WiKirby is broked

[Toomai]

Sad Kirby is sad.

As of today, several of WiKirby's pages have been hit by a database error that renders them unrenderable, including Special:RecentChanges and Special:UserLogin.

The only person who has WiKirby server access, known as Adam, has been ridiculously xenophobic for several months and has not responded to any questions or concerns in a long time (despite having previously promised to give access to other, active, people). WiKirby's only chance at getting out of this ruined state is to get him to fix the problem and give someone else server access.

So, I'm rounding up the troops. I want everyone who cares about NIWA and WiKirby to send an e-mail to Adam via the EmailUser feature on Zelda Wiki (see his talkpage here) or the e-mail feature of the NIWA forums (see his user profile here). (If anyone knows of other ways to contact him, use those as well, and maybe post them here for others to use - but don't post his raw e-mail address or other such information here.) Tell him that you're from NIWA (specify a member wiki if you wish) and that you're disappointed that he's been ignoring his duties as a webmaster for a fellow NIWA wiki. Tell him that, at the absolute least, he should immediately give someone else server access so WiKirby can survive without him. Be polite and respectful, but make it very clear that his continuing absence and aloofness is not acceptable.

Spread this message across the rest of NIWA. We're not having a wiki fall apart because of one person's absence.

[DoctorPain99]

I have sent Adam a line and have told/will tell all of my friends from various Wikis to do so. Let me know if I can help in any other way.

[Moydow]

I added an announcement to the forum news banner, so hopefully that'll get more people involved. Also, apparently the wikirby.com domain expires on the 13th of August. That may be either a good thing, or a bad thing; good, if Adam gets a reminder to renew the domain, and it draws his attention to this, or bad, if he's forgotten about it completely and lets the domain expire. Hopefully the former occurs; as for the latter... well, let's not go there yet.

[DoctorPain99]

WiKirby is back up. What is the source the info that the domain name expires soon?

[Moydow]

GoDaddy whois lookup, enter the captcha and it'll load a list of details about the site and ownership. Currently still listed as expiring on the 13th, so either Adam is waiting until then to renew, or it wasn't him who fixed this.

[Toomai]

WiKirby is only slightly better right now; more pages work (including Special:Export) but it's not 100%. We don't know why.

[Vellidragon]

We don't know why.

In fact, we don't even know why it's better. Adam has yet to respond to me and I didn't hear about any responses from him to anyone else either.

Efforts have been made to export the pages while it's in a state that allows for doing so, and all the text content has been grabbed by now. All that's left is extracting the files. At least one person has a backup of the wiki skin as well, as far as I'm aware, so if Adam has forever disappeared, we could at least move the site to a different place to reduce the damage. Thanks everyone for the help with this!

[Vellidragon]

Apologies for the double post, but an update on this: Apparently, many pages are currently broken while using the wiki anonymously due to error pages being cached. If you come across such a page, please add  ?action=purge  at the end of the URL, confirm and click the "OK" button on the page that pops up; this should purge the cache for the page and make it visible again. There seems to be no way to do this for multiple pages as we still have no access to the server.

Adam has still been entirely unresponsive and we will need to keep trying to get a hold of him if we are going to prevent problems in the future (and wish to be able to do "fancy" stuff like actually updating the horribly outdated MediaWiki or installing the extensions that he has refused to cooperate on for at least the past two years). If we don't manage to reach him or he continues to refuse to share or transfer the server access despite admitting that he doesn't have the time to handle it by himself, the last resort is still a (clumsy) server move via the data that we exported from the site (which will likely pose problems as well if we cannot acquire the domain).

[Vellidragon]

Important update! Adam has forsaken WiKirby entirely and it's in the process of moving to a new host. We have acquired the domain

http://www.wikirby.us/

for it (where it will be appearing soon), presumably a temporary solution until we are able to pick up wikirby.com (which is expiring later today but won't be available for about 30 days). There's also a new Facebook page for WiKirby (https://www.facebook.com/wikirby) where updates will be posted.

Please prepare to switch to the new URL when it's working, especially in interlinking on member wikis. Thanks in advance!

[Seritinajii]

Congratulations!! Hope the new domain and server works well, and that the wikirby.com name works for you soon.

[Vellidragon]

Congratulations!! Hope the new domain and server works well, and that the wikirby.com name works for you soon.

Thanks! If major problems pop up, we have Moydow and other active and tech-savvy people on board now with access to the server, so we're actually able to do something about that now. (We also are finally using an updated MediaWiki version; fairly exciting!)

As a reminder, the URL still needs to be changed to wikirby.us in a few places. Dragon Quest Wiki, Bulbapedia and Wars Wiki have yet to update (Strategy Wiki as well, but they have been informed), as well as the NIWA Network hub. It would also be nice to get a NIWA News announcement about the URL change. (EDIT: Thanks, Moydow!)

[Adam]

Hi all, not read all of the posts above yet; I've only just become aware today. Don't know about the database errors, because right now the wiki is inaccessible since the domain name expired a few days ago as well! I've paid the renewal now, just waiting for it to come back up. I'm sorry to everyone about that. I dropped the ball. Assumed autorenewal would take care of it, but had forgotten to update my account with my new card details. D'oh!!

I'll be working hard to ensure that WiKirby is back online and error-free ASAP. Unfortunately people had been contacting me using my Hotmail email address, which I rerely/never use. I had given Vellidragon and a few others my personal address (which I check regularly) and urged them to contact me there in case of any issues. To be fair, Velli did do this on the 9th of August, but the email ended up in my spam folder! (apparently you've changed email accounts since we last spoke  )

Anyway, regardless of problems getting in touch with me on this occasion, please rest assured that I'm neither uncontactable nor "gone". Nor am I apathetic to WiKirby's survival. I have no plans to discontinue my financial commitment to the project and would never knowingly leave errors unfixed. I still maintain full daily backups of the entire database and filesystem (although obviously I can't store every day's backup indefinitely due to disk space limitations). I currently have the following backups available should any recovery/rollback become necessary:

wikirby_backup_2012-08-18.tar.gz
wikirby_backup_2012-09-18.tar.gz
wikirby_backup_2012-10-18.tar.gz
wikirby_backup_2012-11-18.tar.gz
wikirby_backup_2012-12-18.tar.gz
wikirby_backup_2013-01-12.tar.gz
wikirby_backup_2013-04-02.tar.gz
wikirby_backup_2013-05-01.tar.gz
wikirby_backup_2013-06-01.tar.gz
wikirby_backup_2013-07-01.tar.gz
wikirby_backup_2013-07-02.tar.gz
wikirby_backup_2013-08-02.tar.gz
wikirby_backup_2013-08-13.tar.gz
wikirby_backup_2013-08-15.tar.gz
wikirby_backup_2013-08-16.tar.gz
wikirby_backup_2013-08-17.tar.gz

I'll keep you all updated here with any progress/change.

[Justin]

Adam, at this point, I hardly see this as you being around. You allowed the site to be broken for over two weeks, and even allowed the domain to expire. It's become quite clear at this point that you are no longer capable of maintaining it, and I therefore stand by the decision of the others to remove it from your ownership. I'm sorry it came to this, but you refused to give out access to the server to anyone and then disappeared. "It's what Ax would've wanted" is no longer a valid excuse, because I'm pretty sure that Josh's intention was not to have his site maintained by one person who can't devote enough time to even know when the damn thing is broken.

If I'm a tad harsh, it's because these people are upset with you. Hell, you didn't even take the time to see that they had to make a new WiKirby with everything ported over! But frankly, you need to reconsider your actions. I find this lack of action to be rather off-putting. If you're going to be in charge of it, people should've at least been able to reach you.

[Vellidragon]

I'll be working hard to ensure that WiKirby is back online and error-free ASAP.

WiKirby is back online and free of the error of being outdated and inaccessible. It's found at wikirby.us now and is on Ringtailed Fox's server.

I had given Vellidragon and a few others my personal address (which I check regularly) and urged them to contact me there in case of any issues. To be fair, Velli did do this on the 9th of August, but the email ended up in my spam folder!

I recall using at least three different emails to contact you by. I can hardly have been the only one given the extent of the email campaign to reach you, and you also most certainly received personal messages, talk page messages and even messages on Facebook. If you are going to say you didn't see a single one of those or they all ended up in the "spam folder", then I'm sorry, but I find it difficult to believe that, not to mention that the problems with WiKirby were clearly visible just from visiting the website itself and would not even have required reading emails.

Anyway, regardless of problems getting in touch with me on this occasion, please rest assured that I'm neither uncontactable nor "gone". Nor am I apathetic to WiKirby's survival.

The situation over the past year or so has demonstrated otherwise. This is not a new issue. WiKirby's MediaWiki version was so outdated it was a wonder it was even still working and no extension, updating, etc. issues have ever been taken care of. Requests of that ilk have been downright ignored on a regular basis; I have been stuck with telling users of WiKirby that their server-related problems could not be handled because the only person with server access was impossible to reach. Downtimes, to my knowledge, have lasted up to three weeks in the past; that is not a sign of a healthy website or one that is checked on regularly by someone who has the time and motivation to put into keeping it alive.

I have no plans to discontinue my financial commitment to the project

I thank you for your financial commitment in the past, but the site has moved to Ringtail's server, so it is no longer needed at this point.

I'm sorry, but you have had enough chances to act responsibly, which you did not take. An entire email campaign was launched to get a hold of you - not only spanning this thread and the skype chat, but also some NIWA member wikis like SmashWiki - which you did not respond to (I still have not received a response to any email I sent and it appears to me you did not read any of them before posting this, and your apparently unknowingness that the site had even moved shows to me that you did not even bother to visit wikirby at all, even after renewing the domain, as the entire main page has been changed into a message stating just that). You have acknowledged in the past that you do not have time to take care of the server, yet you have consistently refused to share access to it with anyone to the point that the site had to be moved by exporting the pages as no one had any access to the server. NIWA staff as a whole has been aware of this for much longer; this entire situation has only been the inevitable climax of it all, and the wisest thing you can do (and which I humbly ask you to do) at this point is transfer ownership of the domain to Dillion (dkpat, who owns the .us domain) so we can point it to the new (updated and accessible to multiple tech people) site currently found at wikirby.us .

I, along with the rest of NIWA, thank you for your work on WiKirby while you were active (mainly while Axiomist was still alive), but I think it has become evident that the site needs to move on. You are free to continue contributing in whatever way you can, but the site's hosting duties are, at present, best left with someone else.

[dkpat]

Just a reply to give Adam easy access to my profile.

[Adam]

Look, I can understand how you guys must be feeling. You've made that very clear. Angry. Betrayed. Frustrated. Neglected. Disappointed. Resentful. And you have every right to feel that way. I won't make any excuses here, so please don't take any of the elaboration below as such. I plan to make a separate post later on (when I'm in a better frame of mind EDIT: posted here) because I feel that the community deserves to know the personal reasons behind what has happened over the previous 2.5 years.

And before I go on, to address the most important point here; yes of course I'll transfer the domain ownership and whatever else you guys may need from what I have. I've already contacted Dillion directly about that.



Maybe this was never as clear to anyone as I'd believed, but it was certainly 100% clear to Josh (Axiomist) even from the point when WiKirby was nothing but a twinkle in his eye; I was never going to have any kind of active presence as an editor on the wiki itself. From day one, my role was purely one of technical support and consultancy, on the basis that I considered Josh a good friend and wanted to help his project succeed in the long term. He understood that I had no interest in Kirby games, having never layed them, and would never be in a position to patrol edits or get involved in the community as such. Josh himself started from a similar position, although he cultivated an interest in the series and began to play and learn the games. The reason Josh founded WiKirby wasn't due to a passion for the games themselves. What he saw was a lack of any open, independant wiki for this series of games, and he wanted to create a place where that community could take root and grow.

Perhaps this is crass, but I'll say it anyway. When Josh died, I found myself suddenly and unexpectedly holding the "keys" to WiKirby. I thought deeply about what to do; but of course there was only one conclusion. Despite any obstacles, the wiki must stay online, and I was the only one there to take on the burden. Since that moment I've sunk at least $1500 of my own money into the site, paying the server bills and domain renewals, as well as large chunks of my time in previous years working on the server-side. I bought two new domains to try and combat the fact that we couldn't get control of the original .info domain name, redirecting them all to .com way in advance of the original domain expiring, to ensure there was no negative impact in terms of search engine referrals. I ensured that there was a full and comprehensive backup in placed in case we ever needed disaster recovery, and have maintained the infrastructure supporting that until today.

Yes, there were suggestions that others might consider taking over running WiKirby (either one or two, I don't recall exactly), and yes, I did reject tese offers at the time. I won't go into my reasons behind that, as to do so would require me to speak on Josh's behalf. You can ask me about that privately if you want, but please show some discretion. Suffice it to say, had the current setup been proposed to me, I would have gladly handed everything over without any reservations.

Josh and I had shared an uncertainty over how extensive and long-lasting a community a Kirby wiki could expect to attract. The nature of the games, IMO, is such that they appeal to younger plaers, and have less of a series continuity or story-based pull than other Nintendo franchises. That could make for a tough demographic out of which to build a strong, lasting community of wiki editors. After Josh was gone, I have to admit to having taken a somewhat fatalistic view of what I perceived as a lack of strong growth and an absence of regular, good-quality editors who kept up their activity. I had hoped that things would snowball by themselves, and my position solely as a custodian and platform-facilitator would be sufficient. But as time went on, that seemed not to be the case, and it became clear to me that in losing its community leader, a key component of Wikirby was now missing.

At this point I have to say, Vellidragon you (aside from me) are the only other reason that WiKirby still exists. I've expressed this to you via email before, but let me say publicly that your tenacity and enthusiasm as WiKirby's only day-to-day admin has been essential, and is truly appreciated. I know the position all too well, having served a short yet exhausing six-month stint as Zelda Wiki's only active staff member. Fortunately, others stepped in before I was completely overwhelmed and could no longer keep my head above water. So I, too, have felt the resentment towards and absentee owner; I can understand the difficulties of such a relationship from both sides.



So there you have my actions and intentions from my point of view. Make of that what you will, but as I said at the start there are no excuses contained there, and none should be inferred from what I wrote. Perhaps I wasn't the best person to take over running wiKirby in the long term, but at the critical point I was the ONLY person who could do so. I did all I could to keep WiKirby alive; it's alive today, so I feel that in that small way (at least) I succeeded. I hope Josh would understand.

All that remains for me to say is: I'm sorry. I apologies for my shortcomings and the ways in which I failed the community though what I wasn't able to offer. I hope, given time, that some of you can forgive me.

[Vellidragon]

At this point I have to say, Vellidragon you (aside from me) are the only other reason that WiKirby still exists. I've expressed this to you via email before, but let me say publicly that your tenacity and enthusiasm as WiKirby's only day-to-day admin has been essential, and is truly appreciated.

Thank you. I too have had an important position to fill when Josh died (that of a lead admin who deals with content rather than server issues), and I'm not sure how well I have been doing in that (I had hoped that more quality editors would stay around to help than has usually been the case so far, though that's not to say there haven't been any), but it's nice to know my efforts appreciated.

but at the critical point I was the ONLY person who could do so.

Well, there were other tech-savvy people around at the time who access could have been shared with to to help maintain it; but no reason to fret about that now.

I haven't read the other post yet, but I'm sorry as well for reacting harshly to this. The last weeks especially have been very, very frustrating and worrying in regards to WiKirby with all the uncertainties and difficulties, and I'm sure others involved can agree on that. I'm not one to remain angry for long though, and as long as you're willing to work with us here to ensure the site's future (which you apparently are), I see no reason to be sour right now. Thank you again for the work and money you did invest into the site; it has been much appreciated, even if the situation has not necessarily been ideal.

[Adam]

Hi all, update on the current status:

I've cancelled Josh's original hosting for WiKirby (with TMD Hosting). I have a full compressed zipped backup of the site from before it went down, which includes all files and the database itself, in case anything is needed (it's in my Dropbox, please PM me for the link if you'd like it). The filesize is around 600 MB.

I contacted Dillion and RingtailedFox by PM offering to transfer ownership of the .COM, .NET and .ORG domain names. All three of these are currently registered via Godaddy. They both gave me the same response; that neither of them uses GoDaddy or has an account. Someone will need to take responsibility for these; to give you an idea of the renewal costs, I just renewed two of them for GBP 22.00

If whoever is going to own these domain names could sign up for a (free) GoDaddy account, I'd be happy to transfer ownership. While it would be possible to transfer to another registrar, this seems to be a lenthy process and sounds anything but straightforward. In light of the fact that these domain names no longer point to a working site, I think it'd be best for WiKirby's sake to get them transferred and redirected ASAP (ideally I'd suggest you use the .COM as primary, to keep the current SEO status and avoid having to start again from zero!)

[dkpat]

It is of little issue to transfer the ownership to another registrar, and GoDaddy is fairly evil, therefore, neither one of us will use them.

[Adam]

It is of little issue to transfer the ownership to another registrar, and GoDaddy is fairly evil, therefore, neither one of us will use them.

That's fine, and you're quite within your rights to boycott services you don't agree with. However the fact remains that these domains no longer point anywhere, which is presumably reducing WiKirby's traffic...

If someone could just PM me to confirm that they'll accept ownership and give details for where they want it transferred to, I'll do it.