this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2023
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Here's hoping they migrate to wiki.gg as Terraria's contributors have a while ago.

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[–] [email protected] 243 points 1 year ago (8 children)

please, fandom is one of the worst sites on the internet

[–] [email protected] 96 points 1 year ago (2 children)

When the old school RuneScape wiki moved to a self hosted solution it was night and day the quality difference. I’d argue that OSRS (and probably regular RS) have some of the best wikis in gaming.

https://osrs.wiki

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

From what I've heard, the RS3 wiki was even better, but for sure both are fantastic. Prime examples of how wikis should work. They're even fully integrated into the game.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

Fr. Recently the Satisfactory wiki moved off of fandom and it is already so much better. More wikis need to drop fandom.

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[–] [email protected] 100 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I'm pleased to hear that they're moving. Fandom's had a monopoly on the community-created wiki space for far too long, and it's had a dire effect on the usability of so many wikis. It's like they're trying to make their site everything but a easily usable resource for community wikis.

On a related note, I highly recommend the "Indie Wiki Buddy" extension for Chrome and Firefox. When non-Fandom/Fextralife wikis are available, it'll direct you to those instead; and when they're not, it'll allow you to view the Fandom wiki through a much more usable mirror.

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[–] [email protected] 82 points 1 year ago

Going to Fandom is like visiting a annoying dying person because they hold the hidden information.

[–] [email protected] 62 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Stardew Valley did the right thing by self hosting a wiki, makes it both official and independent

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[–] [email protected] 56 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Path of Exile did the same thing, going from fandom to https://poewiki.net. And thank god they did, fuck fandom

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Satisfactory recently left fandom as well.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Fandom is barely usable at this point. I feel like they're just relying on no one wanting to put in the effort of coordinating a migration elsewhere.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Lol, they moved out from Reddit and now they moved out from Fandom.

But their solution could be as simple as make their own wiki.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Imagine if we already had all the tools needed, and all that's missing is a bit of hosting and a bit of moderation. If only there was a company with some extra cash behind this… haha.

But it's seriously time people retake some kind of control over their online activity. All these "services" looking at every occasion to screw their user is getting annoying.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm surprised Microsoft hasn't forced some Teams/SharePoint mandate on them

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This isn't about Mojang. This is about a wiki that is mostly maintained by fans but endorsed by Mojang as the official wiki. If MS tries to force some bullshit Teams or SP solution via Mojang and official branding, the fans will likely abandon it in favor of an unofficial one not hogtied to some BS MS ecosystem.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

*used to be endorsed by Mojang. About a year ago Mojang said it's no longer official. Presumably because of Fandom. See https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Minecraft_Wiki:Community_portal/Microsoft_status_update

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fandom has been a pretty terrible experience for awhile now. I hope they find a better home.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

uBlock Origin makes it way better, but still, you shouldn't have to use that in the first place

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

This makes fandom much better by outright blocking the entire site and redirecting you to alternatives instead

If they have a proper wiki that is not a fandom one for the topic, it redirects you there, otherwise it lets you use a proxy like antifandom to access the data without going on the fandom website

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago

I make it a point to actively avoid Fandom. They're fucking horrible. Luckily for the type of games I'm interested in there's alternatives available (for eg doomwiki, halopedia, UESP)

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The RuneScape wikis did this several years ago, might even be a decade at this point. The actual developer studio, Jagex, helps pay to keep them online and independent because of how damn good they are and how useful it is for everyone, including developers, to reference.

Microsoft (or Mojang? I don't know anymore) would be well served to do the same here honestly.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I hope the Fallout and Final Fantasy wikies also migrate out from fandom. Back when they were wikia, they were a lot better. It feels that the search function on fandom is so bad that half the time you're better off going on google and slapping your search there instead.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just whatever you do, do not use Google docs to share information that belongs to a wiki. That's is by far the most annoying option and 100 times worse than just having to deal with a fandom wiki.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"But ever since the acquisition contributors and editors have been uneasy about Fandom's big money owners applying the nipple clamps and, ..."

The article is worth reading just for that paragraph, if nothing else.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"There is also deep disquiet among wiki editors over a recent controversy with the McDonalds wiki, in which Fandom replaced the existing Grimace page to a paid-for McDonalds advertorial, without the consent or knowledge of the McDonalds wiki editors. No I'm not making this up."

Then again, this one came in in a close second.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago

"42 Minecraft wiki contributors and editors have voted to tell Fandom to fork off"

And this comes in at number three.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago

Good, Fandom's wiki's are garbage.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (3 children)

A lot of people are moving to wiki.gg l. It has so many more features

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

I love wiki.gg. Such a pleasant site to use.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago

Fandom is a huge headache to even navigate, I couldn't imagine what it’s like to maintain it

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago

I'm an editor for a community wiki that moved off fandom a few years ago to Mireheze. When the recent discussion about Miraheze shutting down happened I briefly inquired about where we would migrate to, expressing my hope to not return to fandom, and was quite thouroghly assured that fandom is not somewhere that would even be considered returning to. I don't think I've had a single positive experience on a fandom wiki ever, or at least not in over 8 years, with issues ranging from intrusive ads, to the comment section pop in making scrolling inconsistent, to even something as simple as it universally looking fucking ugly, I can't wait for people to leave and am actively cheering on its slow death as a website.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

I am an admin on another wiki that used to be on Gamepedia before the Fandom buyout. We forked immediately. I have also been self hosting a wiki for another game since early 2017. Completely worth it. Fandom has always had terrible user experience, and frankly they do not care about their users at all. Maybe their community-level staff do, but definitely not the higher ups. I've chatted with them directly when we were planning to fork. They're only in it for the money, not for the good of the editors or readers. They make ridiculous changes that are great for advertisers but completely subvert the user experience and actual content on the page. They've also let go a lot of their staff for nonsensical reasons. I really hope the Minecraft wiki goes through with the fork, and that more and more wikis follow. It's absurd how much of a monopoly they have, given how awful their service is. I for one will be happy to visit the Minecraft wiki again, as someone who plays occasionally, but not often enough to be keeping tabs on all the new features and updates. But I boycott Fandom wikis on principle so I haven't been there in years.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Exactly this.

When a company can't expand its market share anymore they will make the product cheaper, worse and more expensive.

For tech this means filling the product with bloat, upping the prices for consumers, and lowering their payouts to creators (subcontractors).

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

Fandom has always been massive garbage, thank goodness

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Looks like the add-supported-free-stuff business model really is collapsing.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (8 children)

The model is not the issue, all of these make great profits. The issue is that companies don't just pursue making a profit they pursue making ALL the profit, ie growth. If growth does not exist then investment in a company is not very attractive and investors leave, lowering company value.

The problem is that they reach a growth saturation point, and when they have reached that point what they do is self-cannibalise by making their services worse in order to continue the "growth" (in total revenues). This continues to happen until they kill themselves by making the service so shitty the users leave.

It's a system that is not trying to make anything sustainable. Under capitalism everything is trying to pursue infinite growth and that inevitably results in this outcome.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

The old Minecraft Wiki was so great. I was pissed when I heard they got bought by Fandom...

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Does anyone know how wiki.gg makes money? Wiki hosting side without stable income will just get bought out by bigger player or turn bad like fandom

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

Wiki gg does have ads, but they're pretty unobtrusive and are only videogame related.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

Fandom is so utterly annoying with those unrelated videos. Really annoying website.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

It's funny, many wikis moved off then-wikia to Curse's Gamepedia family and then they just merged back again, kinda sad :(

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Thank god, fuck that site. I hope they move to wiki.gg

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Fandom is unusable garbage.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (10 children)

I would love to see a federated wiki platform form somehow, as centralization has honestly been pretty terrible for both wikipedia and wikia/fandom.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Fandom is so bad I just blocked the domain. Chatgpt gives me info quicker and more precisely on older titles anyway.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

As a matter of fact, there are opportunities here for other companies that don't have general wikis for gamers to create a better hosting service. They have not done this and I don't understand why. Steam could easily do this, I think. Just imagine Steam creating a wiki for games, with links to the best guides, etc. It would be a modern version of GameFaqs (which still exists) but improved. When I do a search on a game and I get Fandom in my results, I tend to skip over it and look for something better without ad bullshit. I would think that other gamers tend to do the same thing. I mean, it's that bad, even for a user without a registered account (like me).

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

If they don't migrate to a wiki running on a Minecraft CPU virtual VPS, I riot.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

UESP is one of the best parts of Elder Scrolls games; forever may it reign

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