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Wikia
Wikia mainpage 2010-12-21
Wikia mainpage 2010-12-21
URL http://www.wikia.com
Status Online!
Archiving status Not saved yet
  • Almost-complete XML dump, 2018: [1]
  • Complete image dump, 2014: [2]
Archiving type Unknown
IRC channel #archiveteam-bs (on hackint)

Wikia is a website that allows the creation and provides hosting for several thousand user-made wikis under a wide variety of subjects.

For a list of wikis hosted in this wikifarm see: https://code.google.com/p/wikiteam/source/browse/trunk/listsofwikis

Download

Like Wikipedia, Wikia content is primarily available under a free content license, usually the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license. Unlike Wikipedia, Wikia wikis don't enjoy from regular production of data dumps, so the possibility to reuse their content is rather limited and their survival is more at risk.

XML dumps of the content of a wiki, when available, are linked from its Special:Statistics page (example for Wookieepedia: Special:Statistics).

Dumps are produced only on demand, hence – normally – for a small minority of wikis (in a typical month, about 50 random wikis are dumped). Users with appropriate rights (as of 2013, autoconfirmed users, sysops and higher) can request a dump at the same Special:Statistics; the request is processed in a "first in, first out" queue, max one wiki every 5 minutes, usually during low traffic hours (23–8 UTC).

There are two XML dumps per wiki (both in gzip format):

More information can be found at Wikia:Database download.

History

Two "complete" dumps of Wikia exist, 2008 and 2010. A 2007 dump (not verified) also exists. After 2010, Wikia stopped making regular dumps. At some point around 2010, Wikia also started deleting inactive wikis, so it's possible that some content only exists in those early dumps.

A December 2012 dump of unknown completeness is the last one made available on the domain http://dumps.wikia.net/. The XML contained in it should be good, but were not all verified.

In May 2013, only a couple dumps were produced every day, around 2-3 UTC, whatever amount of dumps is requested; till October 2013, no XML dumps were produced at all, only images.tar dumps of all the uploads to a wiki. If you request too many dumps, your account may be blocked from requesting more, without notice (the button to request a dump disappears).

A directory list to access to all backups used to be at http://dumps.wikia.net/ ; no equivalent for the new host exists. All dumps (about 50k wikis) have been erased in July 2013 due to unspecified technical problems. Since October 2, 2013 the dumps are produced again and stored on Amazon's S3: all the previous dumps were lost.[3] Since about November 2013, dumps have been (very) slowly repopulated after user requests, but bigger wikis have invalid gz files.[4]

A script to list all unarchived Wikia wikis has been produced.[5]

As of 2015-01, dumps for closed/archived/"old" wikis (how many?) will no longer be published[6] and the 7z format is used instead.[7] There are other bugs which make many big wikis have invalid XML files (prematurely terminated before </mediawiki>). In February 2016 there was an attempt to fix the XML, but as of July 2017 it's still broken.

As of 2017, only administrators are allowed to request a dump update for a wiki.

In 2018-19, Wikia is becoming problematic for censoring user-generated content, sometimes closing entire wikis for fear of offending advertisers. Uncyclopedia, killed 14 May 2019, is one example. Wikia might leave an XML dump (text only, no images) available for download temporarily after the closure - but does not always do so.

Moved wikis

There have been substantial numbers of wiki communities leaving Wikia for various reasons, including two ad-heavy forced reskins in 2008 and 2010 and censorship of images to a PG13 level in 2012. Wikia has a de-facto policy of leaving the old wiki open and editable after the community has gone elsewhere, as a direct competitor to the new sites. This leaves two (or more) forks of the same project.

Do *not* presume the Wikia version of a wiki is the only version or the most up-to-date version as it may be years out of date if the original authors left years ago. There is a partial list of moved wikis at http://awa.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Moved_wikis

Former Wikia projects which are now independent will need to be backed up individually from their new homes.

Acquisition of Curse Media

Curse is the home of a successful Wikia competitor - Gamepedia - and many other gaming related projects, including end-of-life websites.

On December 12th 2018 it was announced that Fandom would acquire Curse Media[1] (but in fact seems to be the complete Curse LLC?)[2][3]

The account migration e-mails were sent out on 24th December 2018 and 8th January 2019:

Hi,

We wanted to reach out again to remind you that Curse Media will be joining the Fandom team. We’ve contacted you to ask for your consent to transfer your account terms and the personal data associated with your account to Fandom, and are sending you this note as a reminder to ensure you can continue to enjoy access to our sites without interruption.

So that you can keep enjoying Curse Media after the transition, we are asking for your consent to transfer your account terms and personal data associated with your account to Fandom to the extent they relate to Curse Media. You will be unable to access your account on the Curse Media sites/services after the transition, unless you provide consent. You can provide consent by clicking the link below, or you can learn more by visiting here (or the link below corresponding to your preferred language). Providing consent will not impact your existing relationship with Twitch in connection with other Twitch Services.

We sincerely appreciate your involvement with our communities, and we hope that you’ll join us for this exciting new chapter.

[...] Additionally, Curse Media maintains archives of certain end-of-life websites (e.g., arenajunkies.com, azurilland.com) as a service to the community. These archives will also be transferred.

[...]

Impacted sites and services:


  • curse.com
  • D&D Beyond App
  • dndbeyond.com
  • diablofans.com
  • forums.zybez.net
  • futhead.com
  • www.gamepedia.com and associated apps
  • gwentdb.com
  • hearthpwn.com
  • innkeeper.com & Innkeeper App
  • Innkeeper Twitch Extension
  • minecraftforum.net
  • mmo-champion.com
  • wowdb.com
  • mtgsalvation.com
  • muthead.com and the Muthead app
  • nbalive.gg
  • playbook.gg
  • siliconera.com
  • strawpoll.me
  • symthic.com
  • azurilland.com
  • arenajunkies.com

See also

External links