Forum:Announcement: Wikia & Uncyclopedia

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I have some good news - Wikia is the new owner of the Uncyclopedia domain name and Chronarion has transferred the trademark rights to us. Wikia has been hosting the site since the start of 2005, but we were always cautious about adding the other language versions to this domain, and about adding new subdomains, to a domain owned by a third party. However, these things are all now possible. We're not intending to make any negative changes, so please don't be concerned about this change of ownership. The only changes should be positive ones, and ones that this community have been requesting for a long time, such as a shared image repository, and shared login with the other versions of Uncyclopedia, and possibly even with Wikia in the future. Mostly, we hope you see this as a commitment from Wikia to ensuring the continuity of the project. Angela 10:39, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

OHNOES....a hostile takeover. Chronarion will be avenged!!!! For Sophia!!!! -- Sir Mhaille  (talk to me)

Should I get my hat and coat now? --~ sin($) ^tan(€) 10:46, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Only if you're feeling cold... Angela

I doubt MoneySign even HAS a hat.... -- Sir Mhaille  (talk to me)

There are currently eight Uncyclopedia language projects hosted externally. We have already had problems with Wikia staff removing links from this wiki to external sites which are part of this project. We've also seen at least one Wikia project created which overlaps one of our existing externally-hosted projects. What will the impact be when these issues arise in the future and Chron is seemingly out of the picture?

Then there's the whole Google issue; anyone following the Forum: section on this site knows we've been penalized rather heavily in search results for reasons Google has refused to explain. If this continues, I'd expect that we may have wanted the flexibility to choose another ad provider or pay our own way instead of continuing with Google. This change takes those options away from us, short of moving the entire site to another domain - no small step and not something I would wish to see happen.

Any reason why neither Chron nor anyone else made any attempt to consult the Uncyclopedia community before taking this step (the first we've heard of it is at 0:20UTC today when it showed up on whois)? --Carlb 11:06, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I know... this is completely out of the blue. ~Sir Rangeley GUN WotM UotM EGA +S (talk) 23:31, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

The claim that the word "uncyclopedia" is in any way trademarkable is also completely out of the blue. If it's already been applied to everything from the Uncyclopedia of Baseball book to various websites (some part of this project, some not, some not even wiki) it's hardly unique - and not a word in the more than a year I've been part of this project ever claiming it ever even might be trademark material. Jimbo has already tried to convince me to sell the .info domain out from under the Taiwan and Japan projects, needless to say my answer was (and still is) "no". And then there's all these "who owns the logo? who owns the logo?" questions (an issue if we ever want it printed on a T-shirt, a webpage or anything else) and the question of why we were not informed the uncyclopedia.org domain name was even for sale until after it was already taken out from under us. Business as usual? Not in the least. --Carlb 01:04, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Why was this decision made? Why did we hand over ownership to an outside entity? Was it just money or something, because I'm sure we could have raised it if we needed. But I really, absolutely dislike the idea of giving this to Wikia, and so far every defense of it has made me dislike it even more. Even this opening paragraph by Angela makes me cringe - she insinuates that we as a community somehow have asked for shared user names, when we infact have always rejected the idea outright due to the obvious problems that exist with doing such a thing. ~Sir Rangeley GUN WotM UotM EGA +S (talk) 01:44, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Raising money isn't the issue. I just picked up a dedicated server in Saudi Oilberta for just under $US50/month, P4, Linux, 200GB HDD, 1000GB/month transfer. Any project I had on shared hosting (some Uncyc-related, some not) will be moving there at the end of next week. If we were that hard-up for money for server space, we could just dump en: there with the rest of this mess (as there's more than enough capacity to spare) at no additional cost, bye-bye Google ads (which should never had been on a CC-NC-SA project) and that would've been the end of this matter. Servers are becoming rather inexpensive these days. And no, the server farms don't demand anyone sign over their domain names. That's nuts.

As for uncyclopedia.info domain and the Taiwan "false base of a hundred subjects" that appears to be its largest user? Original intention was that uncyclopedia.info serve as a mere placeholder and that the individual subdomains merely be redirects to existing projects. Taiwan attempted to get their own Wikia; as there already is a China project (zh.uncyclopedia.wikia.com) they weren't given a straight yes-or-no answer but told "go talk to your community". This dragged on for weeks, even though they had about 450 pages of content (they're over twice that now) and represented half of Babel: on this site alone. When attempts to get them a Wikia went nowhere, the project was dumped on zh.uncyclopedia.info using a commercial shared host. That got maxed-out rather quickly, so a second shared host was used for various smaller projects to compensate until the whole mess (and some non-Uncyc stuff I've been working with) could be dumped to a dedicated server. This isn't about money or making money; Uncyclopedians just needed somewhere to store their patented nonsense™.

If I have to go to some wretched courthouse to defend the right of the Taiwanese project to use a domain with the word "uncyclopedia" in it, I shall, even though it's a pointless waste of money. I have nothing to gain by doing so, but on principle these things belong to the community - not to someone who wants to hijack a CC-NC-SA-BY project and turn it into a trademarked asset to be sold to investors. That's not what this project (in any of its languages, including about twenty in which I don't understand a bloody word) are about. If I want money, I have a day job for that. --Carlb 11:02, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

"I have some misunderstanding about these two Chinese uncyclopedia. I have strike and apologized to Hant." is what KJ said. That was just a confusion, not a sign of Evil To Come. :) --Jimbo Wales 16:16, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

• I want the other Uncyc project to be subdomains of Uncyclopedia.org, but I do not want a shared user list between Uncyc projects, I use different user names when working in different languages, and I want it to stay that way. However a true Commons will be great! - Sir Real Hamster {talk} {contribs} 17:38, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind shared between the languages, but not between all of wikia... because some of the names on uncyclopedia are already taken by names on other wikia (My name is on the HR Wiki for example.) Even if you could iron out that problem, most of the wikia users don't use uncyc, so sharing their userlist would be pointless.   t o m p k i n s  blah. ﺞوﻦ וףה ՃՄ ண்ஸ ފއހ วอฏม +տ trade websites 17:59, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Also, I have a username on Wikia, yet I forgot the password, and chances are if the userlist is shared it'll be the Wikia username which is used, so I won't be able to use Uncyc. ~ Ghelæ ^talk_contribs 18:25, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

As I've already stated, shared user list between languages is a bad idea, because many user names (such as mine) are in English, and I want to use usernames not in English on other language Uncycs. - Sir Real Hamster {talk} {contribs} 19:33, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

What we need is a pros and cons list - and possibly some of the cons can be fixed - for example (wild speculation here) what if you could set your preferences to use a different name in all the German language wikis than in all English language ones? Or specify a name for Uncyc, but still have shared contribs and other features available (shared contribs are a planned feature).... or whatever. I seems worth looking at what's possible at least -- sannse (talk) 20:23, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I think that overall, this is what I'm hearing from people.

Uncyclopedia wants to remain its own entity and does not want to become a part of the wikias.

The shared login and contribs is great for a network of small, community wikis, of which one may edit any number of different ones. Uncyclopedia doesn't want to join them. Owned and hosted by Wikia, Inc (which is what I think is what happened?), sure. Part of a network of small-time wikis, nothx. I don't personally know how appealing wikias are to the average uncyc user, but they seem to be sufficiently different in intent and interest and stuff that single user login isn't really advantageous.

The community doesn't want Wikia to make huge changes without the community's knowledge and support.

It seems that people are worried that Wikia has bought us so that they can make changes behind our backs, changes which would have been impossible otherwise because we wouldn't want them. It doesn't seem a likely reason, but we want assurance that this isn't going to happen.

What's there to gain with the licensing?

CC-BY-NC-SA is not profitable; what does Wikia hope to gain?

Uncyclopedia has been an autonomous commune for over a year now and would like to remain that way. It is resisting a merge with the wikia structure because it is different in scope and interest. Note: this is just my analysis of community opinion, feel free to toss it if it's incorrect. --KATIE!! 03:34, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Um, Wikia buying the domain name out from under us (and attempting to lay their paws on various other Uncyclopedia-related IP) *is* a huge change that was made behind our backs. That's part of the problem. --Carlb 11:15, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Blame me a bit

Ok. I have something to say.

chronarion, several months ago (before I was offered internship at Wikia) asked my opinion on if he should give the Uncyclopedia domain to Wikia at some point in the future. Before that, there was much discussion about creating more subdomains for languages and projects, but no progress could be made, because Wikia was only the domain's administrative contact, and the legal implications would have been a mess. Memory-Alpha has a similar problem with new subdomains. So, I suggested to him that he probably should. I also suggested to carlb that he could, until that happens, register uncyclopedia.info to do some subdomain pointing as a demonstration of what it would be like (at least, I think that was my reason behind suggesting it). I only had the community's interests in mind at the time. I personally felt it would improve things overall. I also, at the time, assumed chronarion was asking several core people about this, but from the responses it looks like he hadn't. This freaks me out a bit that he might have based it on just my opinion.

The thing is, while the content of this Wiki is the intellectual property and copyright (albeit released under an open content license) of the editors, the actual wiki was chronarion's. It was his to do with as he wished. However, I believe his intent was to improve the flexibility of our experience, not to cast us to the wind. Carlb, from what I remember, uncyclopedia.info's purpose was as a placeholder and companion to the eventual sister project languages domains (which would only ever have come about by givin the domain to Wikia, Inc, as you know), not a competitor :(. There are technical aspects that can hopefully be addressed, now that Wikia has more technical staff who are not working just on one upgrade.

As for merged user databases, databasi? That is more a technical matter, it would make several of the staffs jobs much easier, such as interwiki vandalism and global rights adjustments. If you have two logins, just edit on uncyc with one login an wikia with the other. As they have separate domain names, the cookies (which can't cross) won't even stop you from being logged in with two users on different wikis. I don't really see a problem with that aspect.

It annoys and scares me to think that Uncyclopedia is now so resistive to change as to only find negative aspects of this change of ownership. "Uncyclopedia wants to remain its own entity and does not want to become a part of the wikias." --> It has been part of Wikia for most of its existance and almost all of its significant additions. Has it gained nothing so far? "The community doesn't want Wikia to make huge changes without the community's knowledge and support." --> Have they raped and pillaged the other projects? Or have they supplied them with an ever growing techical staff (who' by the way, have just spent a very stressful 6 weeks trying to track down a bug inside thousands of revisions, to upgrade to the newer 1.7, so that we could have parserfunctions) and community team. "What's there to gain with the licensing?" --> not much for them, MORE DOMAINS FOR US!

So in conclusion (and I am ambivalent about some views, being both staff and having done 99% of all my career wiki edits ever to this particular wiki) so I'll have to split this comment: <uncyclopedia user>CALM THE FUCK DOWN YOU UNGRATEFUL BASTARDS!</uncyclopedia user> <wikia staff>Please trust our intentions are honourable and benign</wikia staff>.

--Splaka 08:43, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

MORE DOMAINS FOR US!....never thought of it that way. -- SonicChao ^Babbel!_Contribs 12:05, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

"More domains for us" as in http://en.uncyclomedia.org after this domain is pulled out from under us and sold? :lol:

Divergence of Interests

What has happened is that Wikia, a company, has taken ownership of Uncyclopedia. We are assured that only positive changes will happen. No matter what they intended they would say this, its not like they would come out and say they intend to do negative changes, that might get people mad after all. Wikia is careful with its words because it doesn't want to alienate anyone in this community. This in itself isn't bad, it shows they are intelligent businesspeople. At least we can be glad that an unintelligent business hasn't taken us over, what a catastrophe that would be.
But one is left wondering what they have to gain. Taking the ownership of Uncyclopedia and the domain means they now pay the bills for it. What a gregarious move, no? Wikia would not have done this without something to gain, because they have proven above that they are intelligent businesspeople. Sure, we made Wikia a profit. We are the biggest Wiki out there, outside of Wikipedia. We are funny, we are large, and we are fairly well known. But we were this before they bought us out. If they speak the truth that our interests will not be abandoned, why would they have lowered their profitability by taking on the domain as an expense? The answer to this is that they now can take the site to places that are in their interests. It is the only logical thing to expect from good businesspeople. They would not have taken on that expense if they did not get something out of it; more than they put in.
It is here that lies the divergence of interests. As the outright owners, they have the full ability to implement changes that will benefit their goals, such as shared user logons, when we on our own would not have wanted such a thing - in fact we outright rejected the idea. To be able to honestly say that they just want to help us - or aid in our continuity, is to deny that they are the business savvy people that they are. The only reason that they would aggressively pursue our purchase is because they could implement changes in the direction they want, that we would not have otherwise done or wanted.
That is not to say everything they will do is bad, hardly. Some things will most certainly be things we wanted. Some things will be cool additions, that will give us a momentary feeling of "Hey, I wish I thought of that!" But, just as it is ignorant to think it will be all bad, it is ignorant to think that everything they will do will be good for us. Rest assured, everything they do will be good for them, but what is good for them is not necessarily good for us.
Most disappointing of all is that this was done in the background, and we were in the dark. The fact that this extremely large change comes only to the communities knowledge after it is completed, and the fact that our site has suddenly given away its power of self determination in such an utter and complete manner is perhaps the true jumping of the shark for Uncyclopedia and its community.
The idea that we have given this away, and now are in the position of an entity holding the power to do as they wish, is indeed quite sad. But that's where they are, and along with the knowledge that they will act in their interests, you can also rest assured that there is nothing that can be said that will change this. So spread the gospel of Wikia far and wide, the good news is here. ~Sir Rangeley GUN WotM UotM EGA +S (talk) 18:49, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh dear... Don't cause panic when there is no reason to. Wikia will not do the user database merge if we don't want them to. They will not change us in any way (except the MediaWiki software) if we ask not to be changed. Wikia has been hosting us for over a year now, with the only major differences being that Chronarion had the trademarks rights and was the owner of the domain. The latter was nothing else but an obstacle, because Wikia couldn't give us the subdomains we wanted due to the administrative detours it would involve. As for the trademarks: why would Wikia take places we don't want to go, as this would undoubtably lead to a great loss of community and as such render the name Uncyclopedia worthless? In other words: we still own the community, no matter what they do.

As for what they might hope to gain? Contributors to other wikia, perhaps? Oh, and maybe make their job a little easier in keeping us happy. Guess you've shot that down now, though... --~ sin($) ^tan(€) 19:57, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

(bit of an edit conflict with that damn MoneySign, but pasting what I wanted to say anyway:)

Wikia has been absorbing the costs of Uncyclopedia since the move of hosting. There is nothing in this that means extra cost, it's just a switch of ownership of the domain/trademark - not the hosting, not the bandwidth, not the staffing costs... all that was already as it is now. And of course, the content ownership is the same too - copyright of the contributors, licensed under the CC-BY-NC-SA. Wikia hasn't, can't and doesn't want to buy that (and if you don't think a wiki company can't be set up that takes your copyright, look at some of Wikia's competitors.)

Of course Wikia plans to be a profitable business - it would be non-profit like the last thing Jimbo set up if that weren't the case, but extrapolating that to "they are going to stuff us" is just not on. I work for Wikia, but I also love Uncyclopedia. This is my wiki of choice for spending my free time, I no more want to see problems here than any other user. I honestly believe that this will not harm Uncyclopedia and very much hope that it will benefit us. All that is with my work hat firmly off. -- sannse (talk) 19:59, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Uncyclopedia rocks, as it is. That's why I offered to buy it. What is our business plan for Uncyclopedia? To demonstrate to the active community here, and by extension other communities, that we know how to not fuck people. Our entire business model depends on showing the world that we are a serious alternative to Yahoo, Google, etc., etc. because we represent a totally different approach... a totally wiki approach... to website management.--Jimbo Wales 20:07, 11 July 2006 (UTC)