Forum:NIWA and Us

Ok, so all of us that aren't living under a rock know that we are going to at least affiliate with NIWA, hopefully completely move there. The reason we have not done so already is because we have not heard everyone's opinion on this. So this topic is just for that purpose, to see what everyone thinks. Except for Anons, as we have not had the best track record with them and having good content. Also when/if we move you will have to make an account to edit, and this has an incredibly low chance of going away.

So, you already know my opinion on this, so I'll mostly just moderate.--Sir Pikmin


 * I just want to clarify a few things. After reading some messages, I should let you know there's no NIWA to move to. It may seem to be another wiki generator like Wikia, but its more like a brotherhood, a collection of independent wikis on Nintendo published content. If this wiki decides to move, you'd be moving to your own property and url. Someone at NIWA could help out every step of the way, but unlike Wikia staff, we aren't paid for the work we do, We just do it because we want to see great wikis and have strong partners to show members of our home wikis so they can see Pikmin info/fanon.

For example, the story of WiKirby. I was an active and well liked admin at ZeldaWiki.org. I was looking for independent wikis to affiliate ZeldaWiki.org with. There's a lot of Kirby references in Zelda games and a few Zelda references in Kirby games. Linking to Wikipedia was getting too boring. I wanted to link to fanmade wikis run by people that care about the subject and not just accomodating it to turn a profit. I found Kirbypedia, but it seemed dead, the Recent Changes were a ghost town and the owner never responded to me. We didn't ask the Wikia guys for a partnership because at the time ZeldaWiki.org was having tons of problems from Zeldapedia.wikia.com. We decided that even if the Wikia of a series wanted to partner with us, the actual Wikia staff could change it all to their own Zeldapedia. Sooooo time went by and we started NIWA, with one goal being to have fan-run sites to link to for specific series, and another to help each other figure out new coding, extensions, and bug fixing. We decided that a hub forum would be the best meeting ground, members of our wikis can meet other wiki editors. I thought, "Well somebody is going to create an independent Kirby wiki. So it might as well be us, that way we can make something high quality." And thus WiKirby was born. It would not be near as good as it is without the help of people from MarioWiki.com and Bulbapedia, plus us from Zelda Wiki.

They helped us with alot of stuff, constant support, gave us traffic with the NIWAbar on their mainpages. And we helped them with some stuff. We helped Wars Wiki get things done, We suggested to Bulbapedia to put all of the rounded corner code in a template like we did and have cleaner page code-ups, We've told Mario Wiki guys how to automatically rotate things on their mainpage, but I think they prefer to assign it as regular jobs for staff members. The list of how each wiki helped one another could go on for a long time, but I'll stop there. In short, I own WiKirby, I can change the skin tomorrow if I want to, but I have no power over any of the other wikis, and they have no power over WiKirby. It's a peaceful friendship. But yes, we carefully review which wikis are going to be actual members of NIWA. It's something that has to be earned and not just given out. There are wikis working on earning their membership now, and will be more in the future. Sorry for the long post, thanks for reading and I hope that clears up everything about NIWA. Hope to see you guys independently running soon! Be your own bosses! Axiomist 05:20, September 8, 2010 (UTC)


 * Long posts are fine! Yes, I know that there is no NIWA to move to, I'm just using move for a lack of a better word I guess. I get that NIWA is more like a brotherhood of independent Wikis, willing to help each other out but with none having control of the others. This is great and we really want to be a part of it, but the only thing that is currently holding us back is money sadly. I can't legally work yet, and it appears the same for Peanut. Game does work, but he has been away for some time. And Portal has been gone for a long time, he is also an admin here..


 * Then there's also the issue of gaining support and user migration. I'm almost 100% sure we'll lose Yoshord once we start up the new site, but it appears the everyone else will make the journey. That's bad because he basically keeps the peace around here when we are busy, and he's my favorite user so I'm kinda biased here.


 * On a side note, I read that NIWA would affiliate with Non-Nintendo sites. Is this correct? If so, I have a website that would be looking to affiliate. If it helps, it is also tied in with this Wiki as it is (soon to be) the prime distributor of all its' fanon games with the community's permission. And it's my site, if you hadn't already figured that out. --Sir Pikmin