this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2023
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The video pretty much describes why Fandom is so bad and why many games are moving their wikis to alternative services, and why you should stop using it in general. Some examples include:
Ads everywhere, including autoplaying video ads that play another ad when they're done. There are also ads sneakily inserted in the middle of articles that are related to the wiki, like a Gamespot review (Gamespot is owned by Fandom)
A sidebar you can't remove that promotes their content
Fandom hijacked the community's Mcdonald's wiki to turn it into a giant advertisement
Accounts that are 4 days old can bypass restrictions and easily vandalize pages
Fandom sometimes introduces things nobody wants, such as AI generated answers that are usually wrong, take up the top half of the page, and with no way for wiki admins to remove it. They removed it after a lot of backlash but still...
When people fork their wikis to other sites, fandom refuses to let admins delete their old wikis. This makes new wikis difficult to start because Fandom usually ends up as the top result on search engines, even if they're old abandoned wikis.
Fandom seems like my experience on Fextralife
And then you learn about Fextra's embedded twitch player that artificially inflates their twitch view count and pushes out smaller content creators who are actually trying to engage with a game's audience.
God, I hate constantly seeing their channel with 50k+ views on Twitch. It's insane that embedding the player throughout their entire website isn't against TOS.
The good thing is that they are going to stop abusers of the embed system like Fextralife, the new policy was announced at TwitchCon https://blog.twitch.tv/en/2023/10/20/everything-we-announced-at-twitchcon-las-vegas/
You can block the element behind the player with the UBlock Origin element picker and it won't comeback. I took the time to build this into my UBlock filters list since I regularly use their shitty WotR Wiki. I would kill for a good WotR Wiki.
Thank you
Seems like on that last one someone could go through and change all the content in every page to a link to the new wiki. A PIA? Certainly, but at least it would get the ball rolling and use the built up SEO from fandom to help your new site get views.
Unfortunately they just use a bot to revert those. You're not allowed to truly migrate off fandom, all you can do is fork your own data and try to out-SEO the fandom wiki, because as soon as you put it.on fandom, fandom owns it too.
I wonder if you could use a bot and AI to write fake information and post that instead. Seems like fandom wouldn't have enough game specific info to judge the accuracy, especially if it happened over time.
Oh yeah... Gamespot, that place existed and it was terrible always. Then you look at the other things Gamespot own and realize they all got butchered in terms of reliability and impact.
When the OG crew left, so did I.
You're the best, thanks
What can we do with this information, I wonder...
The video also calls out that one of the challenges in moving off of fandom is SEO. The fandom sites often are above the new sites even when the fandom site becomes a pile of unmaintained, vandalized garbage. This suggests that vandalism actually helps fandom.
The best thing we can do is not visit the sites and don't link to them, instead using and linking to their new sites.
Nice write-up, I appreciate it