Statement regarding relationship with Block & Quill Ltd
Association of Polish Minecraft Wiki (REGON No.: 540656120), in pursuit of the objectives of activities referred to in §12 items 5-6 and 11 and 12(j) of its Rules of Procedure, as of January 18, 2025, publishes this Statement on Block & Quill Ltd.
Just over a week ago, on January 10, 2025, Polish Minecraft Wiki was officially moved to the new platform, available at minewiki.pl. Thus, as the first and so far only non-english Minecraft Wiki, it has not joined the network managed by Block & Quill Ltd nor hosted by Weird Gloop Ltd and Weird Gloop USA Inc. However, this does not mean that Polish Minecraft Wiki does not want to be a part of the International Minecraft Wiki Project.
Unfortunately, in spite of deceptive assurances, Block & Quill Ltd has decided to prevent other language Minecraft Wikis from setting up interlanguage links to Polish Minecraft Wiki (so-called interwiki prefixes). Block & Quill Ltd further assured us, over the past months, that in addition to language links, Polish Minecraft Wiki would also receive a redirect from the pl.minecraft.wiki domain. After communicating that we intend to move to our own platform in late 2024 and early 2025, contact with Block & Quill Ltd became difficult, and on December 29, 2024, we were informed that Block & Quill Ltd was breaking the agreement that had been worked out and did not intend to establish a relationship with Polish Minecraft Wiki. This was argued for trivial reasons, such as Block & Quill Ltd's alleged uncertainty about our ability to use the “Minecraft” in the name of Association of Polish Minecraft Wiki, due to the fact that it is a registered trademark by Microsoft. However, these issues were not real obstacles to the agreement, as the Association could change its name if necessary, as we suggested. At the same time, independently, we believe that the association's name meets the rules of permitted use of the “Minecraft” trademark. It would seem that Block & Quill Ltd was merely creating pretexts to end partnership with Polish Minecraft Wiki. In addition, we were pressured not to take a legal path against the entity that has been hosting Polish Minecraft Wiki so far, as well as the other Minecraft Wikis currently managed by Block & Quill Ltd a year and a half ago. We would like to point out that this issue was only in the planning stage, and if the abandonment of legal action was a requirement for partnership with Block & Quill Ltd, the Association of Polish Minecraft Wiki would agree to this condition.
Due to the circumstances described above, we decided not to delay any longer and make the migration as soon as possible. Officially Minecraft Wiki Poland has been operating since January 10, 2025 on its own platform called minewiki.pl. A few hours after the migration was announced, a situation occurred to prevent Polish Minecraft Wiki from effectively reaching its audience with the information about the move to the new platform. This was later explained by alleged concerns about violating the privacy of visitors to Polish Minecraft Wiki, due to the use of a script from outside the server of the existing hosting provider. It should be noted here, that the script in question was uploaded with the permission of the hosting provider and after prior verification, and that its use did not serve any prohibited purposes, but only allowed to adjust the content of the message based on basic data about the language used, and enabled the collection of anonymized statistical data. It is also worth mentioning that the data was processed in accordance with user-approved privacy policy messages, which wikis managed by Block & Quill Ltd are devoid of, and also lack regionally translated data processing policies, with which Block & Quill Ltd may be in violation of GDPR.
As a result of Block & Quill Ltd's actions, Polish Minecraft Wiki has lost the ability to inform users on the old Wiki of the corresponding address of the new Wiki, and no longer has current information on the number of people viewing the old Wiki. At the same time, there have been baseless claims from Block & Quill Ltd, about alleged violations of the law by the Association of Polish Minecraft Wiki. At this point, We must mention that further reproduction by Block & Quill Ltd of information that is not supported by evidence, and that violates the good name of Polish Minecraft Wiki, will be met with a firm response from Us.
On the following day, January 11, 2025, our designated representative was stripped of his position as Interwiki Representative, thus preventing ongoing activity in multinational Wiki affairs and the realization of the Association's purpose as stated in Paragraph 12(7) of the Rules of Operation.
Due to the above situation, the Association of Polish Minecraft Wiki has severed its relationship with Block & Quill Ltd. However, for the sake and convenience of the users of Polish Minecraft Wiki, we will leave language links to articles in other language versions, including those that constitute Wikis managed by Block & Quill Ltd. Caring for the welfare of users of other local Wikis, we would expect a common agreement on language links to Polish Minecraft Wiki.
Finally, we would like to communicate that we still feel we are part of the International Minecraft Wiki community. However, we are not part of Block & Quill Ltd.
We believe that each local Wiki has the right to self-determination, which does not exclude in any way the creation of a community. At the same time, contrary to the narratives run by Block & Quill Ltd, self-hosting and managing a language Wiki is neither expensive nor very complicated. If any Wiki would be interested in considering following our path, we would be happy to provide all the support we can to make your path easier than ours.
signed: Board of the Association of Polish Minecraft Wiki