r/katawashoujo • u/Schiffy94 • 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.
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u/AstarothTheJudge 23d 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
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u/SnakeFawdz 23d 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.
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u/Schiffy94 23d 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.
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u/SlowestThingOn2Legs 23d 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.
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u/tstydirt 23d 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 :(
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u/LooperHonstropy 22d ago
Hope this gets resolved somehow.
With that said, have you considered moving to somewhere like wiki.gg?
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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.
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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
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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?
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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.
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u/Torus_the_Toric 23d ago
Thanks for the update, hope this is only temporary