Miraheze is Not Shutting Down
Hi all.
Let me start with the important news: Miraheze will not be shutting down. The community has pulled together in our time of crisis, and come up with a rescue plan, which I will explain in more detail later on. But you need to know that there is no immediate risk of service shutdown, and no cause to leave immediately.
I know that this has been an exhausting time for all of you, especially those of you who run wikis. I know this because I felt it myself this week, as I grew increasingly worried about the survival of wiki communities that I and my friends rely on Miraheze to host. I depend on Miraheze, and I know you do too, and we let you down.
I was a major volunteer for Miraheze in the past. While I only recently renewed my involvement, I have been greatly impressed by the growth of the many communities served during the past three years under Miraheze Limited. So when things started to fall apart, and the board announced their intention to dissolve Miraheze, I knew that we had to take a chance to save the farm. For my own wikis, and for all of yours as well.
We are in the process of starting up a new non-profit corporation to assume the assets of Miraheze Limited, and to continue providing the service that you expect (hopefully with some improvements). We have put together a team of Miraheze veterans who will continue to run the site, and we're reaching out to the core volunteers who have left in recent weeks, because we're at our best when everyone is working together.
There will be plenty of time to look at where things went wrong before. Running a wiki farm with 6,774 wikis entirely off volunteer tech contributions is extremely challenging, and we lost focus on our primary reason for existing: building a platform for everyone to make ad-free, free of cost, community-controlled, highly extensible wikis. It’s a combination so important yet so hard to find elsewhere. And to keep moving forward, we need to find ways to reduce the stress on the volunteers that keep the site running, and we need to do a better job communicating with all of you who visit and run wikis on Miraheze.
The outgoing board has committed to keeping the site running while our new organization takes over. We already have enough volunteers and money to keep things running. So you should feel confident that your wiki on Miraheze will remain online for the foreseeable future.
We can save it. We will save it. There is a lot of work ahead of us, but I believe it is all achievable, and I believe it is important. So I hope you will join me here on Miraheze, and I hope your own wikis grow and prosper.
Brent Laabs
Labster (talk) 08:19, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
Additional Statement from Zppix
Hi all, I echo everything Labster has stated above. I wanted to officially put out there, that I am very happy to be working with Labster and some others to keep this project alive. Over the last 6 years, I’ve always stood firm that I would do whatever it takes to keep Miraheze running, and that still holds true today. I’m excited for the future, and all that it entails. If you ever have questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments section below, and they will be answered as best as we can.
Devin
Zppix (Meta | talk to me) 21:06, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
Comments
This page has been protected due to vandalism, and high traffic, non-(auto)confirmed users may leave comments on the talk page. Zppix (Meta | talk to me) 21:30, 15 July 2023 (UTC)
I Help Wikipedia all the year by a small contribution, I have a wiki here, and I appreciate Miraheze, I can Help Miraheze, also, no problem, it's normal in the same time Zazoult (talk) 12:44, 13 August 2023 (UTC)zazoult
@Labster: This is indeed welcome news for a lot of people who run their wikis on Miraheze. Your energy and keenness to drive things forward in a new direction is altruistic, and what everyone wants to see right now: an active presence that focusses on the future and not the abandonment of something that has the potential be turned around. It's going to be a lot of work so I salute your efforts. I am also impressed by those answering the call for help to keep everything running. Hopefully, with a broad range of skillsets from those that will take on their new responsibilities, Miraheze will be on its first step to becoming a better service, and improving on its previous failings, which it MUST do to thrive. There are people out there in the community, myself included, that have been with Miraheze for a long time and wish they could help out but don't have the necessary tech-related skills. This is one of the reasons why I am not very active on Meta. But my absence there does not mean I don't have a passion for Miraheze. After all, this has been the home of my largest wiki for seven years, and I would like it to remain so for as long as possible. Thanks to everyone in this endeavour. Borderman (Talk) 10:44, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
- Do we have any specific ideas/plans as to who will take over as SRE/steward? Is the Board/incorporation still going to be dissolved, or will we be appointing/nominating new members? Is Trust and Safety going to remain a separate division, or will that be disbanded (it's effectively obsolete right now with no team members). – AmandaCath (talk) 14:54, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
- You're asking for answers far too early in the process. As yet, Labster has not yet formally accepted my offer to become a volunteer, let alone started giving jobs to anyone. As for Trust and Safety, the work still needs to be done whether it is done by a separate group or a part of another group. --Robkelk (talk) 15:20, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
@Robkelk: can you clarify what you were trying to say, I can’t quite understand what you are attempting to say.Zppix (Meta | talk to me) 15:46, 18 June 2023 (UTC) Disregard: See my reply below.- I believe it's quite clear what Robkelk is saying, and it's very similar to what RhinosF1 says below, which is that we don't yet know what the U.S. corporate structure will look like, a corporation has yet to be established, and an agreement on the transfer of assets yet to be realized, so it's far too early to both (a) determining what the organizational structure will look like in terms of potential volunteer opportunities let alone (b) start reviewing and accepting applications for said structures. Dmehus (talk) 15:54, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
- I just read it again, it makes sense, I was reading it wrong. Zppix (Meta | talk to me) 16:00, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
- I believe it's quite clear what Robkelk is saying, and it's very similar to what RhinosF1 says below, which is that we don't yet know what the U.S. corporate structure will look like, a corporation has yet to be established, and an agreement on the transfer of assets yet to be realized, so it's far too early to both (a) determining what the organizational structure will look like in terms of potential volunteer opportunities let alone (b) start reviewing and accepting applications for said structures. Dmehus (talk) 15:54, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
- In order, the exact internal structure and roles is yet to be defined. A lot of feedback has been taken in to see what might be best. Miraheze as a UK Limited company will cease. We still need a T&S function but what that looks like is going to depend on the internal structure. ~ RhinosF1 - (chat)· acc· c - (on) 15:42, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
- You're asking for answers far too early in the process. As yet, Labster has not yet formally accepted my offer to become a volunteer, let alone started giving jobs to anyone. As for Trust and Safety, the work still needs to be done whether it is done by a separate group or a part of another group. --Robkelk (talk) 15:20, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
This is extremely relieving to hear. I haven't talked much within Miraheze circles about this situation (nor am I very active in Miraheze circles anyway) but this clears a huge amount of anxiety I have been feeling in the past few months for Miraheze's continued existence. I will admit that I have some reservations on how the new team and organization will operate, but as Borderman mentioned, the energy is much more assuring than my own doubts. Wishing both you Labster and everyone who joins the new team success with this! This is a monumental task and I have hope that it will all end up well. -- Startacker! (talk) 22:37, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
- @Labster: Yeah, the past 2 weeks definitely put a lot of contributors, including me, into a panic and did cause confusion for many. I am definitely planning to stay on this platform, as it has been my place to stay for the past 3 years, and I ain't giving up this place all because of some problems that occurred here recently. --DarkMatterMan4500 (talk) (contribs) 00:04, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
- #SaveMiraheze - Yeah thanks to @Labster: MissKoehler49 (talk) 15:11, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
We have a chance to rebuild our image after Qualitipedia nearly destroyed it with their insanity, extreme political flipflopping, and a reputation so bad even the guy who started them grew to hate them, voted in favor of closing and disowned them when he dumped his own user name and said even he no longer relied on them for game collecting. Coffee Lover (talk) 14:32, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
I believe in all of you. I can argue that Miraheze is the last good wiki farm. Fandom and the like honestly infuriate me with the constant advertising, unusable GUI's, and heavily modified MediaWiki (which, mind you, isn't open-source, so I have to empirically figure things out about it which I shouldn't have to do). I prefer, by far, the good old vanilla MediaWiki Miraheze uses, which lead me to create more than one wiki on this website. Thank you for this, if you do close; I sincerely hope that Miraheze lives on, though. -- Fowl (talk) 17:36, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
Oh, please, I just want to keep my own testing wiki on Miraheze to learn anything advanced because, for me, Miraheze has better decorations and is easy to use. In my alternative, I can make archives or whatever I want to keep my files from 2020 while being harassed in Qualitipedia. Vanilla Miraheze seems to be better for most of the users. Because I have a lot of development work to do in my testing Roblox game, I am not active on Miraheze. We would like to see if people want to move their wiki into Miraheze for better navigation. Best wishes! -- TriNguyen12348 (talk) 4:21, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
Whoa, whoa. I just found out about this news. Miraheze should, and must stay on running. As someone from Asia (Indonesia), there's a lot of us in here who use Miraheze here. Had Miraheze been closed down due to the turmoil in late 2022 and early 2023, we would have lost the last good wiki farm out there on the Internet, as Fandom is mobile device-unfriendly. Also there are several Japanese, Korean and Chinese wikis that can be lost as a result of Miraheze operations being winded down. Hopefully, Miraheze could stay alive in the near future. SMB99thx! 15:02, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
Support and love~ Lemme know if ever you need donations, I guess I can help a little. XComhghall (talk) 04:11, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
FAQ
Please only edit this section if you are 100% sure of the answer and have checked it with either Void, Labster, Zppix or Owen to ensure accurate communication.
- Will Miraheze still be incorporated?
- Yes. A new organization is incorporated in Illinois, file number: 74146392, the process that is needed to completely get the organization ready to be able to transfer Miraheze over is still on-going. However, the first main step of incorporating the new organization is done. We will update the community as a whole as things progress. Zppix (Meta | talk to me) 18:52, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
- Hi @Zppix ! It is great that USA is an option, but I wonder because of positive legislature, policies and potential subsidies in European Union if additional (virtual) registration in EU (specifically in Estonia) would not be also useful to create more opportunities for distributed and coordinated federated organizations? -- ZBlace (talk) 10:01, 12 August 2023 (UTC)