Forum:Proposed Merger with Chapel of Resonance Wiki

Proposed Merge with Chapel of Resonance Castlevania Wiki
I've talked to the folks at the Chapel of Resonance (who maintain a separate Castlevania wiki called the Forbidden Library, though still usually referred to just as the Castlevania Wiki) about policies of one wiki using the other wiki's content, and we think it may be best for the two Castlevania wikis to merge into one. Essentially, all of the articles that are on this wiki would be transferred to the Chapel of Resonance wiki. I wanted to get your thoughts on this idea first before going through with it. Here are some things to consider:

Their wiki has some very strong character pages as far as telling their stories go, which they have been building up for about a year. Our wiki does not concentrate quite so much on the story and would benefit from the work that they've done on them (some which started out as copies of what we had over here, but then expanded or improved upon or removed things that didn't fit their vision, but others that were started from scratch from the ground up). This wiki did start out with a good set of character profiles, but things haven't changed too much since the beginning and they haven't been "polished" too much lately. Their wiki completely lacks pages for most other things, which this wiki has in abundance, such as pages for bosses, enemies, levels, equipment and weapons, merchandise of all kinds, and Castlevania fandom. Merging the two wikis would result in a much more complete wiki. Also, merging the talents of the two wikis would benefit both wikis greatly.

By the licensing of this wiki, they have the right to take any of our content and make whatever changes they want to it. I'm actually not sure if the same is true in reverse, but I expressed interested in the possibility of taking some of the content that they had over there, especially for pages we might not have a lot of detail on. Rather than have two Castlevania wikis borrowing from each other and developing pages along different paths, it'd be better to maintain a single wiki.

Now, it would certainly be easier for them to move their materials here, than for us to move all our materials there. We have a lot more articles and pages for one thing. Here are a few benefits of moving our wiki there instead of vice versa:


 * Their wiki doesn't have ads on them, making it a lot easier on visitors who aren't editors and less annoying.
 * Moving it to the Chapel of Resonance would make it part of a larger web site that's been around for a while now and has a strong active community of Castlevania fans. It would be great to tap into that group and be associated with the other activities that the Chapel of Resonance has been doing, such as their YouTube channel, forum, essays, fan production, and interviews.

Now, they knew about this wiki and could have decided to work on this wiki and improve it, but had decided to start a separate wiki in the first place. I imagine one reason for this may have been so that they didn't have to worry about rubbing anyone the wrong way on any massive scale changes they might have wanted to make and not worry about our editors changing their edits back. They probably wanted it to be something under their direct control as well and a part of their community. They've taken a few jabs at this wiki in the past, there may be some hard feelings? Well, I take anything like that as constructive criticism and don't disagree with some of the statements. As a chief architect of this wiki, I've taken pride in expanding the scope of the Castlevania Wiki to include anything related to Castlevania. The bulk of the work that I have done has been done on things I enjoy doing because I enjoy doing them. I do not really enjoy building up an existing page to meet a certain quality standard, or making pages follow a uniform format. I'm pretty hands off when it comes to that and would prefer to leave that task to other editors. I'm also really not much of a community organizer, if someone tells me that they would like to help and asks me what they could do to help the most, my answer is just to do what you enjoy doing. I do think that joining forces with the folks over there would help this wiki meet a higher quality standard.

If we do go ahead with the merger, I would become the administrator of the wiki at the Chapel of Resonance, while Nagumo and The Successor from the Chapel would have the roles of Steward and Bureaucrat respectively. If any other admins here would be interested in similar roles there, let me know. Anyone can become an editor on the Chapel wiki. You essentially create an account with the chapel forum, and then you can make modifications to the wiki.

We do not have to worry too much about the amount of time it would take to transfer all of our files over there. There should be a way to do a bulk transfer. At this point, I'm not sure if this transfer would include the entire list of edits made to the wiki, along with the list of users who contributed (considering the list of users here and there are different), but I think some of that information would be transferred. It would take a little while to figure out how to do the merger of pages that exist on both wikis right now, such as many of the character pages. The background stories would follow what the Chapel has (if they're fully developed), but I'm not sure how we'll handle other character features, such as the Judgment quotes or fan materials. We'll have to work that out. Another type of page that they have a lot of is Sound Tracks. I'm guessing they initially copied what we had and then modified them, but am not sure. We'll have to merge the contents of those pages at any rate. Another thing that would need to be done is redo the front page on the Chapel's wiki to have better access to the bulk of new materials that will be heading the Chapels way. It'll be a shame to leave behind the new front interface that was added recently here, which was pretty good, with a great logo, scheme, and background image.

I would like for this to be a full merge and basically change the front page here to be a pointer the wiki's new home. This will make it less confusing for Castlevania Wiki editors and reduce the amount of duplicate work that might be done over the two wikis. Of course, if we do end up going through with the merger, anyone could decide to "restart" the Wiki at Wikia.

Anyways, please let me know your thoughts on this. If there is a general desire to not go through with the merge, we will continue to keep both wikis as separate entities. I thank everyone for their contributions to this wiki, and hope to see you at the new location. Thanks, --Reinhart77 20:54, March 26, 2010 (UTC)

Links

 * Here's a link to the Chapel of Resonance's Castlevania Wiki: Forbidden Library
 * Here's a link to the discussion page on the Chapel's forum about the wiki, starting from where the merger was discussed: discussion
 * Here's a link to the main Chapel of Resonance web page: Chapel of Resonance

Discussion
(add your thoughts here)