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Her letter to you sounded as though she were talking to a child. She might as well have offered to trade you the site for a bag of candy to be fully insulting.

I've wondered a few times if she thinks that the replies I've sent her have been written by "the parent of the webmaster" or something. Does she think we're still in high school or undergraduates or something? I don't have a mass of initials after my name for nothing.

This is particularly confusing. How does "she" know Bulbapedia is currently experiencing server errors? Did she simply knew this by going to the website by coincidence? Upon reading what I read, it almost felt like Angela is making an automated message to the head of the wiki. :9

We were experiencing problems back in March, before we added servers 3 through 5. Presumably, it's part of either her job or her subordinates job to keep track of popular non-Wikia wikis. For the record, every time we've actually talked in public before about having financial issues (thank heavens we're financially secure now) or major technical issues, something like this arrived in my inbox a few weeks later.

In any case, this is the reply I sent to Angela earlier.

Angela,

I wasn't going to reply to this initially, but I figure it's best that I do, if only to save myself the trouble of having to read these kinds of emails from you again in the future.

Quite honestly Angela, I'm flabbergasted that you would email me with anything like this. I've felt for a long time that your organisation represented one of the greatest threats to online fan communities, and this email just confirms in my mind everything that I've thought and said regarding Wikia and how little you actually care for the online fan communities that you attempt to absorb.

For starters, if you had cared to actually look into our situation, you would've noted that despite the sustained increased traffic following the English language release of Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver versions (which I note has brought us into the top 2000 websites in the US, with traffic still increasing), Bulbagarden and Bulbapedia's recently upgraded and expanded cluster of 5 servers are currently quite stable and self-supporting. There is no technical or financial reason for us to even think of considering your offer.

However, this isn't what makes your email as astounding as it is. For the record, since both you and your subordinates clearly have not done your research whatsoever, let me point out to you that I am the founder of the Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance (NIWA), an association of fan wikis including Bulbapedia that was specifically set up to provide support to other independent wikis in the greater Nintendo fandom, and to provide a bulwark against the continued encroachment into it of groups such as Wikia. You will find a link to our Manifesto at the bottom of this paragraph. With the very fact that you sent this email to me clearly demonstrating some of the points we raised there with regards to your management style and lack of interest in the fandoms themselves, I imagine you'll be hearing and seeing a lot more of NIWA over the coming months and years.
http://www.niwanetwork.org/forums/index.php?topic=98.0

I would say more, but now that you're here in Australia, I'll restrain myself so that I don't accidentally fall foul of our slander and libel laws. Suffice it to say that, if it hasn't already sunk in Angela, our answer to your offer is, has been, and always will be, a firm no. There is no possible circumstance under which I or my team would ever consider having Bulbapedia "hosted" by Wikia. Our attitude towards your offer has not changed, and will never. The same goes for our wiki partners in the Encyclopaediae Pokémonis and NIWA networks.

Yours sincerely,
Liam Pomfret
a.k.a. Archaic, Webmaster of Bulbagarden/Bulbapedia; Founder of the Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance

I actually already contacted their owner to let them know what we were doing a while back. ^^;

Unfortunatly, the fact that we're not going to outright declare war on them means my "cancer on the internet" paragraph from the draft email reply some of you have seen won't be getting published.

Her initial offer for Bulbapedia, way back in...2006 or 2007 I think it was.....was $1000. I think that says it all.

Actually, this time she's said outright stock as opposed to stock options, which while better is still not worth it.

Honestly, you'd think that as her email quoted our previous exchanges (so she evidently just hit reply on an old one), she would've noticed the fact that I have a Masters degree in International Business, and that I actively teach this stuff. It's like she assumes that because we run a Pokémon site, that we must not actually be very savvy with finances.

Hi Liam,

I was recently told about the problems you'd had in March with the
increased traffic. If there is any offer you would like Wikia to make
to be able to host the Bulbagarden website, please let me know. I hope
we can restart a discussion on what would be an appropriate level of
compensation for you, in either cash, stock, or revenue sharing.

Angela

Thank you Angela, for proving to me once again that Wikia does not actually really care about fandoms whatsoever, that you don't actually watch our trends or care anything about our circumstances.

Here's some news for you. Putting aside the whole NIWA thing, Bulbagarden increased itself from a capacity of 2 servers to 5 servers over the Heart Gold & Soul Silver launch period. If we can afford to put on that kind of cluster to host ourselves, why the hell would we take up your duplicitous offer?

Honestly, I think it's rather premature to consider purchasing advertising. If we were going to though, some of us have industry contacts who, while maybe not able to give us any discount on the rates, could at least point us at the right people.

All admins on the wikis and this forum: Why are you so heartless?

I teach undergraduate students for a living, and am a research student.
...says it all really.

Feel free to make a topic, if you like. Might make it easier to focus on specific issues for your wiki rather than having it either get lost amongst this thread, or ending up taking it over.

I'd like to assure you, the idea most certainly hasn't fallen through. It's just that a lot of our staff have been distracted of late. All the Bulbapedia people for starters have had the Heart Gold / Soul Silver releases to deal with.

We shouldn't use wikia as a reference.

Just because Wikia is a greedy host, it doesn't mean the wikis they host are as bad as they are! Wikia hosts so many of the largest online wikis in so many particular topics!

I would avoid using the word "host" when talking about a wiki on Wikia, and think more in terms of "own/run". Wikia use the terminology of "hosting" to lure financially strapped wikis in, but a proper read of their terms and conditions shows that the whole thing is a lot more insidious.

The wikis on Wikia might not in all cases be bad in terms of content, but they are most certainly complacent.

I can't believe no one's already mentioned the Transformers wiki yet, given their famous break from Wikia.

While we may make a larger, more encompassing alliance in the future, in the short-to-medium term that won't be happening. Let's get this all perfected with the Nintendo franchise wikis first.

Over the past years, we have noticed a disturbing trend in Nintendo fandoms. Where once stood friendly communities, operated by well known and well loved faces, now stand sterile places run by faceless corporate entities, whose only care for their visitors is how much advertising revenue they generate. Nowhere is this more true than with fan wikis. For the past several years, there has been a systematic attempt made by certain groups to acquire wikis of sufficient size and prominence in their respective fandoms. While some webmasters have resisted, many others have instead given themselves over. Some misled by duplicitous offers of free hosting with many more strings attached then they were ever aware, and others led astray sadly by greed, with promises of shared advertising revenues or even flat out lump sums of cash.

We seek to change this trend.

What we have said should not be misunderstood as being anti-corporate. There is certainly a place in online fandoms for corporate sponsorship, and it's true that many fansites, ourselves included, would not be able to cover their hosting bills without advertising of some sort. Nor can we blame all of those who have had to relinquish control of their communities, as the financial and technical burdens for those of us who become large are often quite significant, and there are most certainly difficulties for webmasters in forming the networks and connections they need to make enough return off their advertisements to pay for their communities.

What we do stand against is the corporate meddling in the actual day-to-day operation and management of our communities, which we feel is a detriment to our fandoms as a whole. Our feelings can be summarised thus.

* Fan communities should be run by the fans, by people whose involvement in the well-being of the community is of the emotional nature of the fan. They should not be run by those having only a purely financial investment, with no interest in the specific fandom itself.

* Fan communities should be run for the fans, by people who will take a positive interest in the fans' desires, always thinking about how they can continue to enhance the enjoyment of everyone in the community.

* Fan communities should be run together with the fans, embracing a spirit of co-operation and camaraderie in our fandoms, with friendly rivalries rather than bitter divides.

It's time we made our stand together, as fans, for the sake of the futures of our fandoms.
That stand begins now.

NIWA is a network of independent operators of Nintendo wikis, founded jointly by Bulbapedia, ZeldaWiki and Super Mario Wiki - three strong communities that have banded together in the face of this threat. We hope that our example will send a message to fandoms everywhere: we will not take this trespass into our domain lying down, and neither should they. We will show the world that such a stand is possible, and worthwhile.

To those of you who seek to dominate and hold power over us, we say fear us, and know that your actions will be tolerated by the fans no more.
To those of you who seek freedom in your pursuit of knowledge, and to those of you oppressed under the shackles of faceless shadows, we say seek out and join us.
We are NIWA, and this is our declaration of our independence.

I think the Wikis should add the abillity for intergrated accounts.

There may be possibilities in the future for more portable accounts (perhaps using OpenID), but the accounts would all still be technically separate.

I'm Archaic, real name Liam Pomfret. I'm the webmaster of Bulbagarden.net and the Bulbapedia. I hope the others won't mind me saying that NIWA is my brainchild of sorts. I'm the one who proposed the idea to the other wikis, following an affiliation request from ZeldaWiki with Bulbapedia getting my brain working on the topic. I also own the niwanetwork domain name, and this site actually runs off the Bulbagarden servers.

Offline, I'm a 25 year old from Brisbane, Australia. I hold a Masters of International Business from Queensland University of Technology, and I'm currently completing a post-graduate thesis at the University of Queensland on user perceptions of privacy in online social networking sites, following which I'll be entering into a Ph.D program. I also teach tutorial classes for undergraduate units in Marketing, Management and International Business at that university. During my undergraduate, I spent a year studying at Meijo Daigaku in Nagoya, Japan. I'm not fluent in Japanese, but I understand more than enough to watch a Pokémon episode without subtitles, and I have on occasion provided translation or quality checking services to a number of fansub groups. I'm also studying Spanish, though progress there is a little slow of late.

Kasumi, head of our creative content department on Bulbagarden, is my fiancé.

I'm a lifelong Nintendo fan, with the only non-Nintendo console I own being an Atari2600 that I had for a year or two before the NES was released over here. Name a Nintendo franchise, and I've played it. Pokémon is my biggest passion there, obviously, and I've been into it before there was ever an official english release, introduced by an exchange student who was staying at my house at the time.

Just as a word of warning for anyone considering creating a Smash Bros one, we are currently working on plans internally to create a Smash one as a NIWA project, seeing as Smash is really a crossover of many Nintendo franchises.

I would also like to suggest that those considering starting wikis do their best to affiliate and/or work with big independent sites in their fandoms. While not exactly a requirement as such, it would be preferable to see, for instance, something like Starmen.net sponsoring the Earthbound one, even if their staff aren't involved directly in the production.

When it's finalised (hopefully later today), it'll get its own thread. We'll also be making a page for it linked to from the front page of the site.

Just as a quick disclaimer there....that's a draft, it might not be the final version of the manifesto. ^^;

Out of Curiosity, what criteria does a wiki need to be independent?

the reason i am asking is: I rent web-space from commercial servers, and allow my friends, acquaintances and so on to use it for free. If i were to set up a wiki in this web-space, would it be considered independent?

Most likely, yes. As a rule of thumb, to be considered independent you'd want to fill the following two criteria.

A) Be self-funded, and not part of a network akin to Wikia
B) Be run by fans of the series, for fans of the series