I concur with Biwako and Gergoran that the current wikifits have a lot of, uh, junk in them. I'm personally of the opinion that there is value in having curated fits on the wiki, and do lament that they are going away entirely. But to respond to OP directly:
Arin Mara wrote:EVE University is refocusing their efforts on teaching players how to create a ship fitting to meet their needs, rather than providing fittings that are often used as-is, without communicating an understanding for why the fitting was created in that manner.
As a result, The UniWiki will soon be removing its repository of ship fittings. They will be replaced with a renewed focus on ship-specific roles and bonuses, as well as links to broader articles on how to fit ships for those roles and bonuses. UniWiki will also provide links to other websites (e.g. zKillboard, EveWorkbench) and articles on how to find suitable fits on those websites.
This notice is to provide you the opportunity to save your favorite fits. There is no set date for the Fittings removal, but it will likely occur within the first week of August, 2020. The process to remove fittings will be accomplished automatically, and does not require assistance or editing by wiki contributors. Thank you -- EVE University / UniWiki Management
That's the message that greeted me. I wasn't aware that the Fittings would be deleted from the Wiki.
While this was admittedly kinda buried under other topics, it was announced in the beginning of this month by Laura in the
EVE University Management Restructure thread, accessible to uni members and alumni.
Laura Karpinski wrote:Repurposing Fittings department
We will be closing the Fittings department and removing public fits from the wiki. For a long time we have tried to offer public fittings on the wiki for every ship in EVE. This is a massive undertaking, since module name changes and rebalances, as well as the in game meta, mean that fits need to be updated on a very regular basis, more regular than we can manage.
The most common complaint about the wiki by far is that the ship fittings are out of date. It often gives the misleading impression that the rest of the wiki is out of date as well. So we have decided that instead of trying to provide fits ourselves we will direct people to other, more reliable, sources of fits, like zkillboard.
I don't necessarily agree with the decision, but the facts ring true. We still have 2013-era battleship fits that stain the wiki, and other odd fits here and there.
Arin Mara wrote:Is there any interest in saving the Wiki Fittings?
Privately, I've been, uh, rather passionate with regards to the wiki fits. It's something I'd like to keep, personally, but it's not my decision to make, either. The point on teaching people how to fish rather than giving them fish rings true, though I don't think the two are mutually exclusive, and that both are within our means to maintain.
If you want to personally save them, the ShipFitting template makes use of the EFT format, which the game and most third party websites and applications support. Pyfa and eveworkbench both have sections where you can copypaste the notes we have from the wiki fits.
As for a more organized "saving", depending on how the change is done, they may still be on the wiki, in the sense that they will be recorded in past revisions of pages. The wiki is only young enough to go back to 2010, but you can go through and see revisions of what a ship page looked like, or who management was on a certain year. I have no hand in the removal, so I'm not sure how exactly it will be done.
Arin Mara wrote:Where do you want the Wiki Fittings preserved?
Depending on how much web prowess you have, there are some options.
You could spin up a MediaWiki instance that just holds copies of the fitting pages. Would just need to nab the ShipFitting template and any related subtemplates or CSS styles.
You could also go barebones and have a bunch of EFT copies in plaintext in a more basic website. It's your choice, at the end of the day, and I don't know what archive form would be best.