A new Warhammer 40k wiki built by longtime Lexicanum editors went dark in under a month, and the volunteers behind it are out of a home again.
This one’s pretty rough, especially when you realize the people who got shut out wrote a huge chunk of the Warhammer 40k lore pages we’ve all been using for years. Some had been editing Lexicanum for five to 15 years, and their new site was supposed to bring the lore, Black Library novels, and upcoming video games together in one place.
The new site, warhammer40k.wiki.gg, went public on October 15. Then, on November 6, the staff announced it was shutting down. They say their host, wiki.gg, dropped support on November 5 after a dispute with Bell of Lost Souls, the company that owns Lexicanum. So yeah, the whole thing lasted about three weeks before getting shut down.
And there’s a bigger issue here than just one wiki going offline. Can volunteers take the lore they’ve spent years writing/recording and move it somewhere else? That’s something pretty much every fan project in the hobby should care about right now.
- warhammer40k.wiki.gg: The independent wiki closed November 6 after wiki.gg withdrew support, according to its staff.
- Lexicanum license: The editors say older article text was released under CC-BY-NC, which they argue gave them the right to fork it.
- Bell of Lost Souls: Larry Vela says BoLS reported the copied site to the host, but there was never a wiki.gg lawsuit.
Why These Editors Finally Left Lexicanum
From what the editors are saying, this wasn’t some overnight decision. They’d been frustrated for a while with slow loading times, outdated pages, a rough mobile experience, and restrictions that keep readers in certain countries from accessing the site. They also weren’t happy with how Lexicanum was being run and monetized. What they wanted was a more democratic way to make editorial decisions and a site that worked better overall. Those are their complaints, though, not findings from something like an independent audit of Lexicanum.
And they didn’t just throw a new wiki together over a weekend either. According to the team, they first contacted wiki.gg on June 9, got legal approval from the host on August 12, and had a private version running by September 11. They used standard MediaWiki tools to export existing Lexicanum content, and they’ve acknowledged that user pages were included in that export. They also say they didn’t use AI or access Lexicanum’s internal databases.
Now, you might not think much of those user pages at first, but that’s where things start getting messy with the license.
What’s Going On With Lexicanum’s Content License?
If you’ve ever contributed to a fan wiki, this is probably the part you’ll want to pay attention to. Lexicanum’s own General Disclaimer says its text is covered by Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC-BY-NC), unless the Terms of Service say otherwise. Basically, that license lets people copy and adapt the text as long as they credit the original authors and don’t sell it. And according to Creative Commons, once that license has been granted, it generally can’t be taken back. If somebody breaks the terms, they lose their own license, but everyone else’s stays in place.
Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Well, here’s where it gets complicated. Lexicanum’s current terms say article text in the main namespace doesn’t become CC-BY-NC until five calendar years after its most recent edit. User pages, talk pages, templates, and page histories aren’t covered at all. Those terms also prohibit scrapers and other automated bulk copying without written permission. The editors say the new terms took effect on October 18, three days after their wiki launched publicly. Their argument is that you can’t go back and put new restrictions on text that was already released under the old license, and so far, that question hasn’t been settled.
There’s another detail worth knowing, too. The disclaimer says contributors waive the NonCommercial restriction when Lexicanum itself uses their work. In other words, that restriction applies to everyone else, but not to Lexicanum.
Then the bans started, and the editors say Lexicanum began banning accounts connected to the new project around October 16. Within days, 12 of their most active contributors had been banned, including some who’d spent roughly 15 years on the site. Their user and talk pages were removed, too.
You can actually check the public block log to see which accounts got blocked, but it won’t tell you why they were banned.
Bell of Lost Souls Says There Was Never a Lawsuit
Of course, there’s another side to all this, and Bell of Lost Souls sees things pretty differently. BoLS bought Lexicanum back in 2014, announcing the purchase with praise for its contributors and promises to improve and expand the site. Larry Vela, the founder of BoLS, addressed the current dispute on Discord, and a Reddit user shared his statement on November 7.
According to Vela, the new wiki was a complete scraped copy of Lexicanum. He says BoLS reported it to the host and pointed out technical details, including the fact that user pages unrelated to Warhammer had been copied over. He says the host then took the wiki down “of their own accord.” And he’s very clear about one thing: “There is no ‘wiki.gg lawsuit’, and there never was.” Vela also says anyone can start their own wiki, and Lexicanum has never claimed to own Games Workshop’s IP.
Here’s the thing, though. Those two accounts don’t necessarily contradict each other. The editors say legal threats reached wiki.gg on October 21, while Vela says nobody ever filed a lawsuit. Both could be true. The editors have also admitted they weren’t included in every conversation between BoLS and the host, and their belief that wiki.gg backed out to avoid legal expenses hasn’t been confirmed. So, obviously, unless those letters become public or wiki.gg explains what happened, we don’t know exactly what led to the shutdown.
Final Thoughts on the Warhammer 40k Wiki Shutdown
So where does that leave everyone? Right now, it’s back on the editors to figure out their next move. They say they’re exploring other hosting options, but as of November 9, nothing has been confirmed, and the old address no longer loads. According to their numbers, the wiki attracted about 25,000 active users and 163,000 page views during its short run. They also had roughly 300 new articles, 500 uploaded files, and 20,000 edits. That’s a pretty decent showing for a site that was only public for three weeks.
The big question now is whether anyone actually puts that license dispute to the test. Because depending on how it shakes out, it could determine whether volunteers can take the lore they wrote to another site. We’ve already watched fan tools like Kill Team Battlekit get taken offline, and Wahapedia deals with that same risk all the time. If this wiki does come back somewhere else, it’s worth checking how the new site handles author credits and that five-year licensing rule for sure.
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What do you think of the Warhammer 40k wiki shutdown, and should volunteer editors be able to take their work with them?
