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Top Secret Researcher
Original Poster
#1 Old 6th Oct 2018 at 9:55 PM
Default The Sims Wiki is getting its URL changed to "sims.fandom.com"
Hello Simmers. I am k6ka, and I am an admin on The Sims Wiki on Wikia...

Okay, so since I'm guessing at least some people know me here, I'm going to skip the silly formalities and just jump straight to the point. Now I know this isn't strictly Sims 2 related (it affects players of all games in the series), but I think enough people use the wiki here for this to be worth posting in.

As you may or may not already know, The Sims Wiki doesn't host its own servers, but rather is located on a wiki hosting service that used to be called "Wikia", which also hosted thousands of other wikis like ours. The Sims Wiki should not be confused with SimsWiki.Info, which is also a great site, but we're not related to each other. Anyways, The Sims Wiki's current URL is http://sims.wikia.com, as it has been since February 2005 (fun fact: this was the first edit made to the wiki!).

This will soon change, however. Wikia has increasingly gravitated towards a new name: "FANDOM", a rather non-descriptive and misleading name as it no longer seems to imply they're a wiki farm, but rather some cheap entertainment website with clickbaity titles and irritating fullscreen ads... if you've seen any of those on The Sims Wiki, we really do apologize--we have no control over those things (it's against their Terms of Use to try to hide them for everyone) and we really don't like these changes either. Wikia changed their name to "FANDOM powered by Wikia", and now they're dropping that last part to be straight up "FANDOM". They're really rubbing in this new name like rubbing a lemon on an open wound, and it sucks.

They've recently announced that, starting next week, they're going to start moving wikis over to a new URL: "fandom.com". This means that The Sims Wiki will soon have its URLs changed from "sims.wikia.com" to "sims.fandom.com".[1] Many people are opposed to this change, and I personally loathe it completely; it is unnecessary, serves only to fuel corporate interests incompatible with what the userbase of the service wants, and will only confuse and mislead people. However, FANDOM seems to have no interest whatsoever in listening to its users and are going ahead with the change.

This post isn't to stir up some activism but rather just to inform the community here that very soon, if you try visiting "sims.wikia.com", you will automatically be redirected to "sims.fandom.com". I'm writing this to let you guys know that this is perfectly normal and that you're still going to the right place, before you start panicking over our site being hacked. Existing links will simply redirect to the new site, so there is no need to go hastily changing links. And as always, we at The Sims Wiki will still be the same old The Sims Wiki. We're not going anywhere, and we're still committed to being a wiki and not a cheap wannabe Reddit knockoff. Please continue to call us "The Sims Wiki"; we don't really like being called "The Sims Wikia", and PLEASE do not call us "The Sims Fandom"... ugh, that name makes me cringe so badly.

So to sum this all up in four points:

1. sims.wikia.com will soon redirect to sims.fandom.com. This is still the same website, so don't worry!
2. All old links will redirect to the new URL, so there is no need to go changing existing links; they will all continue to work normally.
3. The Sims Wiki will still be the same old The Sims Wiki providing a freely editable encyclopedia of information relating to The Sims series.
4. Continue to call us "The Sims Wiki" or "The Sims Wiki on Wikia", but please don't call us "The Sims Fandom" as that is not our name.

I've also written an on-wiki blog post about this change here.

Thanks, and happy Simming!

Footnotes
1. https://community.wikia.com/wiki/Us...omain_migration
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The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#2 Old 6th Oct 2018 at 9:58 PM
Thanks for letting us know @k6ka

I no longer come over to MTS very often but if you would like to ask me a question then you can find me on tumblr or my own site tflc. TFLC has an archive of all my CC downloads.
I'm here on tumblr and my site, tflc
Mad Poster
#3 Old 6th Oct 2018 at 11:48 PM Last edited by AndrewGloria : 7th Oct 2018 at 12:02 AM.
Thanks for the information k6ka.

I agree with you 110% about the name change. I sometimes call it the "(Wikia) Sims Wiki" to distinguish it from simswiki.info (which I believe is an MTS offshoot). Maybe I'll have to change that to the "(fandom) Sims Wiki" in future. I don't think I can bring myself to type the silly new name in BLOCK CAPITALS every time though! Because I once edited something there, I'm a registered user and I keep getting mildly irritating emails about "FANDOM". IMHO they'd be better speeding the site up rather than changing the domain name. Sometimes I find it slower than T$R. But, unlike T$R, it really is an indispensable resource for serious Simmers. Almost every week I refer to it for something or other.

So anyway you're doing a great job there! keep up the good work!

All Sims are beautiful -- even the ugly ones.
My Simblr ~~ My LJ
Sims' lives matter!
The Veronaville kids are alright.
Mad Poster
#4 Old 7th Oct 2018 at 2:00 AM
Eh... just a url/name change. Same ol' wiki. Might even make an offline database, ya know? Just kinda meh about it all.
e3 d3 Ne2 Nd2 Nb3 Ng3
retired moderator
#5 Old 7th Oct 2018 at 2:01 AM
Thanks for the info, @k6ka ! I use sims wiki all of the time, so I'm glad it's still going to be around.

Quote: Originally posted by AndrewGloria
I sometimes call it the "(Wikia) Sims Wiki" to distinguish it from simswiki.info (which I believe is an MTS offshoot).

Yes, Simswiki.info is part of MTS, and is where a lot of the tutorials are located. Any member of MTS can add to or edit the Wiki, and you can link there from this site by using the [wiki] tags. Unfortunately, some of the info there is quite outdated and the more important articles (such as the game help troubleshooters) are protected. I used to be able to edit those when I was still a moderator, but now it seems that all of the moderators who maintained the wiki have left, so there seems to be very little activity there. Maybe some of the current mods could unlock some of the protected pages- I'd like to update a lot of the stuff I wrote, but can't as I'm not an admin.
Mad Poster
#6 Old 7th Oct 2018 at 3:08 AM
I'm just curious, but has the Sims wiki considered moving off from Wikia/Fandom? I know a couple of them have already done so, and others are considering it.

I'm secretly a Bulbasaur. | Formerly known as ihatemandatoryregister

Looking for SimWardrobe's mods? | Or Dizzy's? | Faiuwle/rufio's too! | smorbie1's Chris Hatch archives
Mad Poster
#7 Old 7th Oct 2018 at 3:35 AM
Hmm, I guess this means my old wiki that I never update anymore will soon become known as "faiuwle.fandom.com". That'll be weird. If I cared, I would move it, but I don't really care at this point, to be honest, it's mostly just there to redirect anyone who bookmarked it to MTS at this point.
The Great AntiJen
retired moderator
#8 Old 7th Oct 2018 at 1:06 PM
Quote: Originally posted by simsample
Yes, Simswiki.info is part of MTS, and is where a lot of the tutorials are located. Any member of MTS can add to or edit the Wiki, and you can link there from this site by using the [wiki] tags. Unfortunately, some of the info there is quite outdated and the more important articles (such as the game help troubleshooters) are protected. I used to be able to edit those when I was still a moderator, but now it seems that all of the moderators who maintained the wiki have left, so there seems to be very little activity there. Maybe some of the current mods could unlock some of the protected pages- I'd like to update a lot of the stuff I wrote, but can't as I'm not an admin.

I can edit some (and I still haven't had my sticker) - I guess there might be a lot of issues. You could PM me and I could try and talk to Tash about it.

I no longer come over to MTS very often but if you would like to ask me a question then you can find me on tumblr or my own site tflc. TFLC has an archive of all my CC downloads.
I'm here on tumblr and my site, tflc
Mad Poster
#9 Old 7th Oct 2018 at 2:38 PM
Quote: Originally posted by k6ka
Now I know this isn't strictly Sims 2 related (it affects players of all games in the series), but I think enough people use the wiki here for this to be worth posting in.

Maybe me wonders If we need another forum section that emcompass all games. There are sometimes threads that I wanna post that would cover all games from different simmers and their base, since it would be interest to see how we can discuss as a whole united global citizens. Thought probably not awful lot will start use it or if ever.

You know, would been interest If when you entered the "Discussion" page, it would start of with threads filtered by category of each game (TS1, TS2, TS3, TSM, and TS4) and another category that encompass all four games of the series. Imagine browsing Story thread of people sharing stories from their own game. Of course members would have to control to filter out pictures from specific games, as there is system of showing who owns what iteration of the series to do checks and filters on....

Oh I'm rambling... Got side tracked.

P.S. Sorry for my bad english.
Top Secret Researcher
Original Poster
#10 Old 8th Oct 2018 at 12:11 AM
Quote: Originally posted by Bulbizarre
I'm just curious, but has the Sims wiki considered moving off from Wikia/Fandom? I know a couple of them have already done so, and others are considering it.


We've considered doing it. The reason why the Runescape Wiki was able to do it was because the game developer actually extended a hand and helped them migrate off the Wikia platform. Unfortunately, I don't see EA ever lifting a finger to help us escape corporate greed (unsurprisingly).

The main issue we have to contend with is the fact that Wikia won't allow us to shut down the old wiki. If we move, they'll just keep it up and running for other people to edit... or vandalize and screw up. Let's not forget that Wikia has won the SEO game, so their site pretty much always appears near the top of Google searches. If we try starting a wiki elsewhere, there's no way we could properly compete with that.

The Sims Wiki receives quite a bit of traffic every day, as shown in this manually updated spreadsheet. It would certainly require a lot of server resources and money to maintain our own installation of MediaWiki, and to make sure that everything we exported from Wikia still functions on our own servers. Since we're all volunteers, none of us really have the money nor the expertise to set up our own servers to run the wiki on, much less handle all of the traffic we get every day. We do have some folks in the community that have their own websites and even IRC networks running, but hosting an entire wiki is a daunting (and costly) task.

Lastly, even if we could solve all of the above problems, we'd still have the problem of users refusing to leave Wikia. The Sims Wiki has a large community of editors that do a wide variety of things, from helping to write and improve articles to working on their own fanon pages. Moving all of them to a new wiki and having them create new accounts will be a difficult task, and since Wikia will never agree to shutting down or redirecting our wiki, the community will inevitably become fragmented, with some users on the new wiki and some still staying on the old site.

In short, it's highly unlikely we'll leave Wikia, though not because we don't want to. If we could have the best of all worlds, we'd leave this smoking trainwreck in a heartbeat.
Top Secret Researcher
Original Poster
#11 Old 25th Oct 2018 at 5:40 PM
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