GamerEscape Downtime

Was just on there today, but now it goes to a domain camper search engine, so not sure if they simply stopped paying for hosting or if they've been hacked.

Fair warning.

Who used it anyway? :X

I did? I used it and BG wiki, because I didn't like what happened to FFXIclopedia under wikia. A lot of the people from FFXIclopedia moved to gamer escape, that's why it's there.

Not there anymore, someone didn't pay the bill.

lol Their domain expired on 2/1/2012. Looks like they did some "long" term planning and decided to register the domain for only one year.

I appreciated the fact that the original crew wanted to free themselves from Wikia, but its disappointing that all they did was split the community of contributors. I have to admit i'm getting really really sick of having to check between the two wiki's to find all the information i'm looking for on anything new since they split.

I hope it stays down so we can finally have a centralized wiki again.

Not to be an ***, but in order to have a centralized wiki then BGwiki or the wikia version will have to shutdown to only have 1.

I agree and it's really irritating when people insist on saying "just update the BGwiki". BGwiki has some really nice information for some new things but it's layout is a pain in the ***. Half the items aren't linked to where they come from. Most, if not all, R/E items with special properties aren't linked, recipes aren't even shown. On top of that what if someone told you to only edit the "zamwiki". BG-forums, despite being one of the best places to garnish new information, and have quality discussions; carries a certain connotation to it. I know people who refuse to sign on to alla, bg, even ffxiah. I felt that, although it carried a unverified misinformation stigma, ffxi-wiki was a more "neutral" place for information that everyone could contribute to.

That's at least how I viewed it :/

/butts out

Just checked twitter and they are investigating at the moment. :/

Oh and I also used GE and BG as sometimes there is no information on GE but there is on GE. However

I find GE to be a little more detailed than BG especially when I am looking up gear. BG doesn't always tell you where gear drops from but they are working on that now. Not saying GE is the best because it is still missing a lot of information and I do try to help by editing but there is jsut so much other stuff to do....like playing xi. :p

BG wiki is fine as a side wiki devoted to in-depth analysis of the math behind the scenes. Would it be nice to have it all in one place? Sure, but it's niche enough that it doesn't do any damage. GamerEscape on the other hand is a straight up copy/paste in direct competition with FFXIclopedia, and its existence did a lot to stem the flow of information by dividing the community between two wikis that were trying to fill the same role. Redundancy in this case was counter-productive.

I have nothing else to say here except that I hate Wikia for what they did and I will never forgive them for it!!! >:O

but seriously, horrible company move they made. 90% of their wiki's look like crap now.

what an epic first post....

Wiki would be fine if they didnt screw up with the spaceing of everything. I much prefere GE setup/format. BG's, i just dont like at all either...

Corrected.

What did Wikia do now? Is this just a reference to them consolidating all there wiki's to a fixed with layout?

thats because its by the same. exact. people who made wikia wiki. they moved to get off of wikia and their stupid rules. the only reason wikia wiki is even up still is because wikia has a rule that you cant delete wikis

Basically.

Why should they have changed anything? The wiki's they hosted were fine, great actually. Bringing in HQ layouts and refusing users to use the layouts they built for years is unacceptable. Sure, for a time they let us use the basic no modification layout (w/e that was called) but they warned us that they were removing it soon.

Stupid move, why force everyone to look the same when not everyone has the same style of content. That one move by Wikia in my opinion single handily hurt the wiki more than anything. Contributor loss over the years was a huge factor, and they were having trouble keeping up with new content, but the one thing that throws off users more than anything is what they are looking at.

Having everything squished ruined it for me personally, regardless of the real reason the community moved to gamerescape. At least GE lets me have a wide layout so I can view content the way it was meant to be viewed -.-

I am growing fond of BG wiki though now, I really do believe simple is better (as this site doesn't have fancy colors or styles like the main forums do, and I think this one looks better than the official forums).

Same as most for BG. All of the good VW stuff is on BG. On GE? "Can't find what you're looking for."

But for older stuff, GE or 'clopedia is a lot better.

Hey guys, thanks for the concern (and kind words from some of you =P)

As I tweeted out earlier we're currently looking into things to get the site back up and running.

There was an issue where payment didn't go through for the domain re-newel. Rest assured we're currently working to resolve the issue.

In regards to the split/division of wiki stuffs, it wasn't our intention for that to happen. We left Wikia on good terms and made it known that we were relocating the wiki to Gamer Escape. Some people noticed and made the move with us, others didn't. It is what it is. However, know that we can make changes to the wiki on GE where we couldn't on Wikia, and things such as contests and interviews involving Square Enix, and that relationship also moved to GE with us.

Pity the useful part didn't move as well.

Please don't take this as anything bad, but just as constructive criticism.

It's 100% awesome that you got wikia to be cool with you leaving, and them allowing you guys to take a copy of the wiki when you left. I love the fact that you guys have more freedom to create the wiki your way. But when we get down the to the brass tacks, Contests/Interviews/Relationships mean very little when what I really want is to find concise and complete information about a item/monster/event. Any big news you guys break will be replicated across the main forums within minutes anyways, further reducing my need to visit your site.

In my opinion, without solid content and information on the wiki, everything else has very little meaning.

I definitely see the point in that.

However also keep in mind that there's only so much a small staff can do in terms of populating the wiki with information. The point of the wiki is (while being able to look up information) to share information. If the wiki doesn't have the information someone is looking for, they can find it elsewhere, add it, and source it.

If there's a reason people aren't editing the wiki I'd be interested in learning why and seeing if there is something we could do that would encourage more people to make contributions.

The reason: People want their information now without contributing anything to the wiki they use.

:(

I'm sorry D: but I admit.. I want info and I don't want to share other info >:O Does that make me a monster?!

I don't really notice a difference. o.o

/confused :x

Not sure what you're talking about exactly

I don't see how Wiki's changed!

I only really use FFXIclopedia though.

I think really this is a problem of inertia. People keep using wikia because they have bookmarks, links, etc. They don't have enough incentive to change to GE. For me, the layout disaster that is wikia was all the incentive I needed. For others, it's obviously not.

The only real way for GE to get more users is to have the best information, and most up-to-date. I realize this is a chicken-and-egg problem. But I think some strategic planning to target the most used information and make sure it's up to date would be beneficial.

To start with, I'd suggest that the Voidwatch and Dynamis pages be thoroughly updated. There's no shame in pulling information from BG, as long as it's cited properly.

Next, item page creation is a bit of an intimidating thing. There is a lot of information, and filling out the template takes time. Newer editors might be willing to update small details on a page, but not create one from scratch. So I'd specifically ask people to create pages for all the new and missing items, especially those that are related to Voidwatch.

Once that is done, hopefully people will find GE to be more inviting, and will be more inclined to return, and more inclined to contribute. The word also needs to get out that GE is the best wiki - but first we have to make that true.

The last thing I'd say, is take extra care to avoid technical glitches. The initial transition to GE was anything but smooth. I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but when users couldn't figure out how to log in, a lot of them probably wrote the site off. Every incident, no matter how small, that forces users to go elsewhere - even temporarily - is a costly mistake. Today's outage, unfortunately, is probably not an exception.