Retaliation

Because of Oasis, admins and crats on several Wikias have been either banned or stripped of their leadership positions. Below is an incomplete list of these cases.

If you would like to add a case, you must add a link to this situation to avoid inaccurate reports; unsourced incidents will be removed. If you don't have a link, post the incident on the talk page.

Editors blocked

 * User:Anno1404 indefinitely blocked by Staff member sannse for "disruptive behavior", Anno1404 messaged around 15 wikis: ..."Hello, someone on this Wikia wrote on the AWA's Moving page that your Wikia is moving. Please remove your Wikia's name or add your Wikia to the Moved wiki page."
 * Deathrock9 and former 'Wikia Star' user Titanollante globally banned for 'advertising' links to the new Wikizilla address on relevant Tokusatsu Wikis.
 * Karate Jesus indefinitely blocked at PvX by Staff member sannse for disruption. This was later reverted with an apology. User was then later globally blocked by sannse. Users at PvX are protesting the decision.
 * TurtleShroom indefinitely blocked on Community Central by Wikia employee sannse.
 * UWynthyst and Balistic Pve on talismanonline blocked for one year by Staff member sannse for "vandalism".
 * Solar Dragon blocked for a year globally for "spamming links to external sites" and vandalism.
 * Two other Simpsons Wiki editors blocked for three months by Peteparker: "Spamming links to external sites".
 * User:Apolomi blocked on WoWWiki by WoWWiki's sole remaining (Wikia-appointed) admin for informing other people about site move: Spamming links to external sites
 * Gallahan blocked on the grounds of trolling for attempting to propose a community vote to shut down WoWWiki.
 * Rsmall1413, Westlandian, Secundomia, Pmrcalaby and Austenasia blocked indefinitely by charitwo for Spamming links to external sites.
 * Attackofthecatpeople69 globally banned by VSTF member Jr Mime for 4 months even though the attempt to move UnAnything to ShoutWiki had been abandoned
 * Lord of Dark globally banned forever after messaging some users pointing them to the forum where the fork was discussed. His edits were reverted by Staff member Luchofigo85.
 * Three former administrators on RuneScape banned globally, Cook Me Plox (renamed), Gaz Lloyd and Iiii_I_I_I
 * Uncyclopedia's admin Nigel Scribbler blocked globally for posting to individual Uncyclopedians' "community.fandom.com" user talk pages that the project had moved to uncyclopedia.ca... after Wikia had shut down their version of Uncyclopedia and there was no other means to reach the affected users.

Reverting banners/protecting pages
Since Wikia keeps the content and will not close down a site, editors will often add external links directing editors to new sites. These are reverted by Staff.

Asheron Wiki

 * "we are leaving here is the new URL address" reverted posting by Wikia employee Sarah Manley.

Absurdopedia

 * Sitenotice removed by Staff. At one point, links to "absurdopedia.net" were blacklisted sitewide, including in every Wikia-hosted Uncyclopedia except en:

Micronations

 * News feed indefinitely protected by Wikia Staff.
 * Staff reverted main page link: "Reverting; community may continue here without being forced elsewhere".
 * VSTF blanking a template linking to the new site.

Touhou Wiki

 * Link to Touhou's fork removed by Sarah Manley in notice on the main page.

Autopedia

 * Wikia employee DaNascat removes moving notice.

Wikisimpsons

 * Staff constantly removes the Sitenotice and revert it when it has no link to external sites, just a link to a vote.

Club Penguin Fanon Wiki

 * Wikia Helper Merrystar removes links to the new wiki.

WoWWiki

 * Forum thread regarding the fork location locked by a Wikia employee to prevent further bumping.
 * Removal of some advice and a link to Wowpedia on a user's talk page was undone twice: once by a Wikia employee and the second time by WoWWiki's Wikia-appointed remaining admin.
 * Wikia's hired WowWiki admin created a forum page (now deleted) announcing a new policy to permaban users that advertise other sites, especially Wowpedia, on user talk pages. It has been replaced by a proposal after a forum complaining about a new policy being created without proper consensus. (Apparently, the original thread was a direct order from Wikia on how they think the site should be run).
 * Both admins are now stifling any reasonable attempt at discussion or mentions of Wowpedia, labeling it "trolling" and reverting it.

Astropedia

 * Staff reverted information about leaving Wikia

Donkey Kong Wiki

 * Many reverts, a toning down, and moving to "news" template on Main Page regarding the move notice - See full history

Beepedia (Finnish)

 * Sarah Manley reverted a notice on the main page, even when the editor explained to Sarah that the notice "does not even recommend anyone not to edit this wiki".

D20 NPCs

 * Brandon Rhea deleted and Jenburton modified it. Both times, changing it back to the way it was was not re-reverted.

SpongeBob Fanon Wiki

 * sannse reverted a JavaScript code redirecting the wiki to nickfanon.wikia.com (per a fork compromise) and globally blocked the admin who originally posted said code for a month.

Lost Media Wiki

 * Banner removed from main page. Message from Staff: We would have allowed notice about the move to stay up for one month to let people know what was happening, but that has to be earned.

Club Penguin Wiki (Portuguese)

 * Link to the fork removed by Wikia employee Macherie ana.

RuneScape Wiki

 * Takeover by wikia staff, and feature changes without consensus

After everyone left, Wikia Staff took control of the wiki and changed things without consensus. Classic talk pages were disabled and changed by message walls, they enabled Discussions, and disabled user blogs.

Ironically, on the forum where those changes were advertised, Wikia Staff Mira Laime says Going forward, it's our goal to collaborate with the community whenever possible rather than dictate changes.


 * Forum:Discussions, Message Walls, and other changes for the RuneScape Wiki (archive),


 * Mass-deletion of all user pages and subpages

Another of the changes was to completely remove all user pages and subpages of all the past editors of the wiki. The change was done allegedly because there were lots of user pages with broken links and templates. The most sensible way to do that would've been to blank those pages to allow users to recover their user page if they wanted, but the real reason was to prevent new users to see why or where the old users that had built the content for so many years left the wiki.


 * Forum:Fresh start for user pages (archive)
 * Deletion log of all user pages, done by a bot controlled by Wikia Staff


 * Others
 * Continuous reverting of links to the new wiki added by various editors. Both the RuneScape Wiki and Old School RuneScape Wiki were locked down to autoconfirmed users indefinitely.
 * The Forum:Leaving Wikia page was deleted, no reason given (see last version on the forked wiki).
 * When a community forks, Fandom does indeed remove anything that could harm the remaining wiki's chance of attracting a new community. That includes deleting links to the forked wiki, debates about the fork, and blocking users who have moved to the new wiki but keep coming back to sabotage the wiki they've left behind. That may be irksome to those who have left, but it makes perfect sense from a business standpoint. ~ Mira Laime @fandom

Feed The Beast Wiki

 * Brandon Rhea and Jenburton edit warred with local wiki administrators for trying to put up a banner pointing readers to their forked website. Administrators that took part were promptly blocked and desysopped. By tolerance or by oversight, a link pointing to their forked wiki was permitted further down their main page in plain text rather than in a banner.

Command and Conquer Wiki

 * Kirkburn and BertH edit warred with the notice about the move to Gamepedia 2 days after the announcement, changing the text from THE COMMAND & CONQUER WIKI HAS MOVED TO GAMEPEDIA. THIS VERSION IS NO LONGER MANAGED (which did not include any link to the fork) to THE COMMAND & CONQUER WIKI HAS FORKED.

Pre-Oasis skin attacks
(Not included in the tally)

Transformers Wiki

 * September 2008 - BillK and sannse desysoped 5 editors: has moved to tfwiki.

Gisle Wiki

 * September 29, 2009 - Angela de-sysoped founder Sysrq868: "user has left and is now vandalizing"

Jedipedia

 * July 2010 - Community decides to fork to ShoutWiki. Administrator de-sysoped.

Wikisimpsons

 * Staff argument with Simpson editors.

Deleting articles and images

 * sannse deleted the AWA forums and re-created redirects to this site.
 * sannse deleted the forum question created by Anno1404 similar to the conversation here, which mentions that ShoutWiki has Monaco. Reason: off-topic.
 * sannse deleted the AWA logo, replacing it with this image.
 * Spanish wiki Inciclopedia (part of the Uncyclopedia family) used a template to replace inter-language links with Uncyclopedia that pointed to the forked wiki. The template was deleted by a Spanish Staffer, who cited ToU violation.
 * Greegee Wiki - every page and image created by KATMAKROFAN (who has rollback rights on the English Wikipedia, one of the largest non-Wikia MediaWiki sites) was deleted because VSTF suddenly decided to protect the cross-wiki vandal and sockpuppeteer (or in English Wikipedia terms, "LTA") "Jhmarioman", who uploads Sonic R34 and childporn.

Reverting user/talk pages mentioning the fork
Wikia is reverting and deleting personal notes on userpages or user talk pages saying that the user is now on the forked wiki. That's what they call "Spam Advertising". Even if it's your own userpage!


 * On WikiDex, (now former) VSTF user FalconX Zero reverted notices from personal user pages about being now on a different domain.
 * On RuneScape, Staff user Rappy 4187 Reverts notices on personal user pages about being now on the new wiki.

Domains blocked
The following domains are blocked on all wikia by spam filters. Nobody can save a page containing text where that domain name appears (even as plaintext):


 * wikidex.net
 * runescape.wiki

There have also been reports of links to absurdopedia.net (a fork of the Russian Uncyclopedia) being blocked on most Wikia-hosted sites.

Other

 * Wikia removed the ability to e-mail users on Uncyclowikia, citing abuse of the e-mail system to encourage editors to join the fork.
 * This was later extended to all Wikia sites, citing a lack of use, and without any previous notice.
 * Wikia Staff restored the background image of Lost Media Wiki and said to the uploader: As the creator of the image, you are free to send in a take-down request under the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Staff abusing tools to hide its censorship
This is brand new as of 2018.

Staff member Luchofigo85 is specially angry against old members of WikiDex, which successfully forked one of the major Spanish wiks. Ciencia Al Poder (maintainer of WikiDex outside of wikia) offered hosting for the Spanish wiki of Super Smash Bros. (SmashPedia), and one of the admins of SmashPedia created a blog post announcing this, and seeking consensus whether to fork or not.

A bot account of FalconX Zero (former vstf member) was commenting on that Blog, because the main account was disabled without user consent as a retaliation for leaving wikia because of the fork of WikiDex. In a few hours, the 6 messages of that account were removed, and completely revdeleted and suppressed: The log displayed 6 deleted entries, but gave no information about what was deleted nor who was performing the deletion.

One user of SmashPedia found those logs in RecentChanges, made a screenshot of it, uploaded the screenshot to another wiki, and posted a message to one of the admins of SmashPedia about that. The screenshot did not disclose any private information, just the deleted entries on the log already censored.

Several hours later, the file was removed without leaving any logs about its deletion. According to other user, a tool called COPPATool was used to delete the image. This tool was designed to delete the image without leaving any public logs about that, and make impossible to restore the file, and as the name suggest, the purpose is to deal with images that violate the COPPA law. Clearly, not the issue here. It was an abuse of a tool not meant to be used for this purpose, just to hide who's deleting that file (censorship).

In fact, the entire wiki where the image was posted (es.la-mano-del-diablo) was deleted, and restored again 1h later after someone claimed for it through Special:Contact.

One of the comments of the blog, which supported the fork, was edited (censored) removing one of the paragraphs where he told how wikia would make the fork more difficult. The edit is apparently made by the same user that posted the comment, but the user assures he didn't edited the comment. Staff has a tool called "Piggyback" that allows a Staff to log-in into another user account without knowing the password. The purpose of the tool is to assist in scripts/CSS/Preferences problems, but not for editing or performing actions as another user (impersonation). A characteristic of this tool is that when a Staff uses it, the affected account gets logged-out automatically, and the user confirms he was logged-out when that message was edited. This means, a staff edited a message (censored it) impersonating another user, to hide his own edits. To prevent more messages about this user, the user was also globally banned.

User Ciencia Al Poder was aware of that and suspected of Staff Luchofigo85. Ciencia posted a message on the community central forum asking for clarification on how it was possible to delete the image without leaving logs, and the issue about impersonation. Luckily, another user which knows about those tools suggested the (ab)use of those tools as the possible cause. In parallel, a message was posted on Jenburton's messag wall, pointing to that forum, and asking to stop this abuse of staff tools. Both the forum thread and the message wall thread were censored and closed, not allowing any other reply. There was a reply to the forum rebutting all what Staff said, but it was also removed/censored by Luchofigo.

Ciencia Al Poder also asked on the original thread on SmashPedia that alerted of the censorship, to not reupload the same image again (or at least not under the same name) to prevent people to misinterpret what the logs would say. This message was removed (censored) by Luchofigo85 as well, and Ciencia Al Poder account has been disabled.

A user posting publicly a summary of those events had its account disabled.

Closure of Uncyclopedia
In February 2019, FANDOM announced it would be closing all Uncyclopedia sites hosted on its platform. The following message was spammed across every Wikia-hosted Uncyclopedia by Staff:


 * A message from Fandom


 * This is a very difficult post to write. As you may know, I have been a big fan of Uncyclopedia and its sister projects for a long time. I used to be very active on the English version, to the point of being made an admin. I have written three featured articles and created four featured images. It's a place I’ve loved to spend time.


 * Unfortunately times have moved on, and there are aspects of the wikis that have become increasingly a problem over the years. We've always given you a lot of leeway, despite many pages being outside our Terms of Use. And it's not just random bad images and articles, but some of the genuine content that should be on this wiki, but not on Fandom. We’ve ignored these things for years, but we need to really improve the acceptability of content on the site. So we are looking again at the content, and have decided that it’s not the sort of thing that we want to host anymore.


 * Trying to clean up this wiki would be impossible, and would involve deleting valid (but problem) articles. That simply isn't possible.


 * Of course you have options, and we want to help this change go smoothly. If there is a fork in your language, you may want to talk them about merging in. We can provide a database dump of all articles created here, or you could be more selective taking only the best new articles. Or you could go to alternative hosting there are many available]. I can't recommend one, but I know that a few wikis in a similar situation have gone to Miraheze.


 * We can't provide a dump of the images for copyright reasons - what's likely fair use here would be violating the original copyright if provided in a data dump. But you may be able to use sometihing like https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Exporting_all_the_files_of_a_wiki to help.


 * Again, I'm sorry this is happening, and will help as much as possible to make this a smooth transition. -- Sannse [staff] (help forum | blog) 26. 2. 2019, 17:25 (UTC)

Despite the very clear and public announcement that Uncyclopedia was being forced to leave FANDOM, they conveniently decided to block users for posting "Uncyclopedia has moved" anyways.

Overriding community decision-making on Wookieepedia
Fandom casually interfered with a community discussion on Wookieepedia and reversed several blocks implemented by local wiki administrators, many of who were veterans with many years of tenure. Fandom declared their decision to be non-negotiable and non-reversible.

The official statement said "we've been actively monitoring this conversation over the last week, including working with members of Wookieepedia's administration". This turns to be false, as disclosed by some admins (talk page and Discord).

Removing all links to independent wikis on Zelda Wiki
Zelda Wiki announced the fork in October, the 19th at 20:00 UTC. No announcement, advertising nor a single link to an announcement was posted on the Fandom counterpart.

~8h after the fork was announced off-wiki, almost all admins were demoted. A sitenotice message was added to recruit new staff members on a new discord server created for the Fandom wiki.

Despite Fandom's Forking_Policy saying ''A discussion of the fork, or an announcement, is permitted. (...) A link to this discussion is permitted on the wiki's main page for up to two weeks.'', no link to the announcement was allowed nor posted, since admins got demoted shortly after the announcement.

24h after the fork was announced, Fandom Representative MannedTooth removed all interwiki links pointing to independent wikis, or replaced them by Fandom ones. Links from user pages pointing to those independent wikis were removed too.

After some talk, staff agreed to post a fork announcement. However, despite their forking policy not stating a start time for the two-week period, they only allowed the notice to stay for 1 week. The interpretation of the staff is that the two-week fork announcement date starts at the time of the fork announcement elsewhere, and not when the announce is posted on-wiki.