Bad News for the Wiki

[Sanctaphrax]

Just got an email from Wikispaces.

Today we announced on our blog that Wikispaces is no longer offering a free wiki option for non-education wikis.

dfrpg-resources.wikispaces.com is currently not categorized as an education wiki and it is on our free plan. In order for it to remain active, it must be categorized as an education wiki or upgraded.

We are notifying you, as you are an organizer of this wiki.

If you no longer use this wiki, you may ignore this email.

Otherwise you may categorize this wiki as an education wiki, pay for this wiki, or export the contents of this wiki for use offline or on another service. To make your choice please visit the following link:

http://dfrpg-resources.wikispaces.com/space/convert

If you take no action this wiki will be deleted in no fewer than 30 days.

If you have any questions please let us know.

Thanks,
The Wikispaces Team

There's no way we can categorize the DFRPG Resource Wiki as an education wiki. So we've got to pay or move. Neither prospect is terribly appealing to me.

Paying would cost $5/month. Not all that much, but I'm not keen to reward Wikispaces for pulling this free/not free bait-and-switch. And I'm not sure exactly who would pay.

Moving would be free, but it'd be a lot of hassle. Even ignoring all the work involved, it'd break every link to the wiki and possibly make the wiki much harder to find with a search engine.

So, what do y'all think? Anyone got any brilliant suggestions?

[Haru]

Hmm, maybe Iago has some space on the Forum server for you? I know that involves moving, but it would be safe there from any further such things. Working through the wiki to restore the links would be a hassle, I grant you, but I bet there are some people willing to help around here.
Though shouldn't there be some way to export the wiki and import it again into a new wiki? Seems like that should be an option that exists.

Alternately, you could set up a Patreon for the wiki and see if people are willing to put some money together to keep the wiki up. It's not a perfect solution, but it's not exactly a perfect situation, either.

[Baron Hazard]

I have a lil bit donated to me from my gallifreyan translations, id be willing to help donate from time to time, but not take on the monthly burden all myself. But it is really lame of them.

[Taran]

I don't have any specific solutions.

Is there a way to make it 'educational'?

Maybe each submission has a link to something related or a useful factoid based on something educational.  Would that be enough to slip through the net?

I don't have experience with this kind of thing - but I do have some time.  I could offer to help move stuff, if need be.

[Sanctaphrax]

Hmm, maybe Iago has some space on the Forum server for you?

Hm, maybe. I'll ask him.

Though shouldn't there be some way to export the wiki and import it again into a new wiki? Seems like that should be an option that exists.

It should be an option. With some wikis, it is. But it seems Wikispaces doesn't support that.

Alternately, you could set up a Patreon for the wiki and see if people are willing to put some money together to keep the wiki up. It's not a perfect solution, but it's not exactly a perfect situation, either.

Good idea. Patreon is quite suited for this sort of thing.

I have a lil bit donated to me from my gallifreyan translations, id be willing to help donate from time to time, but not take on the monthly burden all myself. But it is really lame of them.

Yeah, it is. To offer a free service long enough that people commit to it, then to start charging...it's not illegal or evil, but it feels dishonest. If we'd known this would happen, we would've set up somewhere else.

And thanks. I might take you up on that offer.

Is there a way to make it 'educational'?

Maybe each submission has a link to something related or a useful factoid based on something educational.  Would that be enough to slip through the net?

I doubt it. Bottom line, DFRPG isn't really a school subject.

I don't have experience with this kind of thing - but I do have some time.  I could offer to help move stuff, if need be.

Thanks. I might take you up on that one.

[Haru]

It should be an option. With some wikis, it is. But it seems Wikispaces doesn't support that.

According to a quick google search, it does have an "export/backup" option. Though depending on the format, it might be less than useless.

http://help.wikispaces.com/Settings#Exports%20/%20Backups

[Sanctaphrax]

Huh. Somehow failed to find that when I did my own searching.

Well, I guess I'll find out whether it's any good...

[Quantus]

Ya, I used wikispaces to organize several projects and hobbies, and now its all going away.   

Given how small a complete backup of Wikipedia is (assuming no photo's/video) Id be suprised if the wiki would be much of a burden to Iago compared to what the forum backups became.  Thats not the same as wanting to roll in the wiki here though, and I guess it's possible there are non-technical reasons for not hosting it as part of the author site.

Obsidian portal offers wiki functionality as part of it's free service (though Im not sure what the cap is) and it can be open to the public if you want it to be (you have to pay for privacy in fact).  It might be a viable alternative;  even if we end up collecting cash for a paid account, at least we wouldnt be rewarding Wikispaces for their bait-n-switch

[Sanctaphrax]

Got a response from Iago. He said...

I don't have the kind of in-house expertise I'd want to host a wiki, make it secure, keep the software updated, etc. So while I might be willing I'm not sure I can provide it (feel free to educate me otherwise). Other community wikis I've seen have been relying on http://www.wikidot.com/ for what it's worth.

So I guess I'm gonna check out wikidot and Obsidian Portal.

[gojj]

If we are going with the keeping it where it is and paying idea, Patreon could be the answer, but I have a concern. To be honest, I think hitting $5 a month would pretty easy. If we only got  a dozen people on board, that is only ~45 cents a person and although I do not want to assume anything concerning people's budgets, that should be a fairly easy number for people to commit to. My concern is if too much money is pledged. Is there a way to cap the money pledged? If more people want to pledge down the line, what then? I am fairly busy this week, but come Friday I can look into the Patreon idea if that still seems like a good idea.

[Quantus]

The one benefit of Obsidian Portal is that it is RPG oriented, including things like Character sheets, so it might allow for character archives and such as well.  But some of that is size limited without a paid account. 

If we are going with the keeping it where it is and paying idea, Patreon could be the answer, but I have a concern. To be honest, I think hitting $5 a month would pretty easy. If we only got  a dozen people on board, that is only ~45 cents a person and although I do not want to assume anything concerning people's budgets, that should be a fairly easy number for people to commit to. My concern is if too much money is pledged. Is there a way to cap the money pledged? If more people want to pledge down the line, what then? I am fairly busy this week, but come Friday I can look into the Patreon idea if that still seems like a good idea.

I dont know the specifics of Patreon, but I figured we'd just run with threshold goals.  Hell, we could make a small kickstarter out of it if somebody knows the ins and outs of such things.  Regardless just say "If we have $X we get Y years of wiki.  But if we get $Z, we get Y years of Wiki plus a Character Archive or Q Gigs of Image Uploads, etc"  I know kickstarter works with that sort of goals, other such ones should likely allow for a max cap at the very least, or cancellation rights or something.  So long as it is stated ahead of time what happens to any surplus it should be fine, even if it just gets donated to some stated Charity.

[Haru]

I think we would be running into the size problem on OP rather quickly. The free account doesn't hold all that much.

I think Patreon would be better than kickstarter for this, since it is meant for continued donations, rather than a one time goal. Plus I don't think there need to be any stretchgoals. Plus, if there's more money coming in than the 5$/month you need, you can just collect every other month or so, or lower the individual pledges.

[Quantus]

I think we would be running into the size problem on OP rather quickly. The free account doesn't hold all that much.

Certainly.  If we wanted it to be the free account it would have to be a text-only wiki, without using most of the other features.  But keep in ind that the listed 2 mb limit is a)per campaign, not per account, and b) is for uploaded files (pictures, etc) and does not include the wiki.  I have been looking but so far have not found an actual limit on the wiki size. 

That being said, at $40 per year, the ascendant account would be significantly cheaper than the $5/month ($60/year)

I think Patreon would be better than kickstarter for this, since it is meant for continued donations, rather than a one time goal. Plus I don't think there need to be any stretchgoals. Plus, if there's more money coming in than the 5$/month you need, you can just collect every other month or so, or lower the individual pledges.

The main though about stretch goals just to be able to decide to go with a better, paid system if we got a significantly higher response than expected.  If we say at the start we are going with a $5/month service, we could very easily get enough to cover years or even decades  (One guy got several thousand dollars on kickstarter just to make and document potato salad (just for himself); and this has far more value and following).  If that happens it might be worth considering a more advance/expensive service, and Im concerned that something like Patreon wouldnt allow for those kinds of changes to the plan. 

[Sanctaphrax]

Well, I've created and downloaded some backups now. So we're insured against deletion, and we should find it easier to move.

(If anyone else wants copies of the backups, I can make them available.)

But honestly, after looking around a bit I'm leaning towards just paying them. Feels a bit like getting scammed, but moving looks like a lot of work and sixty dollars a year really isn't all that much. Besides, I don't know their situation...maybe offering free wikis just isn't financially viable, and people like us were only ever hurting their bottom line. So it's probably not appropriate to really get angry.

[Quantus]

Fair enough.  Regardless of other factors, moving would if nothing else break any links that may exist for people trying to keep reference links for their own games, so avoiding a would almost always be the smoother option. 

Any thoughts to funding strategy?  It doesnt seem fair to make you take the whole burden.