Extremely important information about our upcoming forum migration - 2

Continued from here:

https://vsbattles.com/vsbattles/4208849

This is information regarding that I, my friend, Fandom, and Community Hired are currently preparing the forum migration.

To do this Fandom has backed up our current VSBW, JBW, and FCOC forum threads, and sent them to a programmer who is converting them to the right format. After this is finished, Community Hired will install them into the new forum.

However, any posts made after this date will not be saved, and we all also need sufficient amounts of free time to organise the actual moving process, especially myself (who currently has to manage up to 14 hour daily work shifts).

As such, Fandom and CH suggested that we should lock the forums completely while this is going on, and strictly communicate via message wall threads.

However, I did not consider this a realistic option to maintain for possibly a few weeks, especially given that our members still need to unwind and get stress relief from the global crisis that we are all going through, so instead we simply put most wiki revision discussions on pause, and primarily allow commenting in the Fun & Games forum, the General forum (so our members can talk about what is happening in their favourite fictions), the rule-violation report thread (to notify the staff about troll attacks and similar), and an information thread regarding the moving process in our News and Announcements forum.

We have also locked the wiki itself for editing from non-staff members while this is going on, to not get overwhelmed with handling too many important tasks at once.

I and the official Fandom staff will create pop-up information messages regarding this for all logged in visitors to the wiki, but I need the rest of the staff to help out by continuously informing the other members about that we are taking a break from most other wiki revisions while the moving process is going on, while linking to this announcements thread, but that they are free to talk about non-serious issues in the Fun & Games and General forums in the meantime (with the knowledge that these will not be saved to the new forum), and that they should all follow and keep themselves updated via the official migration information thread. It is also very appreciated if they help out with calming people down if they get upset about it.

We also decided to keep the Versus forum open, so our members can have their regular fun, but all of you have to be aware of that none of the new threads or posts there will be backed up and migrated, or referenced in our profile pages.

After everything is finished, Community Hired and Fandom will collaborate to send out email invitations to all of our members who have been active for the last 2 years, have over 100 edits, and are not banned.

Help and cooperation would be extremely appreciated, and please take note that the partial lockdown will only be temporary until Fandom and Community Hired finish with their work.

The initial backup happened early on April 15, so nothing from that date will be exported, and we locked the regular wiki pages for non-staff members, and stopped most content revision discussions, from that point onward. The partial lockdown will continue be active until Community Hired has finished installing the backups from VS Battles, Joke Battles, and FCOC to the new forum, and we have verified that everything works properly.

After that has been finished, the invitation messages with login information to all members with confirmed email addresses will be sent out. If you still have not confirmed your email, you can get information how to do so by clicking here.

In any case, it is now time to start quickly wrapping up the content revision threads that you are already engaged in, and not start any new ones, unless they are extremely important or can be easily dealt with.

Important note:

All discussion posts made after April 14 will disappear in the new forum, so if there are any important content revisions that need to be referenced in the new forum, please back them up here:

https://archive.org/web/

The threads can be updated with later backups if more posts are made in them. Just use the "Save Page Now" function.

How much longer is it going to take? The move I mean.

I think he said the invites would be sent by early May.

Possibly quite a while. We finished with the initial conversion a few days ago, but I discovered some serious bugs today after it was installed in the new forum, so Fandom likely has to send Community Hired another backup of the forums with better information.

I have been assured by the Fandom staff that we will get enough time to finish this properly though, but the shutdown will now last a bit longer than we planned. My apologies to everybody for the delay, but it is extremely important that the new forum functions properly before we start to use it.

Damn, that's unfortunate. I can't wait any longer

The posting histories and user avatar images were assigned to the wrong accounts, which wasn't a problem with the backup from November last year, so that unfortunately has to be corrected.

Also, if somebody had edited a thread after whoever started it (for example by adding topics at the bottom), they replaced the original poster as the "owner" of the thread.

It's funny how the migration has been active for a few days but I haven't really seen anything change.

Yeah, don't expect it to go through too quickly. Patience is a virtue.

We are attempting to properly back up the forums for our 3 wikis to a new external location.

Antvasima said:

We are attempting to properly back up the forums for our 3 wikis to a new external location.

Click to expand...

Three?

Umm yes, old info at this point. VSBW, JBW and FCOC. And it's already written there in the OP.

Vs Battles Wiki, FCOC Battles Wiki and Joke Battles Wiki

Woops ninja'd

Since the 3 wikis will be in the same place, will the boards to battles be the same or will there be one to each wiki?

One for each wiki.

Just so you know, we really do appreciate how you are tackling the situation, Ant.

No problem. I am trying to help make sure that we get a proper forum to continue to talk in.

XDragnoir said:

Since the 3 wikis will be in the same place, will the boards to battles be the same or will there be one to each wiki?

Click to expand...

Yep, considering the forums are going to be like the Smogon one, I can see each wiki getting their own section, then their own subforums and so on.

Here is what it looks like. There are sections for Joke Battles and FCOC further down the first page.

Just as I was going to ask this question.

Was curious if it was going to be like Spacebattles Forum look or Narutoforums, something like that.

Also, is there any idea when they'll start handing out the email invitations or is that going to happen soon? We're right around in late April at this point so was also curious about this.

Looks awesome cant wait are there also gonna be profile revisons

How is the forum move going in general, is everything transferring properly?

@Qliphoth

I think that it will look and function rather similar to the Narutoforums.

The email invitations will take a while, given that we likely have to get, convert, and install another backup first, as I mentioned above.

Are there also gonna be bew character profiles on the wiki

@Mitch

Converting and installing worked fine in themselves. The problem seems to be that the backup files that we received from Fandom contained too limited information, so the head programmer is talking with a Fandom staff member about it, so we get sufficient information in the backup archives.

@Pan

Eventually, yes.

@Antvasima

Ok, thanks for the info, delays are innevitable when you're moving such a large section of data, I only hope everyone manages to move to the new thread without issue, it'd be a shame if we lost some users in the move

Will the lockdown continue into May? and if so, how long do you estimate it will take? It's fine if you can't answer this and it is overall uncertain

Antvasima said:

@Pan

Eventually, yes.

Click to expand...

Cool i would love to add a new character to the new wiki if you approve it ofcourse but are there also gonna be profile revisons

@Antvasima: Got'cha. Good to know.

@Mitch

I do not know, but would be very surprised if we manage to finish setting up everything in the new forum before May.

K, thanks once again

No problem.

When will be able to make edits on here again?

Since the character pages are locked to staff only.

Once the forum has been fully migrated.

Yes, and given the delay that I explained above, it might take a while.

However, if the intended edits are important enough, I can give a regular member temporary editing rights.

Following, seem like it's so long to done

Antvasima said:

Yes, and given the delay that I explained above, it might take a while.
However, if the intended edits are important enough, I can give a regular member temporary editing rights.

Click to expand...

Yeah guys I can confirm that Ant is very responsive when it comes to this, if there is a character or verse page that NEEDS editing and there is a logical case as for why, he will give you temporary staff-rights to do so, then rescind them once you let him know you're done!

Can confirm because he did so for me! Thanks Ant, I appreciated that.

No problem. It has to be genuinely important though, and it has to be experienced members.

Can't we instead create a single thread where all can tell about stuff they would like to be edited instead of temp. rights? I mean, wouldn't it be easier?

We cannot have a single thread for discussing every ongoing revision, but various members have posted simple requests to the staff in the usual wiki management threads.

By the way, what, if anything, should we use as an introduction text at the top of the new forum?

If I remember correctly, a Community Hired member currently inserted:

"The purpose of this forum is to discuss the statistics of characters from a wide variety of different fictional franchises."

Would this be appropriate, or should we change or remove the text?