Why we left

this is a very rough draft

Why we left, and why you should too
We the undersigned former wikia editors, would like to explain to those who remained why we left, and more importantly why you should too.

Why we left
On the forums announcing this new skin, the vast majority of editors expressed their opposition to this new skin. [links] The staff ignored these concerns, making small token changes but usually ignoring these concerns all together.

 Jim Wales, founder of wikia:
 * "Currently, the most popular sites that we have are in entertainment and gaming....World of Warcraft is probably the biggest. That community has built a guide to World of Warcraft that has 80,000 pages on it. Just for that particular wiki alone, I think we see 4 to 5 million people a month."

World of Warcraft, the largest site on wikia, decided to leave. Realizing that their largest income generator was leaving, in desperation the staff attempted to give World of Warcraft certain exclusive exemptions from the skin, including a larger edit screen.[link] World of Warcraft left anyway. Other smaller wikias asked for the same exceptions, in formal letters to the staff, and messages on staff's talk pages, and these pleas were all ignored.[links]

The great exodus: vote with your feet
The crown jewel of wikia left wikia, World of Warcraft. Veteran editors who have been on wikia for years, who have hundreds of thousands of edits, and intimately know the way wikia treats its editors left. Based on their collective experiences, they could see that wikia will never respect their rights and their hard work.

Other huge wikis have left also. Including Halo and the Simpsons. Dozens of wikis have left.

Wikia's staff reaction for these communities years of hard work is to ban and take away these editors rights. Showing contempt for its most prolific editors, the staff has begun purging wikias whose members left wikia, taking away dozens of admin and bureaucrat editors rights, and have blocked editors for telling others about the move.

Why you should leave too
 Jim Wales, founder of wikia:
 * "The free license part of Wikia limits our control. If the community gets mad at us, they can just leave and take the content with them. That alone keeps the relationship honest."

Critics have argued that this is just about a new skin. It isn't: it is about your site collectively spending tens of thousands of hours working hard to build a project, and having no voice in the future of wikia.

Wikia is not the last skin: based on the track record thus far, every two years wikia will be coming out with a new disruptive skin. What does that mean for you? You will have just gotten used to this new wikia skin and spent dozens of hours as a site transferring from monaco skin to wikia skin. Then Wikia will then create a new skin, forcing your community to adapt it. And you will have no say in those changes. Once again wikia staff will ignore its most valuable asset: its editors.

In the two years following up to the new future skin, wikia will not leave your community alone. Wikia will continue to make changes against your wikis best interest as they have in the past. Previous examples include changing the gallery formatting and moving then protecting hundreds of help pages, despite protests.

If you are not a large wikia like World of Warcraft or Uncyclopedia (which got an exemption from both skins), you have no voice in the future changes on wikia. And even the large wikias will only be given token changes in the next skin.

To use Mr. Wales words, the wikia staff have not kept the "relationship honest". The wikia staff's actions show again and again: they simply don't care about you.

The better alternative to wikia
In ten minutes any editor can start the process of leaving wikia, the helpful staff of shoutwiki will do the rest, here is how:

Signed
WE NEED SEVERAL EDITORS TO REVIEW AND COPY EDIT THIS FIRST.

Please contact me when the final draft is complete so I can sign (indicate where you can be contacted):

Anno1404 20:06, 28 November 2010 (UTC) Contact me on wikia.