As i have only been using unreal engine for a couple of years, you’ve just took away my best resource. You should have at least gave warning, but you should maybe think about updating your c++ documentation because the only place you could receive help for code were these forums and they are gone
Thanks a bunch…
The online learning platforms has been useful, as has been the documentation, but always if there has been a specific topic covered by Wiki, they’ve been very helpful. Even if the information is no longer completely correct, a lot of it can still work, and it’s always faster to get up to speed from some reference rather than none. I just recently used the wiki’s Replay System Tutorial along with the engine’s own Replay System documentation to implement one myself. I had to also use some Youtube video with information on how to implement the async loading screen to make the transitions smooth.
The point being is that sometimes the source code is rather obtuse to read and to better understand what I’m working on I use whatever material I can. The academy videos are useful, the documentation is useful, Youtube content is useful. So is, or was, the wiki. I can fully understand the desire to get rid of it, it wasn’t the best in terms of functionality, many of the articles were outdated, and nobody could add any new content for quite some time. At the same time, I don’t think the needs the wiki covered are catered by other sources, except for the occasional blog post to someone’s personal website on how they implemented X. I never directly searched anything from the wiki, but as it turns out, using search engines led me to the wiki pages every now and then.
If you can at least offer a data dump I’d be happy. It’s not like it was being updated for ages anyway. Or at least manage some search engine redirects to content in the docs that closely matches what the wiki page had. I’m guessing this thread will get a lot of hits for few days.
I just finished most of my work on making an Unreal plugin that links to third party code, and it would literally have been impossible to make without the resources on this wiki. There is no where in the official documentation that had the information that I needed. I have links to the wiki in my plugin documentation to explain how things work. This is truly a major loss for the whole UE4 community.
Anyone have any backups of the Dedicated Server, or Advanced Plugin Wiki pages? If so Please share them.
this is a huge loss for the community - it’s really going to hurt the development of a lot of projects.
@ if Epic still has a copy of all the data, the least Epic could do for the community is to post a link to an archive somewhere (doesn’t need to be on Epic’s servers), so that the community can create a mirror of the wiki somewhere. Can you please comment on why that can/can’t be done?
For anyone else in the meantime:
https://web.archive.org/web/20191212230615/https://wiki.unrealengine.com/index.php?title=Special%3AAllPages
What complete insanity is this?..
We recognize that the Wiki has been a security risk for you during your development journey, just as much as the Unreal Docs have been lacking proper curation and technical writers that bring it anywhere near the level of minutia that was present in the Wiki. Luckily I can still pull cached pages for some very critical docs I needed from the wiki but until you can present something so well taken care of as the Wiki’s information then I do not see why this was not simply copied by hand on a safer platform for the sake of thousands of developers and more as time progresses past this point.
honestly this is an epic failure to the community.
Seems like Era of Sh*tCoding has began… Now I can keep calm and close half of my browser tabs. .)
But I don’t quite understand why it was necessary to throw the wheels out on the run… Why was it impossible to first transfer useful information, make soft redirects from wiki pages to new represented information, and only then drop off the wiki?
What f**ing sht is this ?? The wiki is the only saving grace of coding in UE4, especially since a lot of important information are never directly provided by Epic, and rarely even bother to.
i am disappointed in whoever is managing this whole mess.
UE4 documentation is very poor and not friendly you just break the main learning systhem.
Smart way would have been to make a duplication in official hub and AFTER close the wiki.
I hope they will make the wiki in read only state soon.
-----EDIT-----
Just really just look at your docs or videos there is hours of videos less intuitive than a 50 text lines wiki.
You should first duplicate every rama tuto cause currently there is no similar “stuff” in your docs.
there is no uml hierachy about engine construction etc…
Unpopular opinion, but this had to be done. The wiki was terribly outdated with inconsistent quality throughout. I feel like UE4 would benefit overall from Epic spending some of them Fortnite $$$ on hiring technical writers to fully document UE4 source and produce some quality wiki content, starting from scratch.
Please just at least put the wiki back up for at least a month so we can backup whatever content we need. For now some information is just completely lost.
That can’t possibly be the Truth, because the entire engine source code is available only across the barrier of providing an email address.
If there’s a security threat it is the fact that entire engine source code is free, not that some wiki taught the world how to do something that you can figure out yourself by studying the engine source code long enough.
The only motivation for taking down the wiki would be as the first of several steps toward making the engine closed-source and no longer a community-based engine.
**Why Are You Closing UE4 to the Public With This Action?**
**Do you really mean to send the impression to the entire world that you do not want people to use UE4 as THE definitive engine for small-business or single- gaming/tech projects?**
Because that is what this action of taking down the wiki points to, more than some imaginary security threat for an almost-public github engine where you can access the entire engine source code by simply providing an email address.
You Are Killing The Community
If you don’t reconsider this decision, UE4 will fade away as the engine of choice for small projects and university learning, is that really what you want?
You have to **want **to the downfall of UE4 as a public engine to make a decision like this.
Even if the security threat was real, you are effectively killing the community-based aspect of UE4 forever by doing this, so if that is not your goal, then I hope this message triggers a reconsideration of this decision.
The use of UE4 will inevitably fade away if you make such an airy claim about security + wiki. It makes the programming team in charge of maintaining the engine sound helpless against some illusory set of well-meaning hackers posting free information on the wiki.
I don’t think new developers will spend $15 to $70 USD to buy the source code of plugins on the marketplace to learn how to use the engine, they will simply turn elsewhere where free and coherent information about the gaming engine they are using is still available.
The company-generated documentation has always suffered the limitation that the people writing it are from the inside and lack the fresh perspective of a beginner/outsider that the wiki documentation provided.
Either you want a competitive edge over your own community members by taking down information that empowered them, or** you are closing the engine to the public in the near future.**
**The Best Community-Based Gaming Engine In The World**
I cannot believe a company filled with such intelligent people as you could not have surmounted a security threat if you really did want UE4 to remain as the best community-based engine in the world that I myself have defended and championed since its arrival to the public.
Why would you close UE4 to the public?
Do you know now many people's dreams you are shattering by having this as your only possible obvious trajectory?
If closing UE4 to the public is **not **your trajectory, then please reconsider removing the most coherent way for small developers to share knowledge with each other about how to develop the best games in the world to entertain everyone with in these unusal times.
Everyone is at home playing video games, more than ever, why remove people's capacity to express their creativty through the use of UE4 to make their own dreams come true?
I can absolutely see from a company perspective why you might not think this decision is a big one.
I hope everyone's feedback in this thread will help you to understand the situation from the perspective of a small developer using the best Community-Based gaming engine there has ever been.
Another will rise and take your place as the best Community-Based engine there has ever been, if you continue on this path.
Personally, I wish it was You and UE4, not anyone else. I don't want to learn another engine.
I wanted UE4, or even UE5 some day, to be known as the best Community-Based engine in the world, forever. You are effectively killing my own dream with your decision and the vaporous provided excuse for doing it. The vaporous excuse is almost more offensive than the action itself.
At least tell us the Truth about why you are doing this, as many super-intelligent people gave their heart and soul to your engine to make their dreams come true.
I do think we deserve the Truth about your trajectory for UE4, as we pour our lifeblood daily into UE4 to build Beautiful games for people to play.
♥
RamaI’ll miss you, Rama
I strongly support everyone here and Rama just explained exactly what all of us think in the best of ways. This action is wrong Epic! We’ve made so many things together for so LONG. We gave a LOT of our sweat and personal time into making this community as good as it can get. Don’t take all of this away like that. Don’t make 2020 even worse.
Amanda’s (or whoever is posting) excuse of taking down the wiki would be totally unacceptable, on any other business setting in the world, but somehow these folks are getting a free pass. Speaking of business, there are multitudes of developers and artists that have setup their entire routine based on the community nature of the engine.
“Oh but Epic owns the engine.”
Yes, but they do not own the wiki content, neither did they have any right to remove it. It’s not theirs.
And if they cared to be honest, they should have at least posted a date after which the engine returns to subscription mode. (Don’t hold your breath).
The wiki was there for the hundreds of common things that users found and will continue to find missing in your documentation. Some ambitious users will figure it out on their own, and then want to help document both for themselves in the future and others. They used to be able to do so. Now they can’t. And that’s the only difference you have just made.
Epic, you have done a lot of great things for your community and your own progress. This is not one of them. This engine is massive, and your documentation covers a lot of things, but you will never cover everything. You will never cover 100% of the common cases that new users need and google for. You will never satisfy your community with this plan. Your community is an ever-expanding asset that you could have leveraged to help maintain and share knowledge about your engine for you. Instead you’re trying to put a blindfold on all of us.
P.S. sure, some of the wiki was out of date. Would you believe that tends to happen when you lock it and prevent us from updating it for 2 years (ok fine, actually only 23 months)? Thanks for that as well.
100% agreed. I feel like the community went downhill since 2017.
I think the security they talk about isnt concern about what content is being put on the wiki. The mediawiki version being used was outdated, and hasn’t been updated as far as i could tell since before the wiki was made readonly. The probability is that being readonly was ok for the short term to prevent an exploit that could only be leveraged while logged in with write access (which they never got around to apply that update, as mentioned in the header at the top of every wiki page saying they were moving to newer software), and then at some point recently a critical vulnerability was revealed that could even be exploited on a readonly wiki. I’ve maintained many wikis before and encountered this very situation, your choices then are to upgrade mediawiki (usually a simple process, untar new files over old, run the upgrade script, adjust any themes where neccessary) or simply take the wiki down if you’re lazy.
I think in this instance they picked the “cheapest” option of “just shut it down” rather than divert someone’s day away from a project that more directly brings money to Epic. This order probably came from an executive higher up in Epic who did not understand the value of community content. A stupid move yes, but not one motivated by the wikis content, more its software and lack of love given to it over the years.
Found this 