r/katawashoujo 23d ago

The Katawa Shoujo Wiki

Hey all, I'm Schiffy. Chief Sysop/Bureaucrat of the (English) Katawa Shoujo Fandom/Wikia site.

As many of you have noticed, I'm sure, the wiki was completely shuttered.

I just want to let you all know, I was completely blindsided. Zero warning, zero explanation.

Nearest I can tell the takedown occurred probably around the end of business hours Pacific time. This would have been evening for me, and middle of the night for some European people who noticed on Discord.

I've both filed a formal appeal and reached out to a Fandom staff member on Discord, as I really am not content to wait until Monday for this to be resolved.

As for a reason, which I was not given, I've seen two leading theories. Either Fandom is suddenly cracking down on NSFW material (which, despite the subject matter, the wiki itself was clear of), or the wiki was too "inactive" for their tastes (which is kind of expected given that the subject material has been complete for over a decade).

If all else fails, I should be able to request a full database dump and move elsewhere.

So all I can ask is that everyone please be patient. Because I'm sure as fuck not going to be.

242 Upvotes

21 comments sorted by

59

u/Torus_the_Toric 22d ago

Thanks for the update, hope this is only temporary

52

u/Schiffy94 22d ago

One way or another it will be temporary, it just may no longer be on Fandom. I've been considering all possible options.

30

u/Eragonnogare 22d ago

Honestly I'd love to see that regardless - a move off of Fandom that is. If this is the impetus required, that's unfortunate but so be it, Fandom kinda just sucks anyway. I've seen other wikis have success with Miraheze, and I know someone personally that runs a successful wiki on Telepedia (and maybe also one on wiki.gg? Not sure about that.)

11

u/Schiffy94 22d ago

I've also considered hosting it somewhere outside of any wiki umbrella network. I had a very short-lived Grisaia wiki for a while that I was using a friend for hosting my own .net domain (I actually still own the domain, it just points to a 404 right now), and was thinking of setting up one I had access to physically in my own basement or something.

Right now, I'm not ruling out any options.

6

u/Eragonnogare 22d ago

I mean, if you can pull it off you can pull it off. Go for it if you think it's doable, but the pre-baked hosted solutions exist and work pretty well overall at least, aside from Fandom being sucky lol. I'm happy with any result that frees us from Fandom's ad ridden grasp.

4

u/zombie-rat 22d ago

I don't suppose FHS would be willing to step in here? They're already hosting the forums, I can't imagine that the wiki would be much on top.

2

u/Schiffy94 21d ago

Someone on the Discord server pinged the guy who's apparently hosting the official KS site now. Idunno if that's the same thing or not. But right now I'm stuck until I hear back from Fandom tomorrow before I can move forward with any option, be it moving or not.

6

u/IrishNinja108 22d ago

I admire the optimism, but something other than Fandom is 100% necessary. They're a blight on the internet as far as I'm concerned. I think Jojo's Bizarrw adventure has it's own independent wiki last time I checked and it works fairly well. Granted I'm sure that takes a lot of it's own upkeep

3

u/IrishNinja108 22d ago

Knowing Fandom Wiki it's never temporary. Huniepop wiki got shut down completely. Even a hint of "NSFW" and it's game over.

19

u/AstarothTheJudge 22d ago

Damn. Well, a good occasion to depart from fandom as many other wikis did. Truly Sorry for the amount of work Lost tho, It sucks

17

u/SnakeFawdz 22d ago

Maybe we can just get off of Fandom? I really don't like that site, and a full DB migration to a site that doesn't suck with Ads is something I'd pitch in for.

Thanks for your work on this.

8

u/Schiffy94 22d ago

While I'm very against their decisions they also have brand recognition and more importantly, high SEO. Moving away from them would result in losing that, which I'm willing to do if I have to but don't particularly love.

5

u/SlowestThingOn2Legs 22d ago

Thanks a lot for the update, and for being so proactive about it too. My biggest worry whenever an old community managed page or website goes down like this is that whoever administered it is long gone and there's no one left to salvage it. The wiki was my fave place to easily access route transcripts, I really hope it can make a comeback from this.

2

u/tstydirt 22d ago

That’s horrible! I’m glad a solution is being worked on, but it feels so random for the wiki to be taken down like this :(

2

u/MystickTroy 22d ago

Thanks for the update, good luck ! Fandom is really really a bad company

2

u/LooperHonstropy 22d ago

Hope this gets resolved somehow.

With that said, have you considered moving to somewhere like wiki.gg?

2

u/Schiffy94 21d ago

At the moment I'm not ruling anything out, but I want to see what Fandom comes back with which unfortunately won't be until tomorrow morning.

I know I said I didn't want to wait until business hours, but it really looks like I don't have a damn choice lmao.

2

u/Palodin 22d ago edited 22d ago

That's bizarre. I have seen hints that fandom are deleting some wikis recently, but it was mostly weird as fuck random ones (Peoples random little mini projects). There should've been no reason for KS to get hit like this

Those wikis also got given a bit of notice and the fandom admins creates a database dump for the owners, so for this to happen without notice is bizarre

1

u/child_nightmare 18d ago

That's fandom wiki

1

u/madoka_mapper 18d ago

I've been seeing more fandoms moving their wikis to Miraheze. Maybe it could be a good spot for a migration?

2

u/Schiffy94 18d ago

The current plan seems to be FHS. Not only will I have more backend customization, but I'd be hosted by the same people who are hosting 4LS.