Editing 2018 Death and Resurrection of the Soundboard Prank Calls Wiki (section)

==29/30 October 2018 update==
[[User:SoundboardWikiAdmin|SoundboardWikiAdmin]] received an e-mail response to an inquiry made to the Wikia Community Support department.  SoundboardWikiAdmin sent the inquiry at Sunday 28 October 2018 02:14:51 UTC, and a representative from the Wikia Community Support department replied at Monday 29 October 2018 23:42:15 UTC.  The subject line of the e-mail thread was: "Questions and assistance regarding the closing of the Soundboard Prank Calls Wiki".  The name of the representative who replied to SoundboardWikiAdmin's inquiry is redacted here.

===SoundboardWikiAdmin's message to Wikia Community Support===
Dear Wikia Community Support Team,

I am writing to seek your assistance in regards to the closed Wikia site, [http://soundboardprankcalls.wikia.com http://soundboardprankcalls.wikia.com] -- the Soundboard Prank Calls Wiki.  Although I am not affiliated with whomever was the owner / administrator of that Wikia site, I am a member of the public who valued that site as an important and lawful public informational service and resource to society, and I was quite appalled when I recently observed that the site is discontinued, as I know that many of the site's now-former readers and users are or will be.  Given this situation, I have taken it upon myself to resurrect the Soundboard Prank Calls Wiki as best as I could at a new website that I have created, [http://www.soundboard.wiki http://www.soundboard.wiki].  I have used the XML "dump" files of the closed Wiki site that are now available at the residual post-closing webpage at [http://soundboardprankcalls.wikia.com http://soundboardprankcalls.wikia.com], in order to migrate all of the articles and edit-histories of the Soundboard Prank Calls Wiki.  However, the XML "dump" files that are available for download from Wikia do not appear to include the images and media files that were on the former Wikia site, and I have not seemed to be able to locate any information in Wikia's help documentation on whether or how images / media files can be retrieved from a closed Wikia site the same way that the article contents and edit histories can.  Currently, if you visit my new [http://www.soundboard.wiki http://www.soundboard.wiki] site at this time, you will observe that only the article contents and the edit histories are present, yet all of the images and media files are missing.

I am reaching out to you to ask the following questions:

1)  Is there any way that your department / Wikia could please provide me with all of the images and media files of the former Soundboard Prank Calls Wiki -- or make them available for download in some manner -- so that I could migrate them to my new site?  I feel that it will be a significant relief to everyone who would like the Soundboard Prank Calls Wiki to continue, if the former site's images are still extant and can be recovered and migrated to the new site in order to fully recover the encyclopaedic content.  Otherwise, if the images and media files have really been lost to oblivion, then the Wiki will only be able to continue with what was available from the XML dumps provided by Wikia, and new/replacement images and media files would perhaps need to be sought by the community over time.

2)  I am wondering if you could please explain the reason for the Wikia site having been taken down?  Was this a decision by Wikia staff such as due to deeming that there was some kind of policy violation, or was the site discontinued by its owning user himself/herself?  Can you say whether the owning user of the Wikia site had any notice and/or opportunity to be heard prior to the decision being made to terminate the site?  I feel that these details would be helpful to communicate to members of the public who are wondering what happened to the Wikia site, perhaps such as with an explanatory article on my new Wiki site.

I really appreciate any assistance that your department can kindly provide regarding this matter.  I am really hoping that those images and media files can be recovered and put back into production, and that the community can ascertain the reason for the Wikia site having been closed down.

Sincerely,

"SoundboardWikiAdmin"

(The administrator of the new Soundboard.Wiki site)

===Reply from Wikia Community Support to SoundboardWikiAdmin===
Hello,

Thank you for reaching out. We closed the wiki due to our assessment that it was promoting/celebrating criminal activity, though I recognize there is a good amount of nuance not captured with that statement.

I have reopened the wiki temporarily so that you can access the files.
You may wish to refer to this article:
[https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Exporting_all_the_files_of_a_wiki https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Exporting_all_the_files_of_a_wiki]

Please note that Fandom cannot offer any assistance in downloading the files aside from perhaps answering questions you may have.

The admin of the wiki, User:Officeredpowell contacted us shortly after the closure. He was thinking of setting up another one as well. I will follow up with him and make him aware of your site.

The assessment was triggered by some complaints we had received. Most recently someone related to this article contacted us:
[http://soundboardprankcalls.wikia.com/wiki/DatBoys_Data_Recovery http://soundboardprankcalls.wikia.com/wiki/DatBoys_Data_Recovery]

I wanted to let you know about this since it might be a good idea to remove that article from your site -- had we left the wiki open, Fandom might have done that.

The Fandom wiki will be closed again on November 13. Let me know if you need more time or if you have any other questions.

Best regards,

(Redacted)

Senior Director, Community Support

Looking for additional assistance?
Check out our help pages at [http://community.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Contents http://community.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Contents]