User:Forerunner/Forum:Domain overhaul - And what do you think?

Hi everyone,

As of recent the administration has engaged in a private discussion debate about moving Halopedia away from wikia, back to its original domain location, by the means of merging our content with halopedian.com. We've seen a number of reasons for this, which I will state below.

Pre-amble
For those of you who don't know about Halopedia it its early days, Halopedia was moved to wikia in 2006 due to server problems in terms of finance. Wikia has certainly provided us a stable host for a considerable number of years, for which we are all grateful for. However, with due respect to them, we feel that moving off back to our original site will bring us benefits that we can't have while hosted by wikia, for many reasons.

The why
As Porplemontage, the halopedian.com domain owner and operator has recently brought the site back up and running, the opportunity was seen to re-merge. Aware of what happened back in 2006 when he sent the wiki to wikia, he has been asked, and has replied with confirmation that he is positive he can support us as we currently are, based on our statistics, with the backing that he now possesses a much better server and server power in reserve.

So, what will change?

 * In terms of user rights, nothing . All users who have some form of user right (sysop, rollback, etc) will be guaranteed their rights on the other side. Additionally, this means that such members of our community will merge with their counterparts -- that us, users who may already hold rights on halopedian.com. But this will not have any negative effect on us as it is.
 * As our wiki will be independent, this means that any software updates or anything in the technical area will be handled by the administration, as opposed to a form of staff (in our case, wikia staff).
 * Pertaining to the above point, we will also have our own developer support, as I myself have seen to. Because things like addition of features, wiki software, etc would be developed only for the single wiki, it will be easier to base it on community input from that particular wiki. Therefore, community feedback and suggestions can be taken into better consideration for the developing in the technical area, which can effect just about anything in regards to the wiki.
 * Our articles, policies and guidelines will remain the same. Everything that we currently have implemented will be exported from here and imported to the new site. The move will have no effect whatsoever on any of the listed.
 * Elimination of ads. As many of you know, wikia's income comes from the advertisements it hosts on its wikis. Halopedian.com however does not utilize ads for income, which will benefit for our readers and editors alike.
 * Community-related: As the wiki will be an independent, standalone site, we can say that the community will be brought closer together. For the administrators, administrating the site will also be easier as they will have access to extra tools for further anti-abuse measures. These will not be used for the settling of disputes, for threatening of users, or otherwise for anything that goes against the administrator's code of conduct. Their use will only be for the security of the site, which altogether will be for the better for the community. As there will be a lack of outlanding-staff, the administration will, with any necessary assistance from developers, be able to handle queries ranging from the simple type that is often given by everyone, to the technical aspects. While not every admin will be able to help in all areas, all areas will be covered. This also will not make the admins higher up the food chain in any way than an ordinary user. Everybody is equal on a wiki regardless; admins are simply individuals that have extra trust.
 * Finally, I should probably mention about wikia's plans to enforce a new skin upon all of its wikis. Nothing wrong with that, right? While this is not the primary reason for the move, I can at least say that it has played as a factor. With due respect to the wikia developers of the skin, some of its changes are very sharp and dramatic. As I've already brought up with my colleagues, the 50% narrowing of article space, the complete redesign of the layout and the theme designer. I myself am part of the beta testing program, and with regards to the Wiki theme designer, after messing around with it for a while, I've found that it is very restricting and a somewhat ill-suitability for Halopedia's theme style. Moving over to our new domain means we move away from the new skin, and my sole personal opinion is such a move would be beneficial. Of course, this would differ from person-to-person as everyone has an opinion about it - similar or different, thus this reason has been kept as much of a minor factor as possible. On the topic of skins -- halopedian.com currently has the options of Vector (wikipedia's skin) and Monobook; we also plan to install Monaco when and if a move is made, so users will be given more options between their skin preferences.

Will we lose anything?

 * Attempts have been made to minimize losses as much as possible. As far as our unique features are concerned, the Social Profile extension has been successfully implemented along with the points system over at halopedian.com. The only feature that we will lose is the Blogs due to the code being unusable. While the forums can be used for anything forum-ish, we're hoping that we'll have an alternative as soon as possible.
 * All pages along with their history will be copied from here and imported to the new domain. This includes all articles of all namespaces, so nothing lost there.
 * Traffic: Wikia staff will not close down halo.wikia.com, for legal and policy reasons. While this means that traffic on the new halopedia will be at first, considerably less, this shouldn't be an issue once the dedicated community switches its involvement from here to the halopedian.com and the articles are implemented. After that's done, traffic there should increase to pretty much the same volume that we currently have here. To explain this a little, the goal is to have it promoted above the halo.wikia.com in terms of search results etc, while leaving halo.wikia.com as a simple branch-off with little activity. This in itself can be beneficial to both us and anyone who might pass by, which I can explain if anybody requests so.

So what now?
We, as a community, have come a long way. Everything's in its nutshell. Whether or not this will be carried out will largely depend on the input given out on this forum thread. We know that this is an extremely huge change, and expect that there will be a lot of mixed opinions about it and we want to hear those opinions from the community as a whole, as it is a necessity for a conclusion to be made. All input will be considered and if necessary, discussed. We've done a lot and feel we have done the best we can to make workarounds for issues that would arise from this. I'm happy to say that we can almost if not completely cancel out all issues we can foresee so far. The community is strongly encouraged to make any suggestions and/or questions for anything they are concerned about.

Regards,

-  Nìcmávr  ( Tálk  ) 12:13, October 2, 2010 (UTC)

Questions
''Have any concerns, questions? Anything not covered above? Feel free to ask here''

Input vote
Below is the voting, as follows:


 * = In favor of moving to halopedian.com
 * = Not sure
 * = Against moving to halopedian.com

Discussion & Comments
Discussion relative to the proposal goes below here