Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-1294345-20130903120904/@comment-2142533-20130903150158

MisterDenisov wrote: 

People above have said that this is "Survivor Wiki," not "Survivor US Wiki." But that's the very issue: it is. "Survivor" is the US version. "Survivor Philippines" is the Filipino version. "Australian Survivor" is the Australian. "Expedition Robinson" is the Swedish. They are not "Survivor" full-stop.

They might not be all called Survivor in name, but they are Survivor all in essence. Castaways would be sent on a faraway place where they would be voted out one by one, where one player would be the Sole Survivor. Survivor is just the name used in US because it is the most internationally used version to air. Also, logically speaking, those versions ARE Survivor (OK, Expedition Robinson could be not counted as Survivor) as there IS Survivor in the name. They are just part of the Survivor Circle of Franchises run by Castaway Productions.

I personally think that the International versions should be housed in a separate wiki site. I would guess that 99% of the traffic coming through the site is only ever going to be for the flagship American version. It's the most known, the most popular and I believe, the only one aired all across the globe. It's been on air for fourteen years now. It has its own cast of characters, its own themes and ideas, its own mythos. It deserves its own site.

Do you have a statistic to back this up? I have known many PoSers (Previously on Survivor) that talk about other versions like the Israel version. I mean even Survivor Oz pointed about the Australian Survivor (and its possible return). And so what...do we just go for the many and not for what is valid for the wiki? I mean do people search for the personnel pages? I have no statistic for that, but I have a feeling that they are as seen as much as the international version pages. Should we remove them? No, because they are part of the Survivor franchise.

Also, other versions have their own "mythos", therefore each version should have a separate Wiki based on that reasoning right? We are trying to remove the bias of the American version on the Wiki, as there is more to Survivor than the US version. And making Wikis for each is just unnecessary when you could save space here in this Wiki IMO.

Now I don't object to cataloging the international versions, but I believe that shoehorning them into the main site is going to cause confusion to casual readers and muddle the existing structure (messy stats pages, plethora of redirects and disambiguations, etc). We've got duplicate tribe names. We've got twists and challenges that may appear in both the flagship US version and international versions that will either muddle the existing pages, or create a slew of 'duplicate' pages within the same wiki. Furthermore, we have to drastically expand our categorizing system, now having to specify which pages are US and which are International. We would try to separate stats of each version, as they are different. But they would be put in one page, just different sub-sections. Also, a big Wiki like Wikipedia had shown how to manage multiple named articles, by having the most "popular" article directing to that link, while having a sort of small note at the top about other uses for that name. Also, it wouldn't duplicated, because if a certain area of the game is the same, we would not make duplicates of it. On categorizing, people IMO rarely check much on categories. And even then, I am not sure what is the problem with more - yet correct - categories when it could help in searching. This is not to mention the impact to the main wiki over the course of this drastic redesign - the construction of the International coverage is going to be very slow going, particularly given how few dedicated editors are going to be familiar with the international versions. We'll have half-finished articles, dead-end links, messy formatting and inconsistent coverage for a LONG TIME. And considering how scarce a lot of the information is for the existing American content, the wiki could quickly go from a mostly reliable source to a mess of broken links and incomplete pages which will discredit the wiki's reliability. Practically, it makes more sense to locate the "website under construction" remotely. As for templates (as Zjzr mentioned), it's not that hard to copy the relevant templates into new templates on a new wiki. It is true that it not that hard to copy (although it would be long to do). I am sure it would take long to do it, but we are kind of halting right now in the project due to people still objecting it. There is always a stepping stone, and in this transition phase we would make sure to only link pages that are currently available if it came from US based pages. So in conclusion:

Keep the main wiki for the US flagship, put the international versions on their own wiki (say, "Survivor Wiki International"). There's nothing to stop us cross-referencing between the sites: for instance, including a link on a Twist page to the corresponding Twist page on the International Wiki. But at the end of the day, I think it will keep everything simpler to maintain, simpler to navigate and simpler to use if we keep them separate. Yes, it is not hard in cross referencing. I don't know how to say this clearly, but if you link it to another Wiki it would just be like linking to the same Wiki. So, putting it in a Wiki which has already a very solid structure is the way go IMO.