Infosphere talk:Community portal

This page could use some more links on it. Anywhere on the site where there's an external link, it could probably be copied here. And personal sites, any of the users could add.... Maybe I'll add that to the Welcome template... Buddy13 20:50, 11 August 2006 (PDT)

Content from Talk:Futurama Fan Forum

I respect the good faith of our contributors, but do we really need to have articles about fan sites? So far I do not recall we do. --Svip^Talk 13:22, 1 April 2008 (PDT)

Nope, It's what the Community Portal is for. Also, an article about that site, if we were to do those, really should have a link to the site. - Quolnok 19:25, 1 April 2008 (PDT)

So it's a delete for this article and instead a possible mention for it on the Community Portal. Which actually reminds me, the Community Portal is hardly a structured article on this wiki. I think we ought to do something about it. And if possible, tune down the position of "personal sites", cause given the amount of personal sites I posses, I would have half of all the links there (which is also some of the reason I haven't added any of mine). --Svip^Talk 22:53, 1 April 2008 (PDT)

To be honest I probably would have moved it straight to the community portal if I knew where the site was. The portal itself, there's vague rules there like "no competing wikis" and "no adult content". What is currently linked from there is acceptable to me, except possibly Aqua Teen World, I don't know what that show's even about. But that area should generally only link to things viewers might be interested in. Possibly protect that page and have non sysops suggest pages via it's talk. It does look a little weird though. We might consider placing image links in the lower part of side bar too (not for everything obviously), that kind of thing may help encourage linking to us. - Quolnok 01:00, 2 April 2008 (PDT)

Hey, it's a member from there site, i added a link to them. - Ps360 9:37 Pm April 2

Split boards from sites?

I suggest the message boards are split from the Futurama sites section. I've added some forums that are mixed Futurama/Simpsons for people that want a message board in a language other than english. Maybe alt.tv.futurama should be in the "other" section, but a Newsgroup is close enough to a forum. Leandro 16:00, 3 July 2008 (BST)

Futurama Sites

• All My Futurama: Something About Leela — (Russian) started as a Leela character site, now focuses on the series in general.
• The Brainspawn — Grey Thinky Whale's Fansite, dedicated to The Brainspawn. Includes a tour by Mr Brainley himself!
• Can't Get Enough Futurama — A popular Futurama site.
• The Central Bureacracy — soylentOrange's fansite
• Futurama Area — (German) general fansite focusing on multimedia. Has a very active forum.
• Futuramer — (Russian) general fansite.
• One and Only Bender — Bender character site.
• Planet Bongo Comics — a site covering summaries of Simpsons, Futurama and other Bongo comics.
• La Indoblable Página de Bender Bending Rodríguez — (Spanish) Alien Languages translations, and other sections.
• LE site Francophone sur Futurama — The largest Futurama site in French with frequent updates and a nice message board.

Message Boards

• alt.tv.futurama — Google Groups archive for the Futurama Newsgroup.
• Felizonia — (Spanish) Simpsons forum with an active Futurama section.
• Futurama Fan Forum — currently the second biggest Futurama Forum.
• Independent Simpsons and Futurama Forum — (Russian) very active forum, backed by several sites.
• PEEL (Planet Express Employee Lounge) — one of the largest Futurama message boards.

Merge

Hi, I'm Joeyaa from the Futurama Wikia,

I was looking at how nice the content is here and was wondering if you guys have ever considered merging with us at the Futurama Wiki. The wiki would retain all of its current information and content, as well as all the users would be transferred there with the same user group abilities, and you would gain the benefit of Wikia's servers. If you were to merge with us, this wiki would be stored on the Wikia servers and would no longer require any donations to keep it up, in addition to the fact that the server would be reliable. Wikia offers the skin Monaco, which would be the biggest change, but we at the Futurama Wiki have a customized skin that is pretty "sweet". All content from here would be directly moved to our wiki, and for the common pages we would just use whichever page was better constructed.

Having your wiki on Wikia would also bring an arsenal of staff members whom would allow for support of technical problems and for help, as well as the many Wikia helpers whose only goal is to help expand content. On Wikia, there are even several users who watch recent edits in realtime which would prevent any vandalism from happening and through the Wikia entertainment portal, many new users would come to the wiki which equates to further growth. The merge would be easily done by us from Wikia and wouldn't really be noticed by anyone from here, and this merge would really help expand us, whilst giving you the free technical abilities and even more users to help! I would love to hear some comments about this, so please write down any feedback and any questions you may have. Thanks! Joeyaa 20:49, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

This is certainly not the first time we have been asked by Wikia, dunno if you noticed the section when you edited Buddy's talk page; User talk:Buddy13#Working together. In addition to that, I have, personally, been asking the same question to the community.

Every time, however, we are worried about losing our quality. Not saying that moving to Wikia would lessen the quality of the wiki, but its overall appearance. I said it last time, that "Wikia are to wikis, what geocities are to websites". Harsh, but I somehow still think so.

One of my foremost issues is ads. I don't like ads, and neither would I like ads to appear on this wiki. I know that I won't see the ads, when logged in, but that is not my problem, cause I turn off ads with an adblocker. No, I am worried about our guests. Cause you have to remember that we produce this wiki as an information bank for people, not for ourselves - well, that too, but mostly for everyone else. And an add free, content focused wiki will give people a better impression.

Skin-wise, I do not like the Wikia skin, I know our current isn't exactly pretty, but we are currently working on one, which we personally think will be pretty sweet once released.

And of course, we fear that we will loose influence, we are not power hungry, we just like being in control of our wiki, we like to add extensions when we need them, and so forth.

So you may think, why have this even been brought up by ourselves, when we seem not to want Wikia at all. That is not true. There are several things that appeal to us with a partnership with Wikia:

1. High maintained and stable servers.
2. No cost from our side.
3. Eliminating competition.

The last one is certainly ideal, since it seems odd to remain competitors in such an otherwise narrow field.

Should we (and I think I speak for the rest of the gang when I say this) get involved into a partnership with Wikia, we want at least TWO condition fulfilled; no ads and we want our own Monobook-based skin. We are willing to compromise on the control factor. --Svip^Talk 21:30, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm about to sound like a dick, but I don't care: The Infosphere will never merge onto Wikia. A reverse merge would be fine, but we've got things pretty much perfect here. We have our own domain name, our own servers (yes, we've had issues, but I think things are better for now), and we have no restrictions, we don't answer to anyone. I think that's the way we likes it. We love the Futurama community, though, and welcome any new members, but I think any attempts to merge should move towards the infosphere (i.e., move from constraint into freedom). There's really no reason to move to Wikia. --Buddy 22:37, 8 March 2009 (UTC)