Tardis:Forking announcement/editors

From Tardis Wiki, the free Doctor Who reference
"It changed! Oh, you clever thing!"

Well, if you're here, by definition, you've heard the news: we've moved off Fandom. Welcome to the independent Tardis Wiki! Thank you for joining us.

First of all, sorry about the secrecy. Very few people have been in on this project throughout its lengthy development. This was necessary to make it as unlikely as possible for Fandom to find out, which may have jeopardised the entire thing. While all Fandom Wikis are licensed under Creative Commons, and should theoretically welcome third parties duplicating their databases, their interactions with Wikis whose communities decided to move have often fallen short of that ideal. The best way to pass under their radar was to do everything off-wiki and in secret. However, we hope that you'll still join us over here on our new wiki. We were only able to inform some parts of the administrative team of the project; if you were an admin on the Fandom Wiki and were not previously aware of the moving plan, please be aware that you will still have admin rights here if you decide to join us. This is not a secession or a coup — we are the same old Tardis Wiki, re-hosted.

Fandom's increasing hostility to would-be movers was an important factor in our decision to move, as were some of the changes the company have been forcing onto communities with increasing authoritarianism. However, our reasons were not merely negative; benefits of forking from Fandom are numerous. We now have near-complete control over the site's design and features. We can enable pretty much any extension or skin and do what we like in CSS and JavaScript. There are also no intrusive ads. As such, we really hope that you'll join us here. You can regain access to your old account by following the instructions at Tardis:Reclaiming your account. Once you've done so, we ask that you then step away from the Fandom version of the wiki. If we leave it alone, they should leave us alone.

Some stuff is different. There's the obvious, like the different skin and theme, but some things are more subtle, like small JavaScript quality of life changes that haven't been set up yet. Some particuarly notable changes are listed below:

  • we're using a new skin, with new CSS. If you notice any issues, please let User:Bongolium500 know.
    • we also have a light theme which can be enabled at Special:Preferences. (A toggle to do this on all pages without creating an account will be added very soon).
    • we have the ability to have many more themes in the future. The "Eleven Day Empire" theme which could previously be enabled as a gadget will be implemented very soon, and others will follow.
  • videos now work quite differently. They are "stored" in the Video namespace, and can be embedded with {{video}}.
    • a bot run has occured to convert video embeds to the new syntax, but it has missed some. Please correct these when you see it.
    • some videos may have been missed. If you find any of these, please list them on Tardis talk:Video recommendations, providing a link to the video's file page on Fandom.
  • interactive maps, being a Fandom-specific tool, are not available on the forked wiki.
    • while these were not widely used, we will look into alternatives.
  • we do not have Discussions.
  • we no longer have the Thanks extension.
  • the archive tool may not work temporarily. This will be fixed soon.
  • preload templates aren't working. This will be fixed soon.
  • auto creation of user pages isn't working. This will be fixed soon.

This forked wiki was in sync with the Fandom wiki until 16:40 UTC on Monday the 19th of February. That should mean very few edits have been lost in the transition. Image sync stopped a bit earlier, but not by much.

The wiki is being hosted by Wiki Federation and is currently being financially supported by Kate from the Independent Fallout Wiki.

Once again, I hope you choose to join us on the forked wiki. Please help to spread the word.