Wikia - creating communities

[edit] Creation of new language versions of MA

Apparently, a japanese language version of MA has recently been created. I (as well as other MA regulars I talked to) was made aware of this fact not by someone from Wikia actually telling me - but by some "random" guy (no offense, Yukichi) changing MA/en's main page to add a new interwiki link.

This is not the first time this has happened - and it's not the first time we're complaining about the way of dealing with this, either. We've got a lengthy discussion page that, among other things, talks about problems with many language versions here. We've even got a page detailing exactly how we want to handle the creation of new language versions here to avoid exactly those problems. We talked about these two pages with Wikia staff more than once.

Yet, every once in a while, a new MA offspring gets created without any approval by us, without any cooperation between the new admin "over there" and the existing MA community, and without any of the policy pages that the other MA versions have. The japanese version currently doesn't even look like MA...

Can we please get something done about this? Thanks. -- Cid Highwind 12:05, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Cid, I had a conversation about this issue with a Wikia staff member when the Chinese version was created (because the admin of that version wasn't following the minimum standards that we outlined here), and I was told, in so many words, that it doesn't matter what we or the admins of any other version of MA have to say about it, the admin(s) of a new language version have full control over both the look and the content of the new version, and if they want to call it Memory Alpha but have articles on any subject they want, that's their prerogative. -- Renegade54 16:18, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

I must have had a similar conversation, then, because I recognize that argument. While it may be technically correct that people can do whatever they like under the "Memory Alpha" name due to its free license, it's a completely different question whether it would be in the best interest of Wikia to actually let them do that. Trying to build a new community by basically telling an existing one that their (not too extravagant, I might add) wishes are completely irrelevant doesn't sound like a great idea to me. -- Cid Highwind 11:49, 17 February 2008 (UTC)