Guild Wars Wiki:Why Guild Wars Wiki?

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Why Guild Wars Wiki?

Why would ArenaNet offer to host a wiki? Why not just use GuildWiki?

 * ArenaNet thought the wiki was a fantastic resource for Guild Wars players. It's often more complete and useful than the documentation that ArenaNet generates internally. They wanted to be able to feature wiki documentation more prominently, on their web site and in their game. They were unable to do that with GuildWiki, for simple reasons like: the servers couldn't necessarily handle the load, the site featured ads selling gold for cash, the site cost Gravewit a lot of money to run and they didn't want to further burden him, and they couldn't rely on the site always being there.
 * They wished to develop wiki support integrated into the game as a built-in help system. They thought it would be fantastic if a player could select 'help' and then click on any quest, mission, skill, etc., and get complete documentation about that item in-game from the Guild Wars Wiki site.
 * There were a few clear problems they needed to solve for that vision to become a reality. First, the game's wiki documentation needed to be hosted on a site that could scale to handle the potentially huge volume and huge bandwidth that would come with game integration. Second, the game's wiki documentation needed to be hosted on a site that they could guarantee would always be available. Third, the game's wiki documentation needed to be hosted under a license that permited integration with the game. For all these reasons, they thought it made sense for ArenaNet to start providing free hosting for a wiki site on their servers, and to start working with the community to bring this vision to reality.

Was ArenaNet in contact with administrators of GuildWiki?

 * Yes. They had a series of productive discussions with Phil (Gravewit) and other administrators of GuildWiki in June and July 2006 when they first proposed to host the wiki. they learned a lot about GuildWiki, and Phil provided a lot of great advice about how they should host the wiki and how they could best support the community. After that series of discussions, they agreed that the next step was for ArenaNet to actually purchase servers and build out the infrastructure to support a wiki. At the time, ArenaNet's IT team was particularly busy getting ready for the launch of Guild Wars in China, so the wiki build-out took longer than they hoped, but in the end they got it done.

Is ArenaNet's hosted site any different than the existing GuildWiki site?

 * There are a few minor things that needed to be different in order to support their vision of using the public wiki as their primary source of documentation, and the long term vision of integrating wiki access into the game.
 * First, they needed to use the GNU Free Document License. GuildWiki uses a different license called Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike, which places some restrictions on how GuildWiki content can be used. Especially important is that the license GuildWiki uses precludes its content from being used for commercial purposes. This could be interpreted to preclude ArenaNet from hosting the site's content or integrating it into their games, since they are a commercial enterprise that makes money from selling games.
 * Second, they wished to host the content in an ad-free environment. Because ArenaNet opposes the sale of gold for cash, they couldn't be in the position of directing people to a web site that advertises the sale of gold for cash.
 * Third, they hosted the site on more powerful servers with more bandwidth, so that they could direct huge numbers of users to the site without overwhelming its hosting capacity.
 * These were important considerations but they're all behind-the-scenes type considerations. The fundamental structure, organization, and look and feel of an ArenaNet-hosted wiki site didn't need to be any different from what the community had already been generating with sites like GuildWiki. They thought the existing wiki site administrators and community had been doing a fantastic job. They did not ask anyone to change what they were doing, just offered to provide free hosting, and asked to use the Free Document License instead of the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

Did ArenaNet consider just purchasing GuildWiki from Phil (Gravewit)?

 * Technically, it was not possible for Phil to sell the content of GuildWiki. He didn't own it. The site contains articles written by hundreds of different people, and each author still holds the copyrights for the articles that he or she wrote. The Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license used by GuildWiki provided certain rights, but selling the content for profit is not a right that's provided by that license. So Phil didn't own the content and he was not allowed to make a profit by selling it.
 * Individual contributors still hold the copyrights to their articles and can license them however they wish. Anyone who wrote an article for GuildWiki can choose to also make that article available to another site under another license. That was a choice for contributors to make, but it was not a choice that Phil was legally allowed to make on their behalf.

Did ArenaNet consider leaving the content on Phil's site and just paying his hosting bills?

 * The content on GuildWiki uses the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, which prevented them from using it as a primary source of documentation for their games or building wiki integration into their games, regardless of whether Phil ran the site or ArenaNet did.

Did Phil earn a living from selling ads on his site, and did ArenaNet take that away from him by hosting a wiki with no ads?

 * When they talked with Phil, he told them that the ads on his site only helped to defray some of the costs of running the site, and that he still had to spend a lot of his own money to pay for server hosting and bandwidth. Phil was unfortunately in a position where hosting GuildWiki could never become a profitable business for him, because he was hosting it under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license that disallowed him from making a profit off the site's content. Phil had started building new wiki sites for other games using the Free Document License instead of the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, so it is possible that his new wikis may become profitable businesses for him. ArenaNet is very grateful to Phil for everything he has done for Guild Wars and wanted to keep his best interests in mind. They sincerely wish him success in his endeavors.

Couldn't ArenaNet 'fork' the GuildWiki site and use it as a basis for ArenaNet's hosted site?

 * They didn't have the right to do that, and Phil didn't have the right to do that. Only individual contributors had the right to upload the articles they'd written to a different site under a different license.


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