steps

The way I see it there are 4 acceptable outcomes to this process:

1. Exodus
2. Unity with the Vault
3. A strong agreement with Wikia that determines who controls what, and where consent/consensus is needed to cross those lines
4. A unilateral declaration by us to them telling them where the lines are, and the promise of a swift response if its crossed

To this end:

We hope to meet with Gamepedia in the next week to discuss how a merge with the vault might work, and how a community solution for that option might be possible, whilst we wait for Wikia’s proposals. I’ll report to you when this is clear.

If we don’t have a proposal from Wikia in the next 2 weeks for something that would fit in with option 3, We’ll start to work on option 4.

We will then let you decide which way to go. We may get to do the talking… But this is your wiki - the communities wiki - and don’t let anyone ever tell you any different. My voice might be loud, but its still only one vote in the end.

Agent c (talk) 23:01, July 8, 2018 (UTC)