I, like many people, have been frustrated by Fandom as a wiki host for years now. I have an extension to redirect me to wiki.gg if one exists for a particular fandom, but not every community has...
I, like many people, have been frustrated by Fandom as a wiki host for years now. I have an extension to redirect me to wiki.gg if one exists for a particular fandom, but not every community has the ability to start a second wiki and move to it. OSRS and Minecraft have consistently had the best wikis that I've used, and they're both created by the authors of this post.
I really like the analysis done here to explain why creating a second wiki is so challenging. It mostly boils down to the same network effects that keep people on the same social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, but with the added difficulty of getting around search engine weights. Seeing them acknowledge that they could become the big players and possibly the villains in the future is also refreshing, as is their plan for allowing communities to move away if they feel the need.
The one I use is specifically for wiki.gg - wiki.gg Redirect. This one looks better because it has more options though, so I might check it out. I just didn't want to post an extra link in the...
The one I use is specifically for wiki.gg - wiki.gg Redirect. This one looks better because it has more options though, so I might check it out. I just didn't want to post an extra link in the comment.
As a person always outcast in life, nothing makes me sadder than the reasoning of "it's popular because its popular". There's truth there, but a very depressing one for those who also kept hearing...
As a person always outcast in life, nothing makes me sadder than the reasoning of "it's popular because its popular". There's truth there, but a very depressing one for those who also kept hearing stuff like "work hard and you'll succeed". I guess the game really was rigged from the start.
I’m going to try to defuse that idea a little here, if I may. I think “it’s popular because it’s popular” is not an immutable universal truth, rather I think it’s just a predictable outcome. It...
As a person always outcast in life, nothing makes me sadder than the reasoning of "it's popular because its popular". There's truth there, but a very depressing one for those who also kept hearing stuff like "work hard and you'll succeed". I guess the game really was rigged from the start.
I’m going to try to defuse that idea a little here, if I may.
I think “it’s popular because it’s popular” is not an immutable universal truth, rather I think it’s just a predictable outcome. It also implies there’s not much propping it up other than inertia. Its popularity is mostly a result of laziness, the path of least resistance.
I propose all this, because it’s exactly why “work hard and you’ll succeed” is valid advice, depending on the circumstances. If the current top spot is held by inertia alone, then shifting momentum towards your own offering won’t be as difficult as if the competition is providing genuinely excellent options. It’s difficult, but not impossible, to present an option better than the competition to sway an entire cohort.
I’ve tried to keep everything above in general terms, but now I’ll relate it to Fandom in particular:
Fandom’s business model is to be as findable as possible for people who are looking for a wiki, and to serve ads to make money. Note that nothing in this business model actually requires them to provide high quality information on said wiki, and having found Fandom wikis for obscure games with barely even boilerplate for a handful of pages, it’s clear enough to me that they aren’t interested in providing good quality information.
The biggest way that I end up interacting with Fandom, despite actively trying to avoid them most of the time, is because they’ve put enormous amounts of time and money into SEO. Many people start their journey seeking a wiki from a search engine, so it makes business sense. If you’re going to start competing with Fandom, especially in the context of video game wikis, I think having a direct link from within the game is probably the biggest factor, because yeah SEO costs a lot of money to maintain. After that, leveraging other platforms that already have SEO would likely also have a large impact for low cost. A few years ago, I would have suggested Twitter and Reddit, but I believe both of these sources are closed to most search engines now (Google pays Reddit to maintain access for their search crawlers)
You're almost on the same wavelength as me. I think it's a bit more subtle than that, though. Not the business fault so much as the consumer. Its continuing popularity is a result of laziness, of...
I think “it’s popular because it’s popular” is not an immutable universal truth, rather I think it’s just a predictable outcome. It also implies there’s not much propping it up other than inertia. Its popularity is mostly a result of laziness, the path of least resistance.
You're almost on the same wavelength as me. I think it's a bit more subtle than that, though. Not the business fault so much as the consumer. Its continuing popularity is a result of laziness, of the path of least resistance. I can't think of too many services that are 5+ years old that feel they continually have the consumer in mind. That's only the first hard step before they get some success and coast.
I completely agree that you do need something useful to gain that inertia at first. Be is first to market or a genuinely good product. Every popular product was once "good" for a legitimate reason. But once you have that inertia, nothing much except the product itself will slow that inertia. And even then, consumers tolerate a LOT of inconvenience once they are adjusted to something. How many times now has Twitter hit itself in the face these past few years alone? How many people are jumping to other competitors? It's just that difficult.
That's the part that depresses me: the people. The talented people continuing to provide value to a company that has slapped them in the face a dozen times. the browsers who complain how things got worse but continue to lazily scroll their feed. There's a lot of complaints but very little action. That's an analogue that translates to real life issues too, so it's not even an internet-only phenomenon. That's seemingly just human nature; stick with the familiar until you need to almost fight for your life to define change.
But I've ranted enough and should go back on topic. I agree the "best" thing about Fandom these days isn't its quality but the sheer money they throw into SEO. So a proper competitor won't come from a talented dev with a snappy page nor a brilliant designer that makes navigation feel as natural as breathing. It will come from a businessman willing to throw millions at google to get eyeballs on the website.
But the sad fact is that we're finally being honest with ourselves after 15 years and admitting that this is not sustainable. So you make a good page and get ignored, or make another fandom, get attention but fall into the same trap of trying to sacrifice anything just to make money.
I think having a direct link from within the game is probably the biggest factor, because yeah SEO costs a lot of money to maintain.
from my experience, the best substitute these days is Discord, bonus points for an official Discord. The not completely horrible ones let some fans moderate and maintain guides. And if external pages are needed they can point to them whenever people ask. Gets around everything at the cost of being non-indexable for search half the time (depending on where they write their guides).
it's better than reddit because it (to my chagrin) fits the way people like to "search" these days. come in, ping a question, get pointed to the wiki, and go along their way. It's less annoying than a post because chat messages are ephemeral anyway.
"Work hard and you'll succeed" is an advice that's too simplistic. There're people who work hard and don't succeed and there're those that don't work hard and succeed. When you think about it,...
"Work hard and you'll succeed" is an advice that's too simplistic. There're people who work hard and don't succeed and there're those that don't work hard and succeed. When you think about it, it's quite obvious when it works. It works when there's a clear path or objectives to success. For example, beating a difficult game or becoming fluent in another language.
It often feels like BS in real life because this advice should come with a precedent: identify the right path (which is different for everyone). There's too much uncertainty IRL and if you don't identify the right path for yourself first, you'd be working hard toward the wrong thing. Like someone working hard to become an NBA player while ignoring the fact that they never possess the genetics to begin with.
There’s another reason to move away from fandom wiki that I was surprised to see wasn’t mentioned here: load time. At home on a modern day internet connection, I might not notice the difference in...
There’s another reason to move away from fandom wiki that I was surprised to see wasn’t mentioned here: load time.
At home on a modern day internet connection, I might not notice the difference in time it takes to load a Fandom webpage vs webpages on other wikis (having ad-block enabled probably helps too). But playing my steam deck away from home, looking things up on my phone? Absolutely. Fandom isn’t just loading plain text and a couple images. It’s loading like 20 different ads and a video at the same time as it loads whatever content you actually want. If you don’t have a good signal, it’s almost unusable. What’s worse is that I have an older phone with a small-ish screen and all those ads take up most if not all of my screen, meaning I have to try to dismiss some of the more obtrusive ads without clicking on them before I can see anything after the page finally loads.
I’m extremely glad to see more pushback against Fandom finally happening. For years it felt like every wiki was just bowing down and migrating to Fandom and it was depressing.
I’ll add my voice here in agreement too. If you’ve got a single page open for a while, those ads also refresh and sometimes un-hide themselves in the process, so there have literally been times on...
I’ll add my voice here in agreement too. If you’ve got a single page open for a while, those ads also refresh and sometimes un-hide themselves in the process, so there have literally been times on mobile that I have a better experience if I load the page, hide the ads, then take a screenshot and work off that than if I’d stayed in the page. It’s atrocious.
I've used the Runescape Wiki for more than 15 years, and the team that runs it is a marvel. The amount of detail in the Runescape Wiki is absolutely insane - - you can find every possible quest...
I've used the Runescape Wiki for more than 15 years, and the team that runs it is a marvel. The amount of detail in the Runescape Wiki is absolutely insane - - you can find every possible quest dialogs choice, every NPC, every item and a list of every item that it can be crafted into, the list goes on. All with a very small core team who have spent thousands of hours making it an incredible resource, and then tens of thousands of people who spent a few minutes or hours lending a hand.
They do fairly open governance on the Weird Gloop wiki, and you can see literal discussions on how run as few ads as possible to keep the sites running and the sysadmins paid.
Jagex (the company that develops Runescape) also deserves some props here. They provided the startup capital to the original move of the Runescape and 2007scape wikis. The folks who made this post used that capital to fund the creation of Weird Group Ltd. The community jumped in immediately. The Runescape and 2007scape subreddits started automatically removing links to the Fandom versions and adding tools that would replace them with links to the independent wiki, and people built browser extensions to hide the Fandom wikis from search results.
I hope this helps more wikis fork. I really do wish Memory Alpha would; it's the Fandom wiki I use the most, and the Fandom stuff really is gross to navigate around.
15 years geez has it really been that long? To me the osrs wiki is a hallmark of the new era, when I stopped playing for a bit I was still using runeHQ and when I came back for osrs launch the...
15 years geez has it really been that long?
To me the osrs wiki is a hallmark of the new era, when I stopped playing for a bit I was still using runeHQ and when I came back for osrs launch the wiki was the place to go.
Yeah, it has been. Back in 2009, I was still using Sal's and Tip.it a lot, and I remember preferring the quest guides on Sal's, but the Runescape Wiki was something that was already coming up in...
Yeah, it has been. Back in 2009, I was still using Sal's and Tip.it a lot, and I remember preferring the quest guides on Sal's, but the Runescape Wiki was something that was already coming up in searches.
We're all getting old is the only conclusion to reach, unfortunately.
Have they finally fixed the OSRS Money Making Guide to include GE tax in its profit calculation after nearly 3 years or not yet? Not hating the whole wiki really, I agree that it's huge and pretty...
I've used the Runescape Wiki for more than 15 years, and the team that runs it is a marvel. The amount of detail in the Runescape Wiki is absolutely insane
Have they finally fixed the OSRS Money Making Guide to include GE tax in its profit calculation after nearly 3 years or not yet?
Not hating the whole wiki really, I agree that it's huge and pretty much part of the game now, I just thought it was funny that one of the selected guides that you don't have to search for because it's constantly visible in the menu bar as some of the most important content has been broken for so long despite complaints. Not counting with the GE tax does little with high margin methods, but with low margin bulk methods like making unfinished potions it can cut the real profit by 50% sometimes, depending on prices.
Very chuffed that the League of Legends Wiki is moving away from Fandom. This wiki is incredibly well made and maintained, with info on several related games (LoL, TFT, Wild Rift, and Legends of...
This wiki is incredibly well made and maintained, with info on several related games (LoL, TFT, Wild Rift, and Legends of Runeterra) as well as the lore, updates (patches and beta environment), company communication, and trivia.
It's an incredibly useful resource for players, and is now officially supported by Riot Games. A big win for the community in my opinion.
I've been seeing coordinated efforts to move wikis off fandom for years now and I have to assume fandom is aware of the sentiment. Has fandom ever addressed this or made any effort to change...
I've been seeing coordinated efforts to move wikis off fandom for years now and I have to assume fandom is aware of the sentiment. Has fandom ever addressed this or made any effort to change people's minds? Whenever I hear about them they seem like a completely uncaring big company.
They actively hinder closing their own wikis afaik, which leads to some funny stuff at times when the staff has migrated and people start vandalizing, but I got no links on me on that. What I do...
They actively hinder closing their own wikis afaik, which leads to some funny stuff at times when the staff has migrated and people start vandalizing, but I got no links on me on that.
What I do have, is on plagiarism, and from the look of it they are fairly slow and fairly light handed towards plagiarists (original video and follow up, I'll note that I had to skim the latter due to lack of time atm).
Is there some reason to believe that as this website grows it wouldn't just become as bad as fandom? I use an ad blocker, so the only time it ever becomes an issue is when I pull up the website in...
Is there some reason to believe that as this website grows it wouldn't just become as bad as fandom? I use an ad blocker, so the only time it ever becomes an issue is when I pull up the website in the Steam browser and that's still pretty rare. Maybe Gabe is on Tildes and will add an ad blocker to their Steam browser. That would be pretty great.
If you or anyone else is really interested in blocking ads in Steam browser, a network/DNS based ad-blocker (nextDNS, PiHole, other options) is one way to accomplish that. That said, the various...
If you or anyone else is really interested in blocking ads in Steam browser, a network/DNS based ad-blocker (nextDNS, PiHole, other options) is one way to accomplish that. That said, the various options require anywhere from a lot to a moderate amount of tech knowledge and understanding of how to do it and the implications of doing it. It is nice to be able to block ads at the network level and not get them on any device in the house (or on cellular data, since i run the nextDNS app there)
As far as growth, it's all about how the owners of wiki.gg treat it. Fandom owners did not care at all, and made the ads incredibly intrusive, unrelated, inappropriate, and resource-intensive (videos, etc). They also did a number of other things (awful UI, lack of features/customization, irrelevant internal marketing, etc). They just made the site awful to use. It is possible for wiki.gg (and other alternative wiki services) to grow AND also treat readers better. In our society, yes, there's always the likelihood that it gets bought out, or owners sell out, or it enshittifies in some way, but that's not a guarantee.
I should mention that this post - and the OSRS, Minecraft, and LoL wikis - is run by WeirdGloop, which is a different organization from wiki.gg. I just mentioned wiki.gg because it's been the...
I should mention that this post - and the OSRS, Minecraft, and LoL wikis - is run by WeirdGloop, which is a different organization from wiki.gg. I just mentioned wiki.gg because it's been the primary alternative that I've been aware of, and because of the extension I use.
Yeah, I went back and edited my post to reflect "other alternatives" too. (wiki.gg is the main one I use instead of Fandom anytime I need a game wiki). And I specifically like that fact too- and...
Yeah, I went back and edited my post to reflect "other alternatives" too. (wiki.gg is the main one I use instead of Fandom anytime I need a game wiki).
And I specifically like that fact too- and even think it's better than there are multiple alternatives/wiki sources. More wikis hosted across the web should be a thing. Especially ones that are not user hostile. Better to not centralize it all under one wiki host in case they go the Fandom route
DNS based adblock triggers the corporate laptops at my home something fierce, so ymmv. There's probably a workaround for this that I haven't bothered looking for yet because mostly an in-browser...
DNS based adblock triggers the corporate laptops at my home something fierce, so ymmv. There's probably a workaround for this that I haven't bothered looking for yet because mostly an in-browser add-on is enough.
If one only had one or two laptops that had issues with it could you run a second WiFi network for them without the DNS filtering? It would be more complicated but might fix it?
If one only had one or two laptops that had issues with it could you run a second WiFi network for them without the DNS filtering? It would be more complicated but might fix it?
Most standard ISP supplied home appliances do not necessarily allow changing the DNS on specific WiFi signals, at least mine doesn't, and if you'd forward your router DNS to the device providing...
Most standard ISP supplied home appliances do not necessarily allow changing the DNS on specific WiFi signals, at least mine doesn't, and if you'd forward your router DNS to the device providing DNS based adblock, you'll still have this network wide.
It's possible, but I'd need to get a different router to do this.
There's other methods that I've tried but it introduces a lot of maintenance overhead that I don't particularly need.
Ads on Smart-TVs are often delivered straight from the feed and are not blockable over DNS, and any other ads can be blocked with browser based adblock or things like ReVanced for phone. Mostly, the work I put in for DNS adblock costs me more than just having local device adblock.
Yeah that is probably at the very edges of my technical ability to implement and likely not worth the effort for my use case. But good to know it can be done! And yes, my pessimistic take would...
Yeah that is probably at the very edges of my technical ability to implement and likely not worth the effort for my use case. But good to know it can be done!
And yes, my pessimistic take would suggest that no one should even bother trying, so I'm all for them giving it a shot even if it fails again.
In my case, faith in the people running it. They donated thousands of hours to the Runescape Wiki when it was Wikia (later renamed to Fandom) hosted. They listen to feedback and cared deeply about...
In my case, faith in the people running it. They donated thousands of hours to the Runescape Wiki when it was Wikia (later renamed to Fandom) hosted. They listen to feedback and cared deeply about the community before money was ever involved. I trust them as stewards.
From the article: And from that link: This is the cleanest "you can walk away free and clear" MoU I think I've ever seen. Weird Gloop gets a percentage of revenue from the first year after...
From the article:
So we’ve been voluntarily entering into agreements with the wikis we host (here’s an example) where we set very clear obligations for what happens if the wiki community wants to go somewhere else.
And from that link:
Termination
For avoidance of doubt, this section refers to terms of termination of the future business engagement, not the termination of this memorandum (which is not legally binding).
Both parties do not see termination as a particularly likely outcome, but prefer making it straightforward for either party to terminate at any time, rather than exhaustively listing out obligations that, if not met, would constitute a breach of contract.
Either party may terminate the agreement, for any reason, at any time, with 30 days notice. The specific mechanism for giving notice will be decided in the future contract.
Upon termination by either party, Weird Gloop is obligated to:
Cease operating any version of the Minecraft Wiki
Transfer ownership of the minecraft.wiki domain to the community members
Provide dumps of Minecraft Wiki databases and image repositories, and any of Weird Gloop's MediaWiki configuration that is specific to Minecraft Wiki
Assist in transferring to the community members any domain-adjacent assets or accounts that cannot reasonably be acquired without Weird Gloop's cooperation
This does not include any of Weird Gloop's core MediaWiki code, Cloudflare configuration, or accounts/relationships related to advertising or sponsorships
If terminated by community members, community members are obligated to:
Remit to Weird Gloop 33% of gross advertising/sponsorship revenue, if any, arising from operating the Minecraft Wiki during the first 12 months post-termination. This obligation is waived if the termination occurs after 24 September 2025.
Reimburse Weird Gloop for the domain registrar cost of minecraft.wiki, prorated for however much time is left on the registration.
This is the cleanest "you can walk away free and clear" MoU I think I've ever seen. Weird Gloop gets a percentage of revenue from the first year after separation, if that separation becomes true within the first two years, and that's it? They promise not to host a competing copy of the wiki and offer it to the community free and clear?
Yes, this feels like we got screwed over by putting all our eggs in one basket, and are responding by moving all of the eggs into another basket. But it seems like they're also encouraging wikis...
Yes, this feels like we got screwed over by putting all our eggs in one basket, and are responding by moving all of the eggs into another basket.
But it seems like they're also encouraging wikis to find other hosts than just them, literally anyone who's not Fandom:
As far as where you host it…there’s plenty of decent options. Wiki hosting is not nearly as hard as Fandom makes it out to be – for example, if you’re the Path of Exile devs and you already host a bunch of PHP web stuff, then hosting the wiki yourself is objectively a really good option.
Sometimes Weird Gloop will be the good option for your situation, and being totally honest, sometimes it won’t be. And that’s okay! I want to help communities get away from Fandom, regardless of who’s running the servers.
Otherwise, their assurance for why they won't become just as bad is basically "we promise", but well, how much can they really do to make people trust them other than pointing at their good track record?
It seems like they're doing a little more than just "we promise", but the issue that I was concerned about that they didn't address is that sometimes people get too much of an ego or like being in...
It seems like they're doing a little more than just "we promise", but the issue that I was concerned about that they didn't address is that sometimes people get too much of an ego or like being in control and makes me wonder when they empower the community to make decisions on the wiki, who is it they are empowering? This is kinda similar to some issues with reddit moderators in various subreddits, where there were some moderators that did nothing anymore but they were higher on the list and couldn't be removed by current active moderators and essentially could do whatever they wanted with impunity so long as it wasn't enough to make the reddit admins step in.
Here's what Weird Gloop said in this post about how they would avoid becoming Fandom:
So we’ve been voluntarily entering into agreements with the wikis we host (here’s an example) where we set very clear obligations for what happens if the wiki community wants to go somewhere else (hint: it’s all about the domain).
So within that text, the first thing that is made clear is "it's all about the domain". How is a community of strangers basically, going to control a domain? Someone, somewhere, is going to have to control.
Now about the promise thing, in the example they gave, it actually is pretty much just a 'promise' initially it seems, because it says it's not legally binding, but it does say it can become legally binding if the community forms a 'corporate entity'.
Also in that example, it basically seems like if there were community division, WeirdGloop sorta acts as the arbitrator of sorts, because they're the ones that determine who is validly representing the community. If I wanted to take over the Minecraft wiki and terminate the agreement, at what point am I the community? If I make 90% of the edits? Never?
I'm not saying it's bad on their part or that because there's a different potential pitfall that it's not worth doing, just saying that I don't think the only concern in this case is whether they become another Fandom, but rather that this type of setup does create some other issues that I could see happening in unlikelier cases.
I know this is the least of fandom's problems (Like incessant ads) but what's up with many fandom wikis opting to use past-tense? Is this just general wiki-etiquette or is it just some weird thing...
I know this is the least of fandom's problems (Like incessant ads) but what's up with many fandom wikis opting to use past-tense? Is this just general wiki-etiquette or is it just some weird thing people do?
With that being said there's some franchises with a fandom site and a regular wiki and it's too confusing - for example Minecraft, or even Doom. Always used the Minecraft wiki to scout out for upcoming features but then I found the fandom website and it was just worse. The original Doom wiki seems to be more classic-focused and even has technical rundowns of the engine, while the nu-doom wiki is focused on the newer entries. It's just weird and I wish they'd keep it all in one place.
And then there's really weird stuff like fanon wikis which just publish fake stuff for... reasons. Like someone is out there just making fake articles, I think.
A lot of the “fandom” sites are the original wikis for specific franchises, such as the original Minecraft wiki. But the main community editors of the Minecraft Wiki didn’t like the fandom site...
A lot of the “fandom” sites are the original wikis for specific franchises, such as the original Minecraft wiki. But the main community editors of the Minecraft Wiki didn’t like the fandom site (due to ads, lack of finer control, etc), so they opted to create a different, separate wiki. However, since they don’t “own” the fandom site, fandom leaves it up and continues to host it (even though the new, separate wiki is better), because that way Fandom still earns ad revenue off the Fandom site.
And the new community wiki has no control over the Fandom site to remove it. Which is why Weird Gloop talks about, in their post, about allowing Wiki communities to maintain their own domain name / get their domain name for themselves if they move Wiki hosts in the future - to avoid a similar issue.
That's bizzare, like obviously the fandom version is deprecated (doesn't even look nice, the og minecraft wiki look is just perfect) but the fact that it just exists so fandom can just make money...
However, since they don’t “own” the fandom site, fandom leaves it up and continues to host it (even though the new, separate wiki is better), because that way Fandom still earns ad revenue off the Fandom site.
That's bizzare, like obviously the fandom version is deprecated (doesn't even look nice, the og minecraft wiki look is just perfect) but the fact that it just exists so fandom can just make money even when it's pretty much dead.
I wonder if Miraheze is considered a good option for these projects. Also, why not Github or Gitlab? Are those wikis not good for that kind of stuff? (actual question)
I wonder if Miraheze is considered a good option for these projects. Also, why not Github or Gitlab? Are those wikis not good for that kind of stuff? (actual question)
Github/Gitlab wikis are really designed to be documentation for the specific tool that each repo represents. Edits require either direct editor access to the repository, or a fork and a pull...
Github/Gitlab wikis are really designed to be documentation for the specific tool that each repo represents. Edits require either direct editor access to the repository, or a fork and a pull request later. If you're a dev who's used to working with git, that's fine, but for the majority of users who might want to update a wiki it's a big hurdle. I wouldn't say that the wikis on any git host are good for non-developer use cases (such as games).
As far as I'm aware, Miraheze is a Mediawiki host, but I don't know how they handle plugins or customizations. You can set up your own MediaWiki instance as long as you have a web server (and db server, depending on size) and a domain name, so I think you can get a pretty similar experience without using a wiki host. The advantage Miraheze gives is that it removes the technical requirements to get started, which is good for the same reasons as I mentioned for avoiding Github/Gitlab.
Wikipedia is a general wiki. The wikis mentioned in the article are in-depth documentation for specific communities with individual pages for specific topics. Wikipedia would not be a good fit for...
Wikipedia is a general wiki. The wikis mentioned in the article are in-depth documentation for specific communities with individual pages for specific topics. Wikipedia would not be a good fit for that kind of information, because it would be considered niche info and the number of pages would balloon tremendously.
The Wikimedia Foundation itself was founded in 2003 as a means of supporting Wikipedia. The idea was for a free, accessible encyclopedia and finding a means of supporting it without ads, fan wikis...
The Wikimedia Foundation itself was founded in 2003 as a means of supporting Wikipedia. The idea was for a free, accessible encyclopedia and finding a means of supporting it without ads, fan wikis don't really line up with that goal.
In 2004, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and Wikimedia Foundation board member Angela Beesley-Sterling founded a for-profit company called Wikicities. Basically, Wikipedia for cities. In 2006, they changed the name to Wikia and had hoovered up 1,500 fan wikis by this point. Wikia would rebrand themselves in 2016 as... Fandom. And it has been downhill since its 2018 acquisition, but a full circle for this comment chain.
I, like many people, have been frustrated by Fandom as a wiki host for years now. I have an extension to redirect me to wiki.gg if one exists for a particular fandom, but not every community has the ability to start a second wiki and move to it. OSRS and Minecraft have consistently had the best wikis that I've used, and they're both created by the authors of this post.
I really like the analysis done here to explain why creating a second wiki is so challenging. It mostly boils down to the same network effects that keep people on the same social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, but with the added difficulty of getting around search engine weights. Seeing them acknowledge that they could become the big players and possibly the villains in the future is also refreshing, as is their plan for allowing communities to move away if they feel the need.
For those who also need this:
https://getindie.wiki/
The one I use is specifically for wiki.gg - wiki.gg Redirect. This one looks better because it has more options though, so I might check it out. I just didn't want to post an extra link in the comment.
As a person always outcast in life, nothing makes me sadder than the reasoning of "it's popular because its popular". There's truth there, but a very depressing one for those who also kept hearing stuff like "work hard and you'll succeed". I guess the game really was rigged from the start.
I’m going to try to defuse that idea a little here, if I may.
I think “it’s popular because it’s popular” is not an immutable universal truth, rather I think it’s just a predictable outcome. It also implies there’s not much propping it up other than inertia. Its popularity is mostly a result of laziness, the path of least resistance.
I propose all this, because it’s exactly why “work hard and you’ll succeed” is valid advice, depending on the circumstances. If the current top spot is held by inertia alone, then shifting momentum towards your own offering won’t be as difficult as if the competition is providing genuinely excellent options. It’s difficult, but not impossible, to present an option better than the competition to sway an entire cohort.
I’ve tried to keep everything above in general terms, but now I’ll relate it to Fandom in particular:
Fandom’s business model is to be as findable as possible for people who are looking for a wiki, and to serve ads to make money. Note that nothing in this business model actually requires them to provide high quality information on said wiki, and having found Fandom wikis for obscure games with barely even boilerplate for a handful of pages, it’s clear enough to me that they aren’t interested in providing good quality information.
The biggest way that I end up interacting with Fandom, despite actively trying to avoid them most of the time, is because they’ve put enormous amounts of time and money into SEO. Many people start their journey seeking a wiki from a search engine, so it makes business sense. If you’re going to start competing with Fandom, especially in the context of video game wikis, I think having a direct link from within the game is probably the biggest factor, because yeah SEO costs a lot of money to maintain. After that, leveraging other platforms that already have SEO would likely also have a large impact for low cost. A few years ago, I would have suggested Twitter and Reddit, but I believe both of these sources are closed to most search engines now (Google pays Reddit to maintain access for their search crawlers)
You're almost on the same wavelength as me. I think it's a bit more subtle than that, though. Not the business fault so much as the consumer. Its continuing popularity is a result of laziness, of the path of least resistance. I can't think of too many services that are 5+ years old that feel they continually have the consumer in mind. That's only the first hard step before they get some success and coast.
I completely agree that you do need something useful to gain that inertia at first. Be is first to market or a genuinely good product. Every popular product was once "good" for a legitimate reason. But once you have that inertia, nothing much except the product itself will slow that inertia. And even then, consumers tolerate a LOT of inconvenience once they are adjusted to something. How many times now has Twitter hit itself in the face these past few years alone? How many people are jumping to other competitors? It's just that difficult.
That's the part that depresses me: the people. The talented people continuing to provide value to a company that has slapped them in the face a dozen times. the browsers who complain how things got worse but continue to lazily scroll their feed. There's a lot of complaints but very little action. That's an analogue that translates to real life issues too, so it's not even an internet-only phenomenon. That's seemingly just human nature; stick with the familiar until you need to almost fight for your life to define change.
But I've ranted enough and should go back on topic. I agree the "best" thing about Fandom these days isn't its quality but the sheer money they throw into SEO. So a proper competitor won't come from a talented dev with a snappy page nor a brilliant designer that makes navigation feel as natural as breathing. It will come from a businessman willing to throw millions at google to get eyeballs on the website.
But the sad fact is that we're finally being honest with ourselves after 15 years and admitting that this is not sustainable. So you make a good page and get ignored, or make another fandom, get attention but fall into the same trap of trying to sacrifice anything just to make money.
from my experience, the best substitute these days is Discord, bonus points for an official Discord. The not completely horrible ones let some fans moderate and maintain guides. And if external pages are needed they can point to them whenever people ask. Gets around everything at the cost of being non-indexable for search half the time (depending on where they write their guides).
it's better than reddit because it (to my chagrin) fits the way people like to "search" these days. come in, ping a question, get pointed to the wiki, and go along their way. It's less annoying than a post because chat messages are ephemeral anyway.
"Work hard and you'll succeed" is an advice that's too simplistic. There're people who work hard and don't succeed and there're those that don't work hard and succeed. When you think about it, it's quite obvious when it works. It works when there's a clear path or objectives to success. For example, beating a difficult game or becoming fluent in another language.
It often feels like BS in real life because this advice should come with a precedent: identify the right path (which is different for everyone). There's too much uncertainty IRL and if you don't identify the right path for yourself first, you'd be working hard toward the wrong thing. Like someone working hard to become an NBA player while ignoring the fact that they never possess the genetics to begin with.
There’s another reason to move away from fandom wiki that I was surprised to see wasn’t mentioned here: load time.
At home on a modern day internet connection, I might not notice the difference in time it takes to load a Fandom webpage vs webpages on other wikis (having ad-block enabled probably helps too). But playing my steam deck away from home, looking things up on my phone? Absolutely. Fandom isn’t just loading plain text and a couple images. It’s loading like 20 different ads and a video at the same time as it loads whatever content you actually want. If you don’t have a good signal, it’s almost unusable. What’s worse is that I have an older phone with a small-ish screen and all those ads take up most if not all of my screen, meaning I have to try to dismiss some of the more obtrusive ads without clicking on them before I can see anything after the page finally loads.
I’m extremely glad to see more pushback against Fandom finally happening. For years it felt like every wiki was just bowing down and migrating to Fandom and it was depressing.
I’ll add my voice here in agreement too. If you’ve got a single page open for a while, those ads also refresh and sometimes un-hide themselves in the process, so there have literally been times on mobile that I have a better experience if I load the page, hide the ads, then take a screenshot and work off that than if I’d stayed in the page. It’s atrocious.
I've used the Runescape Wiki for more than 15 years, and the team that runs it is a marvel. The amount of detail in the Runescape Wiki is absolutely insane - - you can find every possible quest dialogs choice, every NPC, every item and a list of every item that it can be crafted into, the list goes on. All with a very small core team who have spent thousands of hours making it an incredible resource, and then tens of thousands of people who spent a few minutes or hours lending a hand.
They do fairly open governance on the Weird Gloop wiki, and you can see literal discussions on how run as few ads as possible to keep the sites running and the sysadmins paid.
Jagex (the company that develops Runescape) also deserves some props here. They provided the startup capital to the original move of the Runescape and 2007scape wikis. The folks who made this post used that capital to fund the creation of Weird Group Ltd. The community jumped in immediately. The Runescape and 2007scape subreddits started automatically removing links to the Fandom versions and adding tools that would replace them with links to the independent wiki, and people built browser extensions to hide the Fandom wikis from search results.
I hope this helps more wikis fork. I really do wish Memory Alpha would; it's the Fandom wiki I use the most, and the Fandom stuff really is gross to navigate around.
15 years geez has it really been that long?
To me the osrs wiki is a hallmark of the new era, when I stopped playing for a bit I was still using runeHQ and when I came back for osrs launch the wiki was the place to go.
Yeah, it has been. Back in 2009, I was still using Sal's and Tip.it a lot, and I remember preferring the quest guides on Sal's, but the Runescape Wiki was something that was already coming up in searches.
We're all getting old is the only conclusion to reach, unfortunately.
Have they finally fixed the OSRS Money Making Guide to include GE tax in its profit calculation after nearly 3 years or not yet?
Not hating the whole wiki really, I agree that it's huge and pretty much part of the game now, I just thought it was funny that one of the selected guides that you don't have to search for because it's constantly visible in the menu bar as some of the most important content has been broken for so long despite complaints. Not counting with the GE tax does little with high margin methods, but with low margin bulk methods like making unfinished potions it can cut the real profit by 50% sometimes, depending on prices.
Very chuffed that the League of Legends Wiki is moving away from Fandom.
This wiki is incredibly well made and maintained, with info on several related games (LoL, TFT, Wild Rift, and Legends of Runeterra) as well as the lore, updates (patches and beta environment), company communication, and trivia.
It's an incredibly useful resource for players, and is now officially supported by Riot Games. A big win for the community in my opinion.
I've been seeing coordinated efforts to move wikis off fandom for years now and I have to assume fandom is aware of the sentiment. Has fandom ever addressed this or made any effort to change people's minds? Whenever I hear about them they seem like a completely uncaring big company.
They actively hinder closing their own wikis afaik, which leads to some funny stuff at times when the staff has migrated and people start vandalizing, but I got no links on me on that.
What I do have, is on plagiarism, and from the look of it they are fairly slow and fairly light handed towards plagiarists (original video and follow up, I'll note that I had to skim the latter due to lack of time atm).
Is there some reason to believe that as this website grows it wouldn't just become as bad as fandom? I use an ad blocker, so the only time it ever becomes an issue is when I pull up the website in the Steam browser and that's still pretty rare. Maybe Gabe is on Tildes and will add an ad blocker to their Steam browser. That would be pretty great.
If you or anyone else is really interested in blocking ads in Steam browser, a network/DNS based ad-blocker (nextDNS, PiHole, other options) is one way to accomplish that. That said, the various options require anywhere from a lot to a moderate amount of tech knowledge and understanding of how to do it and the implications of doing it. It is nice to be able to block ads at the network level and not get them on any device in the house (or on cellular data, since i run the nextDNS app there)
As far as growth, it's all about how the owners of wiki.gg treat it. Fandom owners did not care at all, and made the ads incredibly intrusive, unrelated, inappropriate, and resource-intensive (videos, etc). They also did a number of other things (awful UI, lack of features/customization, irrelevant internal marketing, etc). They just made the site awful to use. It is possible for wiki.gg (and other alternative wiki services) to grow AND also treat readers better. In our society, yes, there's always the likelihood that it gets bought out, or owners sell out, or it enshittifies in some way, but that's not a guarantee.
I should mention that this post - and the OSRS, Minecraft, and LoL wikis - is run by WeirdGloop, which is a different organization from wiki.gg. I just mentioned wiki.gg because it's been the primary alternative that I've been aware of, and because of the extension I use.
Yeah, I went back and edited my post to reflect "other alternatives" too. (wiki.gg is the main one I use instead of Fandom anytime I need a game wiki).
And I specifically like that fact too- and even think it's better than there are multiple alternatives/wiki sources. More wikis hosted across the web should be a thing. Especially ones that are not user hostile. Better to not centralize it all under one wiki host in case they go the Fandom route
DNS based adblock triggers the corporate laptops at my home something fierce, so ymmv. There's probably a workaround for this that I haven't bothered looking for yet because mostly an in-browser add-on is enough.
If one only had one or two laptops that had issues with it could you run a second WiFi network for them without the DNS filtering? It would be more complicated but might fix it?
Most standard ISP supplied home appliances do not necessarily allow changing the DNS on specific WiFi signals, at least mine doesn't, and if you'd forward your router DNS to the device providing DNS based adblock, you'll still have this network wide.
It's possible, but I'd need to get a different router to do this.
There's other methods that I've tried but it introduces a lot of maintenance overhead that I don't particularly need.
Ads on Smart-TVs are often delivered straight from the feed and are not blockable over DNS, and any other ads can be blocked with browser based adblock or things like ReVanced for phone. Mostly, the work I put in for DNS adblock costs me more than just having local device adblock.
Yeah that is probably at the very edges of my technical ability to implement and likely not worth the effort for my use case. But good to know it can be done!
And yes, my pessimistic take would suggest that no one should even bother trying, so I'm all for them giving it a shot even if it fails again.
In my case, faith in the people running it. They donated thousands of hours to the Runescape Wiki when it was Wikia (later renamed to Fandom) hosted. They listen to feedback and cared deeply about the community before money was ever involved. I trust them as stewards.
I have never played RuneScape but the reasons you list are as good as any!
The linked article explains exactly that, in detail.
I read the article. I didn't see a compelling argument as someone from the outside who doesn't know these people and has never played RuneScape.
From the article:
And from that link:
This is the cleanest "you can walk away free and clear" MoU I think I've ever seen. Weird Gloop gets a percentage of revenue from the first year after separation, if that separation becomes true within the first two years, and that's it? They promise not to host a competing copy of the wiki and offer it to the community free and clear?
Yes, this feels like we got screwed over by putting all our eggs in one basket, and are responding by moving all of the eggs into another basket.
But it seems like they're also encouraging wikis to find other hosts than just them, literally anyone who's not Fandom:
Otherwise, their assurance for why they won't become just as bad is basically "we promise", but well, how much can they really do to make people trust them other than pointing at their good track record?
It seems like they're doing a little more than just "we promise", but the issue that I was concerned about that they didn't address is that sometimes people get too much of an ego or like being in control and makes me wonder when they empower the community to make decisions on the wiki, who is it they are empowering? This is kinda similar to some issues with reddit moderators in various subreddits, where there were some moderators that did nothing anymore but they were higher on the list and couldn't be removed by current active moderators and essentially could do whatever they wanted with impunity so long as it wasn't enough to make the reddit admins step in.
Here's what Weird Gloop said in this post about how they would avoid becoming Fandom:
So within that text, the first thing that is made clear is "it's all about the domain". How is a community of strangers basically, going to control a domain? Someone, somewhere, is going to have to control.
Now about the promise thing, in the example they gave, it actually is pretty much just a 'promise' initially it seems, because it says it's not legally binding, but it does say it can become legally binding if the community forms a 'corporate entity'.
Also in that example, it basically seems like if there were community division, WeirdGloop sorta acts as the arbitrator of sorts, because they're the ones that determine who is validly representing the community. If I wanted to take over the Minecraft wiki and terminate the agreement, at what point am I the community? If I make 90% of the edits? Never?
I'm not saying it's bad on their part or that because there's a different potential pitfall that it's not worth doing, just saying that I don't think the only concern in this case is whether they become another Fandom, but rather that this type of setup does create some other issues that I could see happening in unlikelier cases.
That's a valid point. Their track record is worth something until it isn't. And it's not like most people are giving them money anyways.
I know this is the least of fandom's problems (Like incessant ads) but what's up with many fandom wikis opting to use past-tense? Is this just general wiki-etiquette or is it just some weird thing people do?
With that being said there's some franchises with a fandom site and a regular wiki and it's too confusing - for example Minecraft, or even Doom. Always used the Minecraft wiki to scout out for upcoming features but then I found the fandom website and it was just worse. The original Doom wiki seems to be more classic-focused and even has technical rundowns of the engine, while the nu-doom wiki is focused on the newer entries. It's just weird and I wish they'd keep it all in one place.
And then there's really weird stuff like fanon wikis which just publish fake stuff for... reasons. Like someone is out there just making fake articles, I think.
A lot of the “fandom” sites are the original wikis for specific franchises, such as the original Minecraft wiki. But the main community editors of the Minecraft Wiki didn’t like the fandom site (due to ads, lack of finer control, etc), so they opted to create a different, separate wiki. However, since they don’t “own” the fandom site, fandom leaves it up and continues to host it (even though the new, separate wiki is better), because that way Fandom still earns ad revenue off the Fandom site.
And the new community wiki has no control over the Fandom site to remove it. Which is why Weird Gloop talks about, in their post, about allowing Wiki communities to maintain their own domain name / get their domain name for themselves if they move Wiki hosts in the future - to avoid a similar issue.
That's bizzare, like obviously the fandom version is deprecated (doesn't even look nice, the og minecraft wiki look is just perfect) but the fact that it just exists so fandom can just make money even when it's pretty much dead.
I wonder if Miraheze is considered a good option for these projects. Also, why not Github or Gitlab? Are those wikis not good for that kind of stuff? (actual question)
Github/Gitlab wikis are really designed to be documentation for the specific tool that each repo represents. Edits require either direct editor access to the repository, or a fork and a pull request later. If you're a dev who's used to working with git, that's fine, but for the majority of users who might want to update a wiki it's a big hurdle. I wouldn't say that the wikis on any git host are good for non-developer use cases (such as games).
As far as I'm aware, Miraheze is a Mediawiki host, but I don't know how they handle plugins or customizations. You can set up your own MediaWiki instance as long as you have a web server (and db server, depending on size) and a domain name, so I think you can get a pretty similar experience without using a wiki host. The advantage Miraheze gives is that it removes the technical requirements to get started, which is good for the same reasons as I mentioned for avoiding Github/Gitlab.
What's wrong with Wikipedia? Do people still add to that?
Wikipedia is a general wiki. The wikis mentioned in the article are in-depth documentation for specific communities with individual pages for specific topics. Wikipedia would not be a good fit for that kind of information, because it would be considered niche info and the number of pages would balloon tremendously.
Good to know. Given the popularity of sub-wikis, I'm surprised that this wasn't part of the Wikimedia foundation's design goals.
The Wikimedia Foundation itself was founded in 2003 as a means of supporting Wikipedia. The idea was for a free, accessible encyclopedia and finding a means of supporting it without ads, fan wikis don't really line up with that goal.
In 2004, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and Wikimedia Foundation board member Angela Beesley-Sterling founded a for-profit company called Wikicities. Basically, Wikipedia for cities. In 2006, they changed the name to Wikia and had hoovered up 1,500 fan wikis by this point. Wikia would rebrand themselves in 2016 as... Fandom. And it has been downhill since its 2018 acquisition, but a full circle for this comment chain.
Wow, thanks for that!