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are you hinting as the possibility of expansion to 3rd party franchises, or maybe something else is planned?

That's a possibility, yes. NIWA's future direction is currently being discussed, but the discussion has only just begun so there is nothing definite yet.

One of the possibilities being discussed would be to lend a hand establishing other wiki alliances that NIWA would then ally with to provide wider coverage. The proposed "SEIWA" (for Square Enix-related wikis) is a key example of this. That one doesn't have to be the first, of course; if someone wanted to establish a wiki alliance for Microsoft or whatever the staff would certainly be looking for ways for the two to help each other out despite the companies themselves being bitter rivals.

In the shorter term there are certainly some first-party Nintendo franchises remaining that NIWA doesn't have member wikis for yet, and those gaps will hopefully be filled this year.

Which downsides would those be?

I was specifically referring to "hard" redirects, in case that wasn't clear; as well as the reasons mentioned above there's the added hassle of maintaining the redirects. The normal "redirected from" links don't appear across wikis, so you need to approach the page in an indirect manner in order to edit it.

Redirects (soft or not) are advantageous if you're wanting an external page to appear in a local category, but other than that one instance the only actual difference is whether you have to type a couple of extra characters when first adding a link on a page.

Links to other wikis should be handled through interwiki links (either directly or as templates), not redirects. Wikipedia avoids interwiki redirects because the significant downsides outweigh the very minor benefits.

What we need is a SEIWA, a CIWA, a RIWA, and a SIWA (Square Enix, Capcom, Rare, and Sony).

A key prerequisite is finding motivated fans to run them and make them just as lively as NIWA. The SEIWA idea came about specifically because there are people interested in doing this very thing.

You're all wrong. The correct answer is Freshly-Picked: Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland.

I'd suggest that embedded templates and images should be protected on a case-by-case basis (starting with anon protection, which weeds out the lazier vandals, and moving up if needed). Any pages for news or whatever that are meant to be updated by the community as a whole (rather than just the staff) should be protected against registered users as a last resort (possibly only temporarily if possible).

This is useful information either way, of course, and you may wish to forward it to the staff of these wikis to see whether they wish to do anything about it. If nothing else it will give them an idea of where to be watching for future vandalism to occur.

As someone who has only recently found out about the seeecret forums (I didn't realise I could see them ) I must point out that they really aren't as elite and exciting as some of you are imagining.

A large part of it is comprised of suggestions (like this thread, but not organised all in one place). Many of the ideas going on there have been discussed in the public boards already (a general Nintendo wiki, SEIWA, etc.) and then simply become more clearly defined in private before the big public reveal of the final product. NintendoWiki is a prime example of this; it was first set up in May, but those months of secret development meant that it was able to launch in a detailed and impressive state.

Holding the wiki membership discussions privately has its advantages as well. Not every proposed member will actually end up joining (for a variety of reasons), so this way people don't get their hopes up about something that might not happen. There's also the added fun of guessing which wiki might be revealed next.

A NIWA Copyleft license, of our own design and terms more fitting of what we do than the current generic licenses

What would the benefit of such a license be?

Bear in mind you'd be weighing any benefits against the significant downside of not being able to import CC-by-SA material.

Any wiki with advertising should be breaking even at the bare minimum (unless they are doing something wrong) and will most likely be making a modest profit; as hardware demands increase the higher viewer numbers will inevitably provide the advertising dollars to pay for it.

A wiki that relies on donations will only be as stable as its user base is generous, however, and as the wiki grows in popularity the level of generosity required to cover day-to-day operation (let alone funding upgrades) will increase dramatically.

Even though profitability shouldn't be the primary goal, ending up with a profit after covering the day-to-day running costs is very advantageous as it opens up all sorts of possibilities; saving for a future server upgrade is a common choice here. In the case of StrategyWiki it has helped to fund the new skin as well as the "Bounties" gift voucher experiment.

StrategyWiki is going to be updated with a new, sleeker skin which has no sidebar or toolbox in the traditional sense, so linking to other wikis in that way isn't going to be an option. While not everything is definite at the moment I expect that we will be continuing to use interwiki boxes for this purpose as well as the usual in-line links to characters and so forth as appropriate.

Each of the wikis is already linked to from the box on the main page; Prod plans on establishing individual contact with the wikis to make each arrangement feel personal, just like the pre-NIWA ones. It will also help identify how we can best link to each other and what special templates might be needed to make linking easier (like the existing Bulbapedia ones for moves and Pokémon names, which simplify Bulbapedia's naming structure). Prod might be able to explain things more if you can manage to catch him between intensive sessions of tweaking the new skin and whatever else he's doing to make this update a reality, but that's the gist of it.