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| 1 | --- | |
| 2 | title: Why Wiki Forge | |
| 3 | tags: [About] | |
| 4 | --- | |
| 5 | | |
| 6 | Most fan wikis live on platforms paid for by advertising. That shapes everything: pages slowed down by ad scripts, video players nobody asked for, and a business that needs readers more than readers need it. Communities that want to leave find their content, their search traffic and their tools tied to the platform. | |
| 7 | | |
| 8 | Wiki Forge starts from the other end. | |
| 9 | | |
| 10 | ## What's different | |
| 11 | | |
| 12 | - **No ads, no tracking for profit, no paid tiers.** There is nothing to upsell and nothing in the way of the page. | |
| 13 | - **Fast.** Pages open quickly, on any connection. | |
| 14 | - **Components instead of templates.** Infoboxes, navboxes, stat tables and banners are **components**: a wiki writes its own in a small, readable language, with typed props, its own styles and examples, and an editor that completes as you type, checks for mistakes and previews the result on real pages. No tangle of template syntax and parser functions, and nothing a component does can break a page's security. See [[Writing components]]. | |
| 15 | - **Forge Markdown, not wikitext.** Articles are written in Forge Markdown: [Markdown](https://commonmark.org), which many people already know, plus what a wiki needs: links between pages, citations, components and emotes. See [[Writing articles]]. | |
| 16 | - **An editor that helps.** Completions for page titles, files, components and tags; problems pointed out as you type; and a live preview, so a new editor can contribute in minutes. | |
| 17 | - **Links that don't break.** Every page has a permanent id. Renaming a page never breaks the links to it. | |
| 18 | - **Communities own their work.** Text is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 and every wiki can be exported, so no community is locked in. Communities stay because they want to, not because they can't leave. | |
| 19 | - **Communities run themselves.** Each wiki has its own owner, admins and moderators, its own rules within the platform's, and its own look. See [[Editing and moderation]]. | |
| 20 | | |
| 21 | ## What it isn't | |
| 22 | | |
| 23 | Wiki Forge isn't trying to be a general website builder, a replacement for Wikipedia, or compatible with MediaWiki's wikitext and extensions. Keeping that list short keeps it focused. |