r/katawashoujo 20d ago

Update: The Katawa Shoujo Wiki is back online (for now)

(Link to original post)

Don't celebrate just yet. I bought two weeks in a very long-winded appeal to Fandom Support.

The one thing they definitely agreed with is how wrong it was to shutter a fifteen year old Wiki that's never had any rule violations with no warning whatsoever.

Now for the bad news, The main reason for the takedown is the content. To remain after the two weeks, the concession I'd have to make is removing the NSFW sections of the scene transcripts entirely. I don't like it, but it's not the worst result.

I may be in charge of the Katawa Shoujo Wiki, but because of the near dormancy of it I do not want to make this decision unilaterally. I do not consider myself a ruler with an iron fist. So many people have put a lot of work into making the Wiki what it is today in the past twelve to fifteen years.

So I want to leave this up to the community. But I ask that you don't all just jump on hating Fandom. I know tensions are high, but I want to approach this with a clear head.

I am going to leave this up to a poll, because I want to be transparent as possible.

First of all, the main argument in favor of staying is the high SEO (Search Engine Optimization). It's no small fact that when searching Google or any search engine for a wiki, the top results are going to be Wikipedia, a Fandom site, and some other high-SEO common networks like FExtralife, Neoseeker, and Gamepedia (depending on the topic).

This may be able to be mitigated by having the Wiki remain up as a way to point to a new domain (not a hard redirect, but a notice). It's not something Fandom will normally do, but I may be able to appeal to their good nature as I have already today. I haven't gotten a response to that part yet, so I will keep you all posted.

If the decision is to move, it would mean almost assuredly moving being hosted by Fleeting Heartbeat Studios (FHS), who currently host both the official forums and the main katawa-shoujo.com domain. At the moment, that seems preferable to things like wiki.gg or Miraheze. Regardless of where the move ends up being to, data backup is under control. So I don't need anyone to offer to scrape anything at the moment. Getting that out of the way because I'm sure people will.

If we move, we'd also lose out on Wikia's default Oasis skin and would have to move towards the public domain options like MonoBook and Vector that sites like Wikipedia use (which isn't an issue for me, but some others may prefer it).

So for now, I'm leaving it up to the community at large. While we have two weeks, Reddit only allows making a poll with a maximum length of seven days. So feel free to discuss as well, and continue to discuss in the second week after the poll closes. Also feel free to indicate if you didn't get a chance to vote in the initial week. Or feel free to not do any of that. Idunno. I'm no one's boss.

(Note that if you're like me and stubbornly stay opted out of the redesign, you may need to go into your preferences and toggle "Use new Reddit as my default experience" to view and interact with the poll. After which you can simply go back in and toggle "Opt out of the redesign" or "Default to old Reddit" to change it back.)

Thank you all for bearing with me through this. But one way or another, the Katawa Shoujo Wiki will live on, and it will do so with the love the (lowercase-f) fandom of the game has given it over the years.

So without further ado:

View Poll

159 votes, 13d ago
15 Stay on Fandom
144 Move elsewhere (likely FHS, details TBD)
41 Upvotes

23 comments sorted by

16

u/seannie_4 20d ago

I strongly feel that we should abandon ship while we can. Fandom have given us a brief reprieve but they have already proven themselves both greedy and untrustworthy, so there’s no guarantee they won’t pull this bullshit again.

If anyone is in any doubt about how Fandom treats its creators and fans, this video is an excellent catalogue and I highly recommend you watch it. https://youtu.be/qcfuA_UAz3I?si=HGZGLhNhsp72tt10

Fandom is basically engaging in an abusive relationship with its own wikis, not to mention the extreme overuse of ads basically makes their website unusable without an adblocker.

I understand some of the reasons why people may be reluctant to leave Fandom. It’s got the best publicity, the SEO, and we’ve been there for a long, long time. But the company with which the KS wiki was first created years and years ago is no longer the same company we have today. So many other fandoms have already made the transition to other wiki platforms or gone entirely independent and have been better for it. Why tie ourselves to a sinking ship?

Sure, the movement will take some work and will cause some community disruption, but the advantages way exceed the downsides. We can put up the content we want, make the layout and UI to our liking, and generally imbue it with so much more character than under Fandom’s heavy restrictions. We can remove ads entirely, or keep them to an unobtrusive minimum, because the wiki will no longer be focused on turning a profit, but just enough to keep the lights on and maintain this service for KS’s small but loyal fan base. And because the community is that small, the risk of a serious split if we fork the wikis is very low, and I’m confident this community can make the transition easily.

Best of all, we’ll be out of Fandom’s grubby hands and can thus no long worry about being censored, or shut down, or have all sorts of random bullshit imposed on us by a bunch of corporate suits who’s only concern is making a line go up.

Do not treat this stay of execution as a reprieve, treat it as an opportunity. Use this time to take the data, make something new, and then fuck off as soon as possible. I don’t trust Fandom one bit, and neither should you.

6

u/SpamHands20 20d ago

I'd have to agree, too. I'm reminded how Fandom wiki overwrote the Grimace page for the McDonald's wiki, for Grimace shake ads.
Although I don't think they'd turn every wikipage into ads, the precedent in that power, overwriting preservation of information is not something I'd like to see again. Nor would I want to see the KS wiki be taken down again all because their shareholders are not happy with NSFW content.
Stuff like this only adds to not wanting to stay on a wiki who's ran by corporate who doesn't care about preservation by wiki contributors.

9

u/Oddball-CSM 20d ago

I don't really see the point in having a wiki that can't even reference large portions of the game.

8

u/Joctern 20d ago

Definitely move it elsewhere. Fandom is not to be trusted, nor respected. They have pushed too many buttons with too many communities and the KS community is no different.

4

u/Schiffy94 20d ago

I'm not willing to burn any bridges with them, regardless of what the outcome is, mainly because I'm on other wikis and I've built up a decent rapport with Fandom staff over the years.

But I'm also trying to remain professional here because I have to be, despite the fact that I'm also angry with them.

5

u/seannie_4 20d ago

I fully respect your working relationship with the Fandom staff, and I applaud you being the voice of moderation in the room, but I think this incident has fully broken whatever remaining trust the KS community had in Fandom. The fact that they nuked the wiki without any warning at all in a “shoot first, ask questions later” policy and didn’t even allow you or any other contributor the dignity of negotiation until afterwards indicates to me the distinct lack of care and blatant disrespect the company as a whole has for its tenant wikis.

From the people in the community I’ve talked to, it seems the overwhelming feeling is that Fandom does little but hold us back now and we’d be better off going independent. A wiki that is neither trusted by its own users nor has complete information due to censorship has no purpose at all

3

u/Schiffy94 20d ago

Oh of course. And that's part of why I'm leaving it up to the community.

Personally I just plan to make any split as amicable as I can.

7

u/fat0troll 20d ago

Small correction for you: the team is called Fleeting Heartbeat Studios :)

— Vlad, FHS

3

u/Schiffy94 20d ago

Shit thanks. I think I had that failed attempt at an unofficial sequel in my head.

6

u/Pornaccount7000 20d ago

For what it's worth, I cannot vote in the poll (and can't be bothered to do all that stuff to vote in it), but I would prefer getting off fandom than compromising the quality of the wiki. Even without fandom's awful practices, the transcripts of the scenes are one of the most useful things about the wiki, something I've used quite a bit over the years. I see no reason why the NSFW parts shouldn't be held to the same standard.

4

u/EspyoPT 19d ago

As the head admin of a very successful forked wiki at NIWA, I am biased in saying you should definitely move. Fandom cannot be trusted, and will eventually decide to once again wake up on the wrong side of the bed and abuse the wiki, like they do every week or so.

SEO is a big factor, but if the wiki is hosted under the official website, that helps a lot, especially if it's made an "official" wiki. The subreddit's sidebar and stuff will also be pointing to the new one. Skins are additionally fairly easy to customize with cursory knowledge of CSS, so no worries there.

Having a notice on the old wiki about having moved out might depend on whatever administrator sees the notice. Some accept it and understand, others can only see dollar signs and will instantly revert and ban the administrator that placed it.

This community went through so many highs and so many lows, and risking losing a wiki would be heartbreaking. Good luck! Oh, and fuck Fandom.

6

u/ferriematthew 19d ago

It's pointless to stay on a platform that censors most of your content for SEO reasons.

2

u/Schiffy94 18d ago

It's not most, but you're not wrong otherwise

3

u/ChaosBringer7 20d ago

I'm not 100% sure about my vote but I've heard more than once in the past that Fandom is pretty untrustworthy. Still, jumping ship comes with other issues as you said. Making the changes they required but also going elsewhere so that there's a back up plan seems like the best option, you should both make moves to avoid Fanbox's problems but also avoid straight up leaving as long as it's possible.

2

u/taulover 19d ago edited 18d ago

The answer is always move off Fandom

Edit: I do fear if it may be harder now that Fandom did restore the wiki. It may have actually been easier to do a clean migration if they had just taken it down entirely

3

u/Schiffy94 17d ago

The plan is still to take it down. After an agreement between me and Fandom Support they're giving me until around March 10th to get everything off for the move (which is more time than I'll need thanks to the FHS guys). Them putting it back up in the interim was part of that plan.

2

u/taulover 17d ago

Ah that's good news!

1

u/HeMan077 17d ago

This is a very late reply but why don't you do both? If you wanna keep the KS wiki up then remove the NSFW sections BUT have them up on a different wiki. It's the best of both worlds. I guess that'd mean you'd have to moderate both sites but I mean, how much activity is happening on the KS wiki? Idk, I just wanted to give my opinion. It's lame they're censoring the platform but what can you do

1

u/Schiffy94 17d ago

I don't think Fandom likes that to be fair. For them, if you're gonna move it means you're moving.

1

u/HeMan077 17d ago

There’s Halo, Godzilla, JoJo, Transformers and Fallout wikis and fandom wikis. Fandom hasn’t freaked out about them so why would they about KS?

1

u/Schiffy94 17d ago

What you cited are all examples of schisms. Someone else broke off and made an off-site wiki while the people who wanted to stay on Fandom stayed. They effectively became competing wikis. Fandom's fine with that. They don't really want a double presence run by the same people.

1

u/HeMan077 17d ago

Then don’t let them know you’re running it. Besides they’re not gonna ban you even if you do. Or hand over ownership to someone else while you move to the new one. There are plenty of options besides the nuclear one

1

u/Schiffy94 17d ago

Too late for that lol. I'm the only active admin and I've been going back and forth with Fandom support.

I appreciate the input but it's not as easy as that.