Creating a new wiki

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New wiki creation on wiki.gg is done on a case-by-case basis. Please submit a ticket if you have a topic that you want to make a wiki about.

What is a wiki?

Wikis are collaboratively-edited encyclopedic resources about a topic. There are many different types of software for hosting wikis, and the one that wiki.gg uses is called MediaWiki. MediaWiki is the same software that Wikipedia uses.

If you are making a wiki, you should expect:

  • That people who aren't you will make changes to the wiki (usually with good intentions).
  • That people who aren't you may have a different vision for how the wiki should be organized, and you will need to let their ideas influence your plans.
    • This is not to say that you'll have to give into every single whim of every single member of the community, but if you are making 1 edit a month and someone else who also is a huge fan of your topic wants to get involved and start making 100 edits a month, you should welcome them and appreciate their dedication, NOT turn them away, even if they are (for example) organizing some information differently from how you would do it or prioritizing different pieces of content from what you think is most important.
  • That occasionally you may have to read some documentation in order to learn how to do things. Wikis use systems of templates to design pages, and you WILL need to create and edit one or more templates if you are creating a new wiki.
  • That you'll need to ensure your design is accessible first and pretty/fun second. This may mean compromising on fonts or color scheme so that you prioritize readability.

If these things sound bad to you, you may not want a wiki. Other free options include:

  • Google docs
  • Hosting a static site with GitHub Pages
  • Using forum software like Discord to organize your information

Or, if you love the idea of community-managed collaborative documentation, read on!

What to expect

Applying to open a wiki

We'll want to know what the wiki is about, who you are (e.g., admin of an existing wiki, a game developer, a moderator of a TV show's Discord, etc.), and how many people will be helping you. Please give us as much information as possible in the "anything else" section.

We typically reply to tickets in about 1–3 business days (keeping in mind US holidays).

Creating your wiki

If your application is accepted, you'll be given an invitation to our onboarding Discord server. Onboarding is a process during which you prepare the wiki for publication with our help. Onboarding includes:

Additionally, if your wiki is a fork from another site, we ask you to start either creating several new content pages or editing the existing content pages so that the content is meaningfully different and Google won't mark the wiki as a duplicate (if you are self-hosting the old wiki and will be shutting that version down, hosting the old wiki on a platform that allows community-requested wiki deletion, or are otherwise able to get the old wiki taken down by making a request for takedown as the rights holder to the IP, this is less important).

Publishing your wiki

Wikis are never "complete," so the time that we publish your wiki is just the beginning of your wiki journey!

When you are ready to publish your wiki, we recommend making announcements about the new wiki in community forums, e.g., Discord servers, subreddits, etc. If you aren't the developer or other rights holder of the wiki's topic, get in touch with them and see if they'll officially endorse the wiki! They can help inform the community that the new resource exists.

But most importantly, have fun editing 🙂

FAQ

Applying to wiki.gg

I want to make sure my application is accepted, should I start creating content on another wiki platform?
Please do not do this!!! Depending on what platform you use, you may not be able to ever remove it, which will hurt the SEO of your new wiki.gg wiki indefinitely, and even if you are self-hosting, you may do some things in a way that makes sense for a self-hosted wiki but not so much for a wiki.gg wiki where we provide you with default pages, DRUID infoboxes, RANGER navboxes, etc. Also, it's a bit easier on us if we don't have to import anything.
  • If you feel that you need to pre-create content in order to make the 1-month deadline for release, consider that release does not mean completing the wiki, just getting started on SOME of the content.
  • We also are willing to provide extensions to the deadline if you are consistently editing the wiki during your first four weeks and need a bit of extra time to get things how you want them before release.
  • Having premade content will almost never change the chances of us agreeing to host you. The only time it could have an effect is if your topic is extremely broad, for example "a wiki about birds" or "a wiki about every swimming pool in the USA." And even still, we'd prefer that you apply to us immediately before doing any work because we'd suggest how to get started collating information before reapplying, in a way that makes sense for your particular topic.

Hosting

How much does it cost to host a wiki with wiki.gg?
Nothing! Hosting a wiki with wiki.gg is free!
My wiki isn't about a video game. Can I host with you?
Yes, absolutely! We accept any kind of content, from video games, TV shows, TTRPGs, and even non-entertainment topics. Please send us an application if you want to make a wiki here!
I'm just a player/reader/watcher of the topic I want to make a wiki about. Is that okay?
Yes! Wikis do not have to be officially recognized to be allowed on wiki.gg.
Can I make a wiki for a game/book/show that hasn't been released yet?
Yes! We don't reject a topic solely for being unreleased.
Will my wiki be closed after X time if I don't edit?
Currently, we have no procedures for closing wikis due to inactivity or any reason. However, it's likely that we will have such a policy in the future. For a wiki to be closed, there would have to be very little content, no recent edits, and also very few recent pageviews. We'd also send out an email warning all users with admin permissions about the closure. The intent would be to close wikis that never had any content in the first place, not to close wikis that have been inactive for a long time. We understand that you may be looking to archive information about an inactive project and there may be a point at which the wiki is effectively complete, don't worry about that. Please note however that this is a summary of our plans and will not be a policy until we move to implementation phase of these plans.

Forking to wiki.gg

If I am forking to wiki.gg, what pages will be included?
We'll include everything, although for some hosts with very specific extensions we will usually ignore a few namespaces that don't contain wiki content (for example, we might not import thousands of forum posts). If your previous wiki wasn't using the Vector skin, your wiki will likely need to be re-themed, but we can help you with that!
What about my user account, can I keep it?
Yes! You will be able to visit a special page, Special:ClaimExternalAccount , to reclaim your old account.
Can I fork to wiki.gg on my own?
If the existing wiki is abandoned/inactive, and you have wiki experience, yes. However, for most wikis; and for any active wiki, we need all of the current active admins to want to fork, ideally with a community vote supporting the move. If you want a wiki to fork but you're not the admins, you can let them know you're interested in a fork (especially if you'd be interested in helping set up the new wiki), but please stay polite and respect their wishes 🙂
Are there any differences in your Cargo support that I should know about?
One thing, yes. We don't support the "implicit" arg store, in other words $wgCargoStoreUseTemplateArgsFallback is set to False on the entire platform. If this results in some Cargo not working on your wiki, we can help you fix it!

Editing

What is the customization policy for wiki.gg?
Please see: Customization policy.
I want the Visual Editor, is that supported?
Yes! Just let us know in your onboarding channel that you would like VE enabled.
What about other extensions?
We are willing to enable most extensions other than Semantic MediaWiki. If you want DPL or Cargo, we would ask you why; depending on your plan, we might suggest either to use Cargo instead of DPL or Lua data modules instead of either one.
Can I automate edits to my wiki?
Yes, MediaWiki has an extensive API for editing. You can use tools like AutoWikiBrowser or PyWikiBot, and there's some great Python libraries; we recommend looking into mwcleric, mwparserfromhell, and mwclient. mwcleric is a framework that wraps mwparserfromhell (syntax tree generator) and mwclient (API client library).
Your TOS disallows crawling or scraping the platform. Does that mean I can't use automated tools like AWB and PWB to edit or monitor my wiki?
You're absolutely allowed to use automated tools such as AWB and PWB! Just respect our rate limits and only use these tools for the purpose of improving/monitoring your wiki. If you aren't sure, please fill out a ticket and ask us.
Do you support portable infoboxes?
Yes, you can use your own PI code with full compatibility on wiki.gg! However, we prefer DRUID and if you need a significant amount of help from staff with your infoboxes, we would recommend you to switch as they have more features than PI (including support for Lua hooks). We don't provide significant assistance coding PIs.

Allowed types of wikis

What types of wikis do you allow?
We accept wikis on a case-by-case basis, so please send us an application if you aren't sure. But generally speaking, we accept wikis that are:
  • General-interest topics (there is an audience that extends beyond the creator);
  • Not under NDA (unreleased content can be allowed as long as it's permissible to share it);
  • Not fanon projects / not deliberately publishing false/wrong information for any reason including parody; and
  • Not Roblox games
Why don't you permit wikis about Roblox games? Can you make an exception for...?
We don't support the exploitative nature of the game, and Roblox wikis tend to get spammed a lot given their demographic. No, we will not make an exception.
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