FANDOM closed the Netzdemo Wiki some days ago without any further notice. After filing a complaint to the FANDOM community, it was re-opened but is threatened to be closed again if traffic statistics of the wiki pages show little interest. Netzdemo Wiki existed on Wikia/FANDOM since August 2008 and is the biggest collection of information on net activism in German language. The most common reason for closing wikis seems to be inactivity. However, Netzdemo Wiki was not inactive, it was steadily growing over the years, but the user community was very small from the beginning and only very few were writing or editing wiki entries.

FANDOM (originally Wikicities, and later Wikia) was a new platform that built off the core technology powering Wikipedia. We experience the closure of Netzdemo Wiki as kind of commercially motivated censorship. FANDOM is very much centered on gaming and entertainment. In reality they focus not on the wikis but more on their costumers, who they calls „fans“, meaning gaming-addicted people. We speculate that FANDOM wanted to get rid of some wikis with critical content.

We create the Netzdemo Wiki again – this time on Wikidot. The layout is now in the WikiMedia style which more resembles the classical Wikipedia look. We continue with writing in German language. It will become the biggest German encyclopedia on net activism and history of online demonstrations. It will take some time to move the wiki pages to the new place – but it’s worth it. The wiki is open and anyone can become a member.

If you want to be part of this exciting work, please join the new Netzdemo Wiki at wikidot:

http://netzdemo.wikidot.com/start