Stop using Fandom

[@mossbag69]

Update! As of 11/8/2023 Fandom has changed their policy regarding forking. You can no longer link to the new wiki site from the main page for two weeks like I described in the video. Once you fork, all admins are removed and no links to the new site are allowed anywhere but the forking discussion page. Seems Fandom has started to respond to the recent exodus from their website. Let's see if they make any changes to their platform that actually make it better. Also, please consider installing the Indie Wiki Buddy extension! It not only helps the Hollow Knight wiki community, but all the other wikis mentioned throughout this video! getindie.wiki/

[@IEJ7654321]

At least you can link to the forking discussion page. But yeah I can see why you can no longer directly link.

[@joploi7383]

i used an adblock my whole time so i didnt knew how shitty fandom was lel

[@jamweslay5298]

Wow. Hopefully there's a way around this.

[@Nitidus]

​@FrederickSmith-kf2jqLearn to spell before releasing a propaganda spam bot into the wild.

[@valkaerie8715]

@FrederickSmith-kf2jq Hell yeah, Christ is king, don't let the nay-sayers kill your faith

[@Hallowfont]

The most annoying thing fandom does for me is randomly reload the page and reset position to the top. Drives me nuts.

[@ninjanate5018]

It also constantly crashes my device for like no reason at all.

[@GuiSmith]

@@ninjanate5018No joke, the number of times my browser has crashed because of one to three tabs open on Fandom is higher than everything else, even having a dozen or more KZbin tabs open (which I have done throughout time way more, and have loads of extensions for).

[@superscatboy]

They literally have code that waits for the ten thousand ads to load them force the user back to the start to make sure they sure they view every single one.

[@mysryuza]

God, I thought I was the only one dealing with this 😭

[@garrythegoblin8162]

Holy crap I thought that was a problem on my end, like my bad Wi-Fi causing the page to reload or something.

[@ShayyTV]

I'm a developer for the Terraria Calamity Mod, and I can tell you first hand: Fandom is TERRIBLE. Please, do not use them. Ever. Even the process of switching from them to our own site (and for base Terraria too!) has been a complete mess, with them straight up refusing to take down pages that spread misinformation. Nowadays, the community has protested it so much by repeatedly vandalizing it day to day that they've just been forced to stop trying to fix it and allow the community to use it as a shitpost palace. Don't use Fandom.

[@mattyjj1]

No one asked.

[@Hawkatana]

​@@mattyjj1 Nobody cares that you didn't ask. Not everyone operates on the same middle school "logic" you do, kid.

[@xraider927]

​@@mattyjj1know your place, slick.

[@shirotako6249]

@@mattyjj1 No one needed to ask, kid

[@zbz5505]

​@@mattyjj1only losers think they need someone to ask to speak their mind. Like you for example.

[@lordsmorgasbord2646]

browsing fandom without an adblocker is like trying to drive down an interstate with your windshield covered in dead bugs and rotted leaves

[@mightyx5441]

yeah, I recently have been experiencing blind ads where, I click on a link, and it takes me to an ad image or site

[@Damian-cilr2]

Browsing the internet without an adblocker is like going to an extremely densely populated area when a pandemic is going on if you go on even a slightly wrong site,you get swarmed with 20 popups 5763 ads,and a "few" sites popping up as new tabs (okay no thats just an exxagerated joke but not using an adblocker can potentially let you get some malware quite easily)

[@luissaumeth8000]

I use an adblocker, and SOMEHOW their ads are so much it crashes my adblock

[@dntknonuttin]

I dread whenever a site only has a fandom wiki for game tips since if you look that shit on mobile, it's practically unusable. Mobile Fandom is a nightmare to navigate.

[@luissaumeth8000]

@@dntknonuttin mobile fandom costed me a factory reset of my old phone :') I got malware thanks to that shit and lost all my whatsapp stickers smh

[@crazychicken2005]

Not only is Fandom loaded with ads, but it is also unfriendly to old computers as well. Back in 2022 I did not have much money, and I was using a Dell Inspiron Mini 10V netbook as my main laptop. One day I was with my friends and tried to load a wiki that was hosted on Fandom. The netbook got really bogged down by all the ads and the video playing following me as I scrolled. The site ended up overloading the netbook to the point of the system fatally crashing. After that the netbook did not boot up, and I had to completely re-install the OS when I got home. The hard drive in the netbook failed soon after. Hated Fandom ever since that happened. RIP the Inspiron mini 10V's original hard drive 2009-2022. You will be avenged.

[@noodlesnook]

honestly! whenever i go on that site, it makes my tablet lag SO badly

[@79002]

Lmao

[@pierrelam4822]

I’ve used the website before for my tablet. It’s okay but there are too many ads although that’s kind of helpful.

[@rookiegameplay7519]

Does not sound like fandom faukt

[@someguitardude8462]

"Fandom killed my laptop" lol

[@sonicwave32]

As one of the admins on the Minecraft Wiki, I am so glad that we took the initiative and moved when we did. Today Fandom changed their "policy" to disallow basically any type of global announcement on the wiki itself, only allowing a notice on the main page that's entirely up to their terms.

[@denverbeek]

Honestly, if it's even possible, you should just delete the fandom wiki. It's not like anyone will seriously miss it.

[@Slop_Dogg]

@@denverbeekthey straight up don’t let you lol. unless it’s some little wiki with no traffic, they’ll just say no if you contact them to delete it.

[@GimOA]

@@Slop_Dogg you need to contact them to request deletion now?? Wow, they really DOES NOT want lose their content farms by any means

[@luodaniel8576]

@@Slop_Dogg can one deliberately vandalize the fandom pages to avoid readers going into the wrong wiki? seems weird if you can't vandalize your *own* pages...

[@OmegaTyrant]

@@GimOA That always been the case, Wikia/Fandom never willingly deleted any wiki that had any semblance of traffic. Like SmashWiki moved off Wikia back in 2010 and they wouldn't delete their wiki then nor even change the name (at least not until the actual SmashWiki started beating them so badly in search results that they were forced to try differentiating themselves by renaming to Smashpedia).

[@Parasyte316]

The pushback to fandom is so nice. I hated using fandom. Especially on mobile. It would jump and sputter trying to load ads and making everything almost unreadable.

[@bannnz]

fandom on mobile only shows about 4 lines of actual content, the rest is blocked by ads.

[@Heretowatchvideos123]

The only reason I went on the website is so I could learn more certain cartoon characters. The ads are a pain I’m not tryna see 5 ads per article 💀💀💀

[@zabeerfarid7687]

The fact that it’s for literally every ip ever is so frustrating

[@beardsntools]

It's actually pretty easy to leave fandom... rs integrated the wiki search into their game, that's how you beat fandom easily.

[@NachsteNachdemGaming]

Ikr i never saw any complaints when i used fandom so i just thought it was normal and i just has to deal with it

[@whirl3690]

Fandom: "Wikis belong to the community!" Also Fandom: Removes the work of the community because a fast food chain paid them

[@portalmast1177]

To be fair it was like the best troll ever ngl. I did this trick once on a server I own on April fools. It was very funny. Don't worry I got reverted after April fools

[@Circle-VI-Oreos]

well it was their fast food chain after all, so it was fair imo

[@portalmast1177]

@@Circle-VI-Oreos You are right about that it was something

[@notgray88]

What is Fandom supposed to do? McDonalds owns McDonalds. It's their legal copyright. People should not be getting mad at Fandom they should be getting mad at Mcdonalds. Fandom has no choice in the matter at all. They either can comply or McDonalds just can take down the page by force.

[@portalmast1177]

@@notgray88 All I can say is deal with it💀

[@jaceybella1267]

Man, I knew we were going down the wrong path when bulbapedia stopped being the top result on Pokémon Google searches

[@Toadey2012]

OH NO /

[@MrKgtas]

At least in Spanish internet we still have Wikidex as the top result on anything related with Pokémon

[@zeemgeem]

the ai generated answers is geniunely the funniest, most out of touch thing i have ever witnessed. they're really putting mandated misinformation on a WIKI SITE 💀

[@pandaking6247]

That shit was wild af

[@appleando752]

I remember watching a video where a Touhou fan gave an AI a quiz to see if it would get the right answer. It got the basic stuff right, but once he started asking even slightly more complicated questions like "What species is Remilia's pet" (Answer: Chupacabra), it completely broke and started using fanon material to answer the questions.

[@WitherBossEntity]

Reminds me of MDN (which is a technical reference site) trying out AI answers and misrepresenting everyone saying "NO. That makes no sense". LLMs are bullshit generators - they don't care about whether the answer is correct, just whether it looks like a real one, which is worse than not providing an answer.

[@lorenzomeulli750]

99% such decisions are made because some email-pusher of a mix manager found somewhere the absurd idea that it would increase engagment with the site. The problem is, I am not so sure they would be wrong

[@corpsimmons575]

Bro it cited fucking Azur Lane for HOLLOW KNIGHT. AND EVEN THEN IT WASNT CORRECT LMAO.

[@plaguekidd6902]

I like how the HK fandom abandoned the old wiki just like how the pale king abandoned his 70,000 dead children

[@witheri2um]

_Why this made me laugh so hard!??!?!_

[@mikadosannoji553]

the fans have been starving for silksong so theyre making the game a reality

[@LuperisNone]

Well, no. That's not a good comparison. It's more like Fandom is the Pale King (if he was a capitalist) and the communities are the kids (if they were bugs).

[@witheri2um]

@@LuperisNone Pale King *is* kinda a capitalist tho. Haven't you ever heard of his big ass statue you need to throw 3000- yeah you heard me right *FUCKING 3000 GEO!!!!* . FOR A SINGLE MASK SHARD!

[@TheyreBetterDry]

Iconic moment frfr (both of them)

[@bevanh.6068]

I've got mad respect for all these wiki creators, who put so much effort into archiving all this game knowledge. Keep fighting the good fight.

[@diegoaravena423]

Fallout 3?

[@Voingous]

@@diegoaravena423 "Getting a lot of Boss Baby vibes from this..."

[@aa-kz7hc]

its not even just game knowledge, its chocked full of knowledge from anime, manga, manhua, manwha, webcomics, webnovels, novels etc.

[@MrStone125]

RuneScape wiki goes hard, same for path of exile.

[@Chozo_Ghost]

I've spent the last week or so straight doing that with the 1997 game Blood. There's a non-Fandom wiki for it, but I don't have an account on it, but I do for Fandom, so I basically created all the pages for all the levels of the original game, both of the official expansions, and 3 well-known yet non-official expansions, mainly for people to use as a guide for finding secret areas. I mainly did that since the OG Blood Wiki didn't (and still doesn't to my knowledge) have the pages created for 2 of the 3 non-official expansions that have been out for 4 years (one of them) and just over a month (the newest one), and since I already had an account on Fandom and had done the same thing for other games, I figured "why the hell not?" Not sure how many people will actually use it, but it was something I was interested in finishing, no matter how many friggin' times I wanted to stop since it just kept going on and on lmao

[@NFSHeld]

Ever heard about LyricWiki? It used to be an independent wiki, but a DMCA claim made them migrate to Wikia. Wikia gladly took the content, made aggressive cross promotion with other music wikis (Glee, K-Pop groups, bands), then they launched an app with the content. Years later they rebranded to fandom, and suddenly started to censor the content to be "family-friendy" (read: advertiser-friendly). This lead to friction between Fandom and community, as the latter didn't like staff messing with the content. Fandom then closed the wiki to editing to have free reign, and lastly they just deleted all of the around 2 million content pages that were collectively created over 14.5 years, because they thought it was too expensive to maintain the wiki themselves. They didn't allow for a content dump. All those centuries of combined work is lost forever to the shareholder's greed. Disgusting company.

[@AuroraAce.]

truly horrible

[@tiruliru1189]

Jesus Christ

[@AzureGreatheart]

How is that legal.

[@HepiChestCow]

As someone who was formerly involved with being part of Fandom, an additional reason they stated to me as to why they didn't preserve the wiki was due to "vulgar" lyrics. Sadly, it's inevitable, especially for a wiki of this size. In all cases though, it's really horrible that a massive wiki with two million pages is now gone, reduced to atoms.

[@icetide9411]

Fandom is like a parent trying to monetize their child's talents and then not understanding why the child hates them so much

[@thewitness4134]

i feel a little too called out by this one ngl

[@mauricioalonso2157]

so you saying that fandom is the pale king?

[@xxsuperproductionsxx138]

yep.

[@XanthinZarda]

Close, but not quite. It's like trying to monetize a child for their skill in baking when their actual skill is making a C64 game in assembly.

[@blarghblargh]

not just fandom. every social media company with user contributed content. you are the product

[@daydreamteam1366]

I absolutely burst out laughing at the "now, I've been pretty mean to fandom in this video..." part at the end, it's absolute genius.

[@_comment]

I cracked up laughing.

[@cavvieira]

I exhaled.

[@attaboy7729]

it was so good lmaoo

[@Alexus00712]

The perfect way to end the video, lmfao xD

[@Wote89]

I may or may not have startled my partner with my laughing at that. No regrets.

[@howdyhamster]

I remember when Fandom took over a lyrics wiki and immediately shut it down for its content not being "advertiser-friendly". A ton of fan translations of foreign songs completely lost. Wayback machine doesn't have them.

[@kbhasi]

I used to use LyricWiki, which I think is what that wiki was called, but one day, I found their mobile app to just not work at all. Your comment helped answer why their mobile app went offline. Besides fan translations of lyrics to songs in other languages, I also remember that the wiki had fan-made lyrics for songs from obscure artists and genres that didn't get coverage on the major song lyric websites.

[@ulipeitzer1909]

its content apparently got sold off elsewhere though. I have rediscovered lyrics I transcribed to LyricWiki, including notes that indicated the lyrics were not 100% complete (was missing a word in one or two places)... I justify having browsed wikia/fandom with adblock and consider my contributions to this or that wiki sufficient payment instead.

[@JuJuJulesles]

That's just straight up criminal. Translation takes fucking forever, especially for songs where lyrics can have different meanings. To just... nuke so much content :(

[@assuredaviation9116]

It sucks cuz some vocalpid songs don't have translations

[@samumixofficial]

Fun Fact: The Lyrics wiki was the largest wiki, as it had 1.000.000 articles Shame it has gone down a waste

[@peterjane8869]

I forget how bad fandom is until i use it on my phone and get bombarded with ads which really slows things down by a lot. It's so intrusive especially the pop up ads and autoplay videos. I usually use my computer to look stuff up (I have adblocker) and never see the chaos until i have to search something with my phone when i'm away from my computer. Great video!!!

[@Joe18794]

I know this is late, but adblock apps are available for mobile that connect to the safari web browser

[@Snickerway]

Fun fact: The Zelda wiki originally left Wikia years ago. It was self-hosted for a few years before moving to a smaller wiki hoster, which was later bought out by Fandom. The recent Zelda Wiki move is its second after being reabsorbed the first time.

[@cshairydude]

This is a strong argument in favour of self-hosting.

[@gmestanley2214]

So that's why I remember an independent Zelda wiki existing before! I remember seeing one in like, 2014 and it had this ad for a game with a yellow orc that scared me. I'm pretty sure it was self-hosted and that ad just drove me to another one on a wiki hoster, which I figured was Zelda Wiki.

[@GrimTheDestroyer]

i use Zelda Dungeon as my wiki

[@GimOA]

They really don't wanna lose their precious content farm 😂

[@jurel-enlatado1]

@@cshairydude Sadly, self-hosting also means that you are responsible for making your site secure, plus it costs money. Creating a decent wiki site is hard work.

[@citrus1921]

haven’t watched the video yet but i’m glad to see someone talk about how truly terrible fandom is as a website, i hope there’s an alternative to this ad-ridden slow website sometime soon

[@Polemimic]

I’m very glad about this

[@kingpatatochip3357]

Yes, its so fucking clutered now. Every link opens like 7 ads that cover more than half the page, on mobile its even worse.

[@demonic_myst4503]

The admins are alao assholes and lazy

[@saywhaat595]

Wikidot is pretty good

[@CoracaoAcidental98]

As a Doom player I'm surprised that a Fandom exodus didn't happened WAY sooner in other communities, ever since the rebranding to Fandom the website became unbearable without an adblocker, massive communities that relied a lot in the wiki just got used to shit.

[@Luke08700]

I love the ending. There really is no “but they do do something well” that that transition implies.

[@dazza2350]

Yes, it's a good turnaround on an overdone phrase in video essay writing

[@ExValeFor]

That bit earned my sub. I am so done with youtubers feeling obliged to be balanced or say it's not actually that bad. Fuck that. This was great

[@davidumann6707]

Reminds me of a bit in American Dad "Dear viewers! We've made some jokes about drugs in this episode. I just wanted to point that out, I think they were pretty funny."

[@Architector_4]

Reminds me of a bit in Simpsons! Homer, in court, stating "Now, I'm not a man who's good with words...", and then pure silence for the next good minute lol

[@thanhnguyen-rs5it]

zzz

[@mattwo7]

15:20 Probably worth noting that wikis inactive for somewhere around 300 days on Miraheze will be straight up deleted.

[@ZaCloud-Animations___she-her]

According to their Dormancy Policy: 120 days (4 months) of inactivity before it's closed (unable to be edited) & has to be reopened for anyone to contribute. 1 year until it's hidden from public view, then another month until deletion. And brand new wikis, if they've received no contributions yet, are eligible for deletion after only 30 days of inactivity! :( ...Except another official page (Deleted Wikis info) contradicts the policy page, saying wikis are both closed & hidden after 6 months of inactivity (more lenient for closing, less lenient for hiding). Followed by saying that if your wiki DOES reach that point, it is immediately eligible for deletion too! :O Though they then vaguely reassure that they don't do it right AT the 6-month mark to give creators time to notice, but they don't give a solid timeline.

[@cactrot83]

Straight up, the Fandom wiki mobile experience was the thing that finally pushed me over the edge into running an adblocker on my phone. It's not the only culprit amongst websites I sometimes visit, but it's by far the most egregious.

[@sariusskelrets2610]

Same thing happended for my computer. Famdom not only constantly covered 3/4 of the page (including the upper half) in ads but tried to load so many of them it would double the memory use of my browser with 50 opened tabs if I opened even one fandom tab in it Then I installed an adblocker and never stopped using one, even if a website asks to remove it. No way I'm going back to being cluttered with ads all the time

[@ghb323]

it’s the closest but not equal to p0rn/pirate/filehosting sites that DELIBERATELY forces new tabs/window to a random third party pages just to use their site.

[@LynetteTheMadScientist]

Sadly my mobile adblocker seems to work on every site (including KZbin) EXCEPT Fandom. Ugh

[@incenerated9385]

@@LynetteTheMadScientist ycan you tell me what mobile adblocker you got? for some reason i can never find adblockers that ACTUALLY block ads and intrusive popups

[@lilcotorro]

@@incenerated9385 Same, granted I never put an actually effort to research a good one. I personally just downloaded the mobile version of Brave browser instead.

[@RetroDawn]

The ending was so hilarious. It fooled me into thinking that there was going to be a segue into a segment on some positives of Fandom. Well played.

[@mskiptr]

I had to double-check it's not a sponsorblock segment screwing with me or something lol

[@chlorobyte_projects]

The positives in question:

[@Beta_Mixes]

People should just stop with these positive segments in the endings, if something is bad, is bad, period. I was really glad our bro was making a joke, because way too many people go with this trend that "OH ITS NOT SO BAD!!", things are there are really bad, and some people try to shed some positivity into it for no good reason.

[@SadoMessiahLP]

@@Beta_Mixes this is what I call the "positivity cult". positivity became a cancer in recent years

[@Beta_Mixes]

@@SadoMessiahLP You are tremendously right dude

[@ginsengaddict]

For what it's worth, I shared this video to an official discord group managing the wiki on fandom for an audio drama, merely asking if this was of concern, and the very next day the main coordinator for that wiki group began the process of migrating to miraheze.

[@hiddenguy67]

🎉

[@Windisjisjnwj]

🥳🥳🥳

[@karukalua]

Smart men

[@Aria_4real]

Which wiki is it?

[@KingShinyRotom]

Very good job, sir

[@TheVoidrex]

The DRG fandom wiki literally puts a big red box on your screen 24/7 on all pages to tell you not to use the site and to find the official new one, while also adding how disrespectful fandom is, pretty deserved.

[@WipZedKay]

''Now I've been pretty mean to fandom in this video.'' Good job, keep it up!

[@thatfroggyguy]

I thought he was gonna apologize that was so much better

[@Alex.-._]

-Now I've been pretty mean to fandom in this video. -...buuuut ? -No buts, they deserve to be treated this way

[@rhydachhughes7642]

That's hands down the best part of the video

[@Ruminations09]

There's another pretty substantial issue that indie wikis have to deal with that you didn't mention: plagiarism. In the months leading to the migration by the Jojo's Bizarre Encyclopedia, the admins of that wiki did a lot of work to completely overhaul the articles as they moved them to improve the article quality and help boost search engine results. But then, Fandom literally plagiarized those articles and put them on the Fandom versions of those same topics.

[@mossbag69]

Pizza Tower wiki is dealing with that right now too

[@cyberteaaa]

wikis work under licenses which require credits, if someone on fandom is copy/pasting text from an indie wiki they should credit it, and anyone is free to confront fandom about it, but funnily enough fandom's own forking policy actually prevent copy/pasting because they will hate to credit an indie wiki and would rather delete copypasta.

[@Rot8erConeX]

Willing to bet that Fandom's doing it intentionally as an SEO tactic. As Mossbag mentions in this video, Google ignores "duplicate" results, so if Fandom says the same thing as the official wiki, the official wiki is pushed even lower since Fandom is already "trusted" by Google. Making it even harder for forked wikis to get on their feet.

[@TheJaguarthChannel]

not to mention, fandom knows by copying that google will suppress the fork. google cares about who has more traffic, not the original source@@cyberteaaa

[@sailor5853]

And what's the problem with this? If the company responsible for a wiki ends up disappearing like many companies do, I'd prefer it has the same information on wikia. My hatred of wikia will let me from using it before it happens anyway.

[@_Guigui]

The way the video ends on "Now, I've been pretty mean to Fandom throughout this video" with no elaboration is HILARIOUS and shows that it's deserved

[@specs.weedle]

about 9 seconds before I heard that I checked the timestamp and it was currently 22:05/22:17 lol

[@expressience]

Fr I thought he was gonna say something else but nope😂

[@PokeCube_]

it sounded like an ending to a jan Misali video (most people probably won't get this but that's what it reminded me of)

[@klltx2001]

Legit I thought there's be more but there wasn't and I was left giggling like an idiot. There's absolutely nothing to be nice about towards Fandom now lmao.

[@DoctorFalchion]

​@@PokeCube_Oh 100%

[@PipeyardCentipede]

Since the rain world fandom wiki was abandoned it has slowly become a place for shitposting. The stuff that was put there was genuinely HILARIOUS. But unfortunately, recently fandom sent a team of their admins to un-vandalize the wiki. And guess what? THEY JUST PUT AI GENERATED TEXT. THE WIKI IS LESS INFORMATIVE AND ACCURATE THAN IT WAS WHEN EVERY PAGE WAS VANDALIZED. they had one job, and didn't even try. It's not even worth vandalizing anymore. they straight up doomed themselves from getting any more traction.

[@ShadowOfTheSPQR]

AI content, that's hilarious. The unmaking writes itself.

[@DisguisedParrot]

Its genuinely sad that such a briliant game has to rot away becuse of this BS

[@PipeyardCentipede]

@@DisguisedParrot don't worry, the ACTUAL rw wiki is on miraheze for like 2 years now and is better than fandom ever was

[@lucymorrison]

Minecraft Wiki has a similar thing going on. All the actual information is kept up to date on their independent wiki, but users are taking it upon themselves to protest the Fandom wiki not being deleted by filling it with made up bullshit, vandalism and out of date information. Great work lads

[@krissyai]

@@DisguisedParrot ha, rot

[@lucaslol7962]

As someone who runs a pretty big wiki on Fandom, I absolutely support people's decision to stop using it. If it weren't for uBlock, I'd genuinely quit the website altogether and delete my account. Power to you all

[@xboydubose7254]

What's the wiki?

[@flydrop8822]

what is ublock?

[@eerietimes]

@@flydrop8822 open source ad blocker and virus protection

[@AidanTheBandit]

​@@flydrop8822one of the best AdBlock browser extensions

[@annarenfold438]

@@flydrop8822 One of the best ad-blocking extensions out there.

[@pread]

guy who made 80% of the spelunky 2 wiki here (with the massive help of the rest of the community), thank you so much for making this video and spreading awareness of the wiki rabbit hole. it's so nice seeing a channel with as many eyes as yours gets talking about this stuff. ive for the most part retired from the spelunky wiki, but i very much hope the spelunky wiki makes the move soon.

[@Slimehardtshawty]

Thank YOU and other individuals that fill the Wikis with lots of information. I dunno what I woulda done if we didnt have yall

[@dankwojak3689]

Thank you for making it man. It’s honestly a great resource for the games finer details that almost can’t be figured out just by playing a lot.

[@logansmith6342]

As a lover of Spelunky 1 and 2 and #8 world for normal speed run the first month it came out, thank you so much for your work. I also have a huge amount of love and passion for this game ❤

[@staticj2763]

Fanum taxed ads

[@SuperNinjaFat]

oh hey pread!

[@johndoe-cj3rq]

It’s nice to see people from different fandoms being brought together because of fandom being terrible

[@audiobooksforfree7857]

I know. I was searching up the chapter Jason dies in Trials of Apollo and they gave me an add for the Percy Jackson Movie Fandom. (I’m a huuuuge Pjo fan and I wanted to cry)

[@nickxelyt5660]

It really is.

[@Quacking-duck]

@@audiobooksforfree7857 spoiler warning please

[@NatyDashy]

Im kinda scared, can you recommend non-fandom aesthetic wikis ???

[@elijahherstal776]

I'm glad that people are moving away from Fandom. If Fandom were a Library, and you were looking for some information for research: You'd get accosted by like seven of those dudes swinging advertisement signs, a dozen survey-takers, and a soundcloud rapper doing a full-blown music video right in front of the section you need to access. ...and then you'd find the book you're looking for was written by a nutcase that cites his sources as "Revealed to me in a dream" and "I swear to God, trust me bro".

[@yulks4181]

The fact that so many communites have independently undertaken the gargantuan task of remaking their wikis is a testament to just how shit fandom is. Despite this video's brutal criticism, it doesn't even cover probably half the things that make fandom suck so bad. They really have no one to blame but themselves.

[@DracoStarScale]

Especially considering how they removed certain formats under the guise of "not having the resources to keep updating" when in reality, they just didn't want to put in extra work to cram more ads into each format.

[@Ioganstone]

Ya I wanted some more Machiavellian stuff than just McDonalds. Like some accelerationist nightmare scenario with the problems of Wikipedia given a profit motive.

[@Ioganstone]

@@DracoStarScale Deletionism serves to lower the common denominator though which is more attractive to advertisers. Im guessing more pages that advertisers can advertise on normativity wise = money.

[@omegawario7479]

Screw fandom. Me and my friend made a wiki a few years ago to create a lore universe for an inside joke we’ve been building on since middle school. They kept closing it and reopening it claiming it was too inactive until one day they just completely eradicated it and claimed it never existed when I asked them to at least give me an archive of it. Those were a bunch of fun memories gone in an instant for no reason.

[@haz0816]

i know right? they closed 2 of my wikis and claimed they were "inactive and had little to no information" even though I've been adding information and assets to the wikis over the course of a month but after watching this video i realized they meant that my wikis weren't very profitable for them lmao

[@connorconnor1631]

that's disgusting

[@Naltrex]

if you still have the link, it might be worth it to look it up in the wayback machine, maybe it's been saved

[@mojn4249]

@@Naltrexunfortunately the wayback machine only saves it if it's been added previously Found this out when trying to look at an old version of a website and no-one had saved it previously lol

[@mousermind]

That's a more legitimate issue than anything mossbag mentioned. That sucks, mate.

[@autumnroses6630]

Great to see this anti Fandom movement picking up steam. I was somewhat of a contributor of a fandom belonging to a long running indie game. We recently moved to an independently owned wiki last year or so and since then, Fandom staff (namely Saunt3D who was mentioned in this video) have removed admin rights from the former’s founders and censored all links to the new one, leaving our entire community outside of Discord in the dark. Worst of all they refuse to delete the old one. We routinely get people in our discord asking about the Fandom wiki because the new one has been consistently drowned out by SEO infested google searches. We even recently had a Fandom shill join our server and blame our staff. It’s so baffling. They’re not even trying to hide the fact that they want to monopolize video game information.

[@tsm688]

They're cutting off editing powers just to spite people? That's fucked up.

[@krasket]

Which game?

[@MimiksYou]

drop the wiki the people are dying to know what game it is

[@annaairahala9462]

I've been advocating for this for almost a decade now. Seeing it pick up steam honestly makes me so happy

[@annaairahala9462]

@@tsm688 That's been one of the common issues of Fandom when a community shows any hints of leaving. Fandom, despite their name, is actually quite anti-fandom.

[@Thea-Time-13th]

An update on this as a wiki-editor (I did most of the Pale Court mod's research/editing); I'm happy to say that we're past that fandom bullshit, and glad to say that we show up above the fandom wiki on most (if not all) browsers for the search 'HK wiki'. Fandom still shows up though when searching individual bosses/items/etc. which is a pain, but we're getting there!

[@cloudbrooks]

omg you really had me at the end there, i hate it when people are like "now i have described an absolutely awful company, but we should remind ourselves that being in their position is hard :(" thank you for not doing that lmao

[@mostlime12195]

fr man I laughed out load when he didn't continue and ended the video right there

[@zyax123]

This earned my sub + like big time

[@littlegolddragongirl9434]

It’s comedy gold! An ad played at the very end and I was like: “Wait, is there more?” And indeed there wasn’t! I love it! XD

[@aelahn]

but are those people wrong? the only people who can't understand this couldn't manage a lemonade stand... not that you have to sympathise with them but trying to do something big is clearly hard to maintain.

[@cloudbrooks]

@@aelahn everyone knows its hard to be in their position. everyone on the planet. reminding us of that is just an attempt to excuse their actions.... which is especially infuriating when the actions are so greedy.

[@metalgeo]

Yes! Wikis are, no joke, my favourite place to mindlessly browse. Just endlessly reading and clicking links to related articles. Hope everyone watching this video (and everyone else as well!) are going to support communities who wish to ditch Fandom for a place they can actually call home. Much love to everyone fighting the good fight and who contribute to these wikis ❤

[@steponkusceponas4085]

good to know i'm not alone in this hobby

[@tooftreef]

@@steponkusceponas4085 Yep! I like to randomly browse wikis too. Be it Wikipedia or a wiki of a game I like.

[@KindaBoredToday]

@@tooftreefSame

[@oantran8060]

ok

[@bleblo-jr9xb]

Random or new fan will and will always prefer ease to access the info. No matter how hard you try corpos are the new normal.

[@mind-of-neo]

I can't believe entire communities are now moving their wikis off of Fandom. It's finally happening! I hate Fandom so much. When they started aggressively shoving pop up ads down my throat, I said "well I guess i'm not using wikis anymore." It broke my heart when they closed the good minecraft wiki and replaced it with that terrible fandom site, so I'm elated to learn they moved back off of fandom.

[@nickxelyt5660]

Me too. Hopefully it brings some soul back into the fandoms.

[@ZeepAtomic]

I hope KND Code Module will move their wiki soon in light of this madness. While the KND fandom might be small compared to the big ones, the people in it are very caring and passionate about the show. So much love and effort was put into the wiki, and I don't want ads to pollute the platform.

[@geckopecko]

y'all don't use adblock?

[@matthewbarabas3052]

use an adblocker. its extremely simple.

[@theapexsurvivor9538]

I genuinely can't wait for dark souls wikidot wiki to finally get its search bar working again so we can be rid of fextra and fandom in that community too.

[@shadowman_44]

I remember going on the Dragon Ball Wiki's article for Beerus and one of the fucking pieces of trivia said that Beerus had "the most barefoot scenes out of any character in the series" and that edit had gone unnoticed for *2* fucking years. So yeah it's probably best that Fandom just dies when most of the big communities fork away.

[@torenchao]

fun fact: you can put 'anti' in front of the 'fandom' in any fandom link, and it will take you to a site that strips it down (so no ads, etc)

[@TorrentialStardust]

Lol, there's baggage to that terminology but it is poetic

[@ThommyofThenn]

​@@TorrentialStardustwhat did he meant by thos

[@gravity119]

You are a hero

[@m1k3y48]

@@ThommyofThenn "antifandom" has "antifa" in it, I assume that's what they were referring to

[@CryosisOfficial]

Doing this also makes the page a complete eyesore, btw and will fuck up any templates on the page.

[@zeefy9606]

We call this enshittification, which happens to all tech companies. Once they get enough market share, they start making profits from their market share by making the service worse for the users, and it is harder for the users to move to another platform as they are now dependent on their platform.

[@tankguy5312]

Another example of absolute control, tech companies are not your friends. And theres a reason why they still doing that.

[@e5858]

How is that different from monopoly?

[@tankguy5312]

In my own words for monopoly, theres nothing bad about owning specific companies and their assets/properties as long as you *not* abusing or comitting attrocities about the system itself. The only thing that still scares me is about passing the rent to the things you bought like you have nothing to own.

[@anonymousapproximation8549]

​@@e5858presuming that there's no government regulations preventing competition from entering the field, then a physical monopoly is a lot more likely to topple over, because offering a superior product would not be _that_ difficult to achieve. A digital monopoly, however, is more difficult to topple, mainly because they're not making the product or service themselves, but rather _hosting or otherwise supporting_ the people that do, usually because of their visibility to an established customer base and the ease of use and viewing on both sides. As far as I understand, at least.

[@crazy_pyromaniac]

@@e5858Enshittification (AKA platform decay) is an effect of monopolies within the online tech world. Many new niches have been filled by only one company since their beginning, and this is leading to an increasing negative experience for online customers (as seen in Facebook, KZbin, Uber, Amazon, etc.) There's a good Wikipedia article on it, but comments with links are now being removed on KZbin due to bots and lazy moderating.

[@moddedinkling4168]

As a staff member in two wikis part of the Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance, I am happy to see more of these wikis moving away from Fandom. However, I wish this was a more widespread initiative. There is clearly a problem that not enough editors or readers are addressing, and Wikipedia still adamantly refuses to document any of these events due to "lack of notability"

[@AfutureV]

What do you mean by the Wikipedia part?

[@moddedinkling4168]

@@AfutureV Wikipedia chooses to remove information about independent wikis splitting away from Fandom due to lack of notability, or at least that's what they are claiming. This is in spite of major independent wiki communities such as NIWA and SEIWA encountering some controversial clashes with Fandom.

[@kdsvgmremastering848]

Down with the old kings! Let's make a new Wikipedia!

[@1000-THR]

​@@kdsvgmremastering848we dont need a new wikipedia

[@7QWERTY13]

Shoutout to Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance for being so goddamn ahead of the curve with this stuff. I remember learning NIWA was a thing over a decade ago and thinking it was the coolest thing since fan wikis themselves.

[@oopdi]

UESP for Elder Scrolls has been going strong since 1995!

[@TimeBucks]

The AI generated answers is genuinely the funniest

[@RaytoRyu]

I fucking laughed at the question about Hornet's sisters. The answer is clearly about Azur Lane, a chinese gacha game about anthro WWII boat waifus. I have no idea where the fuck the AI went to get this answer. The Azur Lane's wiki isn't even on Fandom.

[@IsaiahOkon-cp9zk]

Nice

[@vasilemariangiarap7005]

Super ok ❤🎉😅

[@sachinnath770]

Nice

[@anusreeshil4265]

Hi

[@singerofsongss]

I hope this starts to get tech companies to wake up to the fact that people really don’t like looking at ads. Advertising has gotten so pervasive and encroached on so many of the boundaries it once had online. It’s honestly so gross that I can’t go 5 minutes online without being bombarded by bright, loud, flashy, distracting ads.

[@nemtudom5074]

Everything about companies just goes directly against everyone's interests. Nature, society, the world, all of these are clashing with the interests of companies to make as much money as possible, and then somehow increase that further

[@YadonTheCat]

That's capitalism baybeeee

[@Ramonatho]

Depending on what sites you've used in the past it used to be 5 mins till a porn ad anyway on shit like newgrounds

[@octave38]

Oh they know. Everyone hates ad and everyone knows it But the goal isn't for you to like ads; it's that you buy what they sell, and you do. That's what capitalism is about: as long as it makes profit there is no consideration for the lives, the health, the comfort, the freedom, .. of anyone. Children are getting their brain ruined by constant stimulation all to generate ad revenue, just like workers are and have been getting their health ruined all to generate profit

[@patrickviny661]

​​@@YadonTheCatcapitalism is what allows this type to entertainment to exist, what am i saying? of couse in sociaty that every is equal would waste time, people and resouces with to niche😮!

[@ConanNews]

We (ConanWiki, German-speaking) forked in 2008 and are since then self-hosted. Our Patreon supporters help us being 100 % ad-free. It's stunning to see it takes for others until 2023 to fork on their own. Do it as soon as possible, if you can. Wikia bought out Gratis-Wiki in 2008, our reason to fork, and it just gets worse every day! Please fork. Please leave Fandom. Don't wait another 15 years. Special THANK YOU to SuperHamster for having us in the Indie Wiki Buddy extension.

[@nemtudom5074]

Out of curiosity, how much are the server costs for the wiki per month?

[@cooraa]

Love, love, love the German Conan wiki!! So many episodes and I'm always pleasently surprised to see each one explained and remembered on there 🥰

[@ConanNews]

@@cooraa Dankeschön! ♥ We don't have many editors, but the ones we have are on fire. We appreciate every help we can get, even if it's "just" a typo correction. Everything helps us on our journey to host and deliver the best Detective Conan Wiki with our ConanWiki, since 2008 and hopefully forever! It belongs to all of us.

[@ConanNews]

@@nemtudom5074 28.27 for everything. Thanks to our Patreon supporters we can keep everything up and running without ads! We want to invest a few euros more starting this month to have an even better experience for everyone. Since we rely on donations we have to be careful with any upgrades.

[@AAnnaa286]

WE HAVE A GERMAN CONAN WIKI??????? WHAT

[@ripleyandweeds1288]

Another issue for Fandom based wikis is censorship. Wikis like the Monster Girl Encyclopedia wiki got nuked completely for NSFW content, and regardless of your opinion of NSFW wikis its unfair that people who are in those communities aren't allowed to post information on a series just because a corporation can't monetize said wiki.

[@Thebois938]

“Why am i not allowed to be a degenerate on (blank) website? this is outrageous!”

[@theunknowman12]

​@@Thebois938 when the original show/games literally have nsfw in it, it become impossible for the Wiki to not have nsfw. Do you even have a mind to think?

[@m.streicher8286]

​@@Thebois938the insecurity oozing of anyone who uses the word "degenerate"

[@pileofcheese5017]

Holy shit you really got me with that ending. I was sure there was some softening of the blow somewhere in this video, going "well euh they're not terrible people there guys", but no. Fandom fucking sucks. Corporatising passion and knowledge sucks. Good on you for sticking to your hard line.

[@vette21man]

Came here to say exactly that. I had to rewind a couple times at the very end to ensure the video didn’t get cut off or something. Well done. Well done.

[@gomango99]

Ehh imo Fandom have too many ads in mobile but having ads so they can *run their website* isn’t outrageous. I just hope the alternatives aren’t stealing the articles from Fandom and taking what they own

[@LoachAo]

@@gomango99ok corpo, you don’t need that many ads on every wiki to run any website, they are corporate greedy fatcats. People like you are why we are still slaves to capitalism, because people enjoy being dogs apparently. Doesn’t make any damn sense to me.

[@dragifire]

​@gomango99 the articles were written by the community, they don't "belong" to Fandom at all. The communities would be entirely within their rights to copy Fandom articles (which they do when they fork wikis)

[@TheGameMasher]

@@gomango99 it’s not the existence of ads that’s the problem, it’s visual vomit covering most of the screen (especially on mobile) that happens to also be an advertisement.

[@nateharvey1300]

I’m so happy that we, as a society, are gradually moving beyond the need for that Fandom wiki site

[@Nico_com_c]

In memory of Gamepedia R.I.P.

[@Ttegegg]

@@Nico_com_cI’ll always miss those trailer parodies

[@OHHHHUSBANT]

Now with mods, and game communities stop being shitcord only

[@Bluecupcake_funko7]

Then I HATE society

[@dupisdisasterpiece1058]

I disagree. Fandom better because there is tons of autistic people on there

[@ProBadSing]

The ending of this video was the best ending that I've seen in a video essay. Provides a really solid empathic view to Fandom that it deserves.

[@Thespikedballofdoom]

Was so good I thought he chopped a part of the video off that he wanted to remove after upload. the goat

[@H.W.Robots]

I laughed pretty hard ngl

[@dsrichmond]

I went back and was like wtf did my internet randomly die lmao. Amazing.

[@setster007]

Yeah, that one reset my brain a little. I loved it.

[@notmithosis7350]

"Now, I've been pretty mean to Fandom throughout this video." And it will stay that way.

[@stevenneiman1554]

The dumbest thing about enshittification is that in the long run it isn't even good for the companies that do it, only for the CEOs at the time and the shareholders who know the right time to cash out. If a company has spent long enough running a good business they can build up a lot of trust and user inertia, but if they treat that as a resource to spend by enshittification, sooner or late the well will run dry and something that could have been both a boon to humanity and a steady source of revenue for decades to come is squandered. I wish every company was run by someone like Gabe Newell.

[@dominickarma6646]

Hi! As someone who's considerably involved in the Calamity community (and a former dev for the project), I was a bit surprised to hear you mention it in this video lmao As you said, the Fandom wiki is more or less abandoned at this point, serving as a location for people to come together to shitpost, spread micro-misinformation, and write up fake content for fun. It's basically a subculture of its own at this point. There's far too much at this point to effectively unearth all the misinformation. You briefly mentioned how Gamepedia was bought out, but I think it's important to emphasize the impact that event had. Calamity's wiki used to be on Gamepedia before this merger occurred. We never originally consented to using Fandom, we were simply forced into it being there as a consequence of that. We of course sought to have it removed, but as you can imagine this didn't really go anywhere and there was little leverage to force such action (To my understanding the technicalities of the law wouldn't really be on our side, but even if they were the development team is nowhere near the size where litigation is anywhere close to a viable option), hence the jump to wikigg. I can't imagine we were the only project to end up in this frustrating situation. All this to say, thank you for helping in getting less people on that damn site. I suspect it'll have a positive impact beyond your traditional Hollow Knight centered community/content.

[@_connorsseur]

This happened to the Dead Cells wiki too. It's really upsetting to have all your hard work irreparably altered without your consent like that. But at least we got the fork out of there!

[@sammiller3875]

I used the fandom wiki for calamity and it convinced me to fight the WHOLE boss rush just to fight the final boss and I was so disappointed when it lied.

[@ThatBugBehindYou]

micro-misinformation?

[@Fuzzlepuzzle]

I used to edit the Overwatch wiki way back in 2016. At one point I removed a "tips and tricks" video from a character's page because it was outdated and had bad advice, and Gamepedia staff messaged me and told me I couldn't do that because the video was made by the same company which owned Gamepedia. I wasn't much of a fan of Gamepedia after that. It sucks they got bought out by an even more invasive company. :(

[@someplant5971]

oh hey it's the you hope your drinking water or something

[@spugelo359]

Claiming that closing the abandoned wiki would hurt the majority of the community is BS. The existence of it is far more harmful to the community due to inaccurate information, outdated information, lacking new information, vandalism ect. And not only does it offer you BS, but also make it harder to find the up to date wiki on another website.

[@ShadowOfTheSPQR]

The true reason of course comes down to fandom wanting that sweet sweet traffic for revenue.

[@Eidolon1andOnly]

*etc. (not "ect."). It's an abbreviation of _etcetera._ Notice the first three letters in order.

[@LeBonkJordan]

@@Eidolon1andOnly I always pronounce the "ect" misspelling out loud as "ec tesera")

[@jesusdontlikethatimgaybuts9493]

@@Eidolon1andOnlypretty sure we all got the point but thanks

[@SalreixVonOtsuu]

i've had a grudge against fandom for years and seeing their downfall brings me great joy

[@Foam_Woa]

I hate it too. Glad to see it gone, it sucks.

[@hakayonder3396]

​@@Foam_Woa Except it's not gone yet and won't be soon.

[@BRIANNA_00]

A bit too early to say they've had their downfall.

[@Naz1Killer]

I stopped relying on Fandom when they gave Yamato "he/him" pronouns outside of her Oden persona, despite being confirmed otherwise by Oda.

[@eatatjoes6751]

@@Naz1Killer I stopped reading Fandom when the ads just took over.

[@lenapawlek7295]

Glad that wikis are leaving - i try and avoid reading fandom wikis because you literally cannot see with all the ads - wishing the best of luck to the independent wikis!!!

[@RubyCat_7]

They also have so many trackers. Like over 200 no joke

[@Chubby_Bub]

Wiki editor here, I am very glad you made this video and spread awareness. One thing you also forgot to mention is that anyone who tried to edit or even talk about the Grimace page was indefinitely banned. The AI incident was also shameful, though hilarious in some cases, and I think it helped open a lot of people's eyes.

[@extragarb]

As an internet pedestrian, the AI "Q&A" is such a bafflingly stupid decision that I'm genuinely confused by how it even got green lit. How could a company that deals in fandoms as a commodity think the people deep in the wiki trenches for a niche interest wouldn't spot the glaring, inhuman errors that AI was cranking out. It feels like someone in that corporate office had to have known that an AI answering lore questions so inaccurately that its genuinely entertaining would actually be seriously tolerated by a fan community. It just seems so obviously flawed to have a mediocre AI software amalgamate lore answers (from god knows what source material) for an audience specifically seeking a nonfiction resource about something they care about

[@Chubby_Bub]

@@extragarb When they took it down after the backlash, their explanation made it very clear that some corporate guy went "whoa, AI is the cool new thing, free content and increase SEO!" and they didn't think about it any further. It was pulling from all of Fandom instead of just the particular wiki, but thanks to your comment I may have realized what made it worse: I think they were pulling not just from articles on any wiki, but from their crappy social media forums each wiki has that's basically inhabited by children. I figured this out because it seems to be the source of my favorite example, Yona from Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. For context, Yona was introduced as the fiancé of Prince Sidon, a fan-favorite tumblr sexyman who was shipped with Link, so she made people angry. This led to the following questions on Yona's page (paraphrased) Q: Who is Sidon's girlfriend? A: he doesn't have one Q: Is Sidon in love with Link? A: It is a fact that he is in love with Link, which has led to fanart etc. Q: Who is Sidon's love interest? A: correctly answering Yona, contradicting the other (wrong) answers Q: Does Sidon have a fiance? A: Yes, she's even been given the nickname 'fsifsgbksdvbskdcjgjfdgbskdjf ugly' by his most loyal admirers! This is what the page for Yona actually said. I looked up "fsifsgbksdvbskdcjgjfdgbskdjf ugly" to find it came from a discussions post on Nintendo Wiki. And then the AI placed this content, most of which isn’t even about the right character, on what is supposed to be an encyclopedic article. It is laughable that Fandom clearly did not test their new feature whatsoever, but as I said, it has led to some humor and exposing that they're creating digital slop.

[@tali64squared]

I was wondering why I was handling so many requests today. As one of Miraheze's volunteer wiki creators (and currently the most active one), I'm glad that Miraheze is getting the recognition it deserves (because although it's been relatively popular even before this video existed, it's not exactly mainstream in the wiki world), though it'll definitely mean a much heavier workload for us. (Side note: I handled one wiki request while writing this comment. It was an approval.)

[@mossbag69]

Sorry for the extra work!

[@tali64squared]

@@mossbag69 It's alright; I can handle it.

[@jamm6_514]

speaking of that, Thank you so very much for your work tali, if it wasn't for Miraheze we from Xomnipedia would never have been able to compile our world building anywhere

[@Cygerion]

yeeeaahhh thats debatable. miraheze deletes wikis after only 60 days of inactivity which is... very much less than ideal

[@talentlessgamer5658]

@@Cygerion this is an understandable criticism, BUT miraheze is funded ONLY by people who donate, making their ENTIRE site ad-free. this also means that they have limited bandwidth to be able to support these wikis - as an owner of miraheze, would you want inactive, unused wikis taking up bandwidth that would be better used somewhere else? there is an easy solution to this, you simply need to make ONE simple edit to any page on the wiki in order for it to not be marked as inactive. i would know, since i have 2 wikis sitting under my belt that i haven't really done much with, but it only takes me going there once every few weeks to make an edit for it to stay active. it's not that big of a deal, and more popular wikis won't even have this issue at all.

[@Kebbo1992]

As an editor on Pikipedia (17:14) and WiKirby (17:54) (the OBJECTIVELY SUPERIOR Pikmin and Kirby Wikis), let me tell you that literally everyone there hates fandom.

[@DonVigaDeFierro]

Honestly, that's expected, but I'm glad people see the reality of that website. Anyways, Wikirby is great.

[@WaluigiisthekingASmith]

pikipedia is such a blessed name

[@KainYusanagi]

And will continue hating it when they buy out the next wiki origin.

[@ilikepie4685]

I guess it will stay that way until a more accessible alternative is introduced

[@l_amp]

i use pikapedia all the time thank you so much for your work

[@BagelBoyMan]

As a fandom phone user I’m so desensitized to all the ads and other bs that it doesn’t even bother me anymore. The scary part is that I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or not.

[@SemiHypercube]

Every time a wiki leaves Fandom, an angel gets its wings

[@stary_kartofel2137]

Dude you're everywhere what is this

[@Cubeytheawesome]

I bet for the idea wiki, it will be like 100 due to how many pages there are

[@FiSH-iSH]

SO TRUE 🗣️🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥🔥

[@LavaCreeperPeople]

Outside. You're right though, lol

[@bjeelaa8795]

yep, which biblically means only 7,405,926 wikis can leave... what a shame

[@styx64]

as a huge terraria fan, I cannot put into words how much nicer it is to use the official site rather than the fandom wiki

[@jessicamarsh1337]

same, I am new to the game and can't find out how to do anything bc fandom is just ads.

[@TrueXiarno]

@@jessicamarsh1337 Don't forget to install the extension!

[@nvm-x4h]

I have 500 hours and i want to say that after using it a bit for fun 90% of the info is very outdated.

[@styx64]

@@nvm-x4h you mean fandoms wiki or the official wiki?

[@nvm-x4h]

@@styx64 fandom, and GOD DAMN it has more holes in its info than swiss chesse.

[@The_Top_Hat_2]

one time i tried to use the pizza tower miraheze wiki for a slideshow but my school blocked miraheze so i had to use fandom and there was like 16 ads on screen at once and i INSTANTLY got a headache

[@YimYum911]

The “now I’ve been pretty mean to fandom” then the video ends at the end made me roll on the floor 😂

[@RadikAlice]

10/10 ending gag

[@Nitram4392]

Same, that was a good one.

[@elmemearana]

Same lmao

[@Utsuhoagie]

Yeah, I was listening to the video while doing something else, but then it just ended like that and I thought YT was fucking up LMAO

[@abfg616]

SAME

[@shadie-cat]

Another niche fandom not mentioned that also departed from this site is Fear and Hunger, though it is to my understanding that they left due to a "no NSFW" policy. Their leaving isn't because a thirsty fandom, no, it's because the games themselves are packed full of grimly mature content. They left because the policies kept them from making a proper page.

[@stealthyfuck3217]

I loved reading funger fandom wiki right after they moved. It got vandalized hard and filled with memes and funny missinformation

[@LarusFotia]

As soon as you mentioned Fear and Hunger, I immediately understood why lmao

[@Mizu2023]

Oh you mean gory stuff. I should really play some more different games tbh

[@korokseed1619]

My favorite example of wiki vandalism was when someone added “Give Up” to the Strategy section for the Shark Giant in the Bloodborne wiki. It’s still there, too, which I think is the funniest part.

[@KINGSNAKE-lh7oe]

Mine's got to be the just blatant misinformation on Calamity's side. They just make shit up and put it there and that's half the content on the wiki. It's glorious.

[@Cr3zant]

I mean, that's about what you would get if you asked for strategies from the Souls community. They'll either tell you you're shit and to stop trying, or to just git gud cause it's so easy.

[@blunderingfool]

@@KINGSNAKE-lh7oe I certainly wouldn't mind an actual bronze wall fight though, looks like you'd get some good drops. =P

[@korokseed1619]

@@Cr3zant I mean the “give up” is more just a joke about how the enemy is universally seen as annoying, not a jab at people struggling against it. At least that’s how I (and other people I’ve seen) see it as.

[@donet0death240]

@@Cr3zantmost of the community is actually annoyingly supportive to counterpart the shithead’s who brag about being good at video games.

[@ArmaanAdhikariNG]

I absolutely hate Fandom due to how hard it is to add 1 fucking image to an infobox template

[@twotruckslyrics]

youre so right,

[@ArmaanAdhikariNG]

@@twotruckslyrics i learnt how 2 doo it

[@eXaiix]

After Fandom got bought out by a private equity firm it really went downhill fast. I’m one of the open source developers of MediaWiki and even I don’t use Fandom without an adblocker. Felt a bit weird the few times I had to meet with Fandom engineers to discuss stuff I’ve done because it would impact them. Props to the people who are able to get MediaWiki instances up and running because it’s difficult even for the developers of it

[@kacperfilipek8461]

Hey, I just wanted to thank you for contributing to MediaWiki. I made an instance for my year at Uni and I just think it's a wonderful project in today's ever more centralized internet.

[@AiLoveAidoru]

Honestly I admire Hello Project Wiki for being able to put up with Fandom’s crap.

[@eXaiix]

@@kacperfilipek8461Thanks! It’s all thanks to the people who donate to Wikipedia which lets me have a job that doesn’t make me feel like a piece of shit. I’d also like to take the opportunity to say that we welcome new contributors (in a bunch of different ways, not just coding) and we are kicking off our internship program in November (the ‘we’ being the Wikipedia Foundation)

[@frogchip6484]

The idea of the AI interpreting Hornet to be one of multiple WW2 American aircraft carriers is incredibly funny to me

[@sorrymabbad]

I'm pretty sure it's from Azur Lane Wikia (WW2 ships turned into anime girls...yeah), but even it doesn't make sense because it's still non-canon. The best you can get from reading all of Hornet's interactions with her sisters is the complicated relationship she has because she's built much later then them, but they behave like normal sisters would.

[@veradistheeggcat229]

I had to pause to laugh when it said Link from Zelda was married to Amber Von Tussle

[@glitter_fart]

ai:7, LAUGHING

[@jonesjohnson6301]

To be fair, there was a USS Hornet and it had a big role in history. That's why the "AI" is "thinking" of it, because the aircraft carrier is constantly in the data it got fed.

[@PrivateMemo]

I didn't watch the video. So could you please explain why that is odd? There have been more than half a dozen US ships named "Hornet". Including the Yorktown and Essex from WW2. 😅

[@LaprasTrainerLiam]

22:11 - *Starts to say something nice about Fandom* "Now, I've been pretty mean to Fandom throughout this video-" *Abruptly ends the video.* That legit got me man! Kudos to you for pulling that on us! 😆

[@igniteshadow2902]

This literally made me burst in laughter. Hole shit. xDDD

[@tacolord2485]

​@@igniteshadow2902SAME XD

[@anstropleuton2]

@@igniteshadow2902 No wonder why most replayed moment is the last scene

[@jamsquan9415]

was thinking of ending it all today until that made me laugh ngl good joke

[@Scaryland42]

@@jamsquan9415 dont kill yourself please

[@angstydoodles1101]

As both a fanfic writer and a cosplayer, I desperately hope more of my fandoms can move to other wiki sites soon because most of them are on Fandom, and I often need quick, easy access to images, references, plot reminders, and other information that I'd otherwise need to dig through endless pages or hours of gameplay or footage to find. As it stands, I regrettably don't have much of a choice but to use Fandom.

[@pugo7925]

while self-hosting is quite complex and expensive, I think it's the best option! this way the internet is slightly returns to its roots being made of independent communities driven by its users!

[@thewhitefalcon8539]

A small VPS costs around 5 dollars a month. If you want a real actual server in a server rack, at entry-level it costs around 40-60 (Hetzner is the cheapest) per month. And if you have good internet and a static IP at home, you can host at home, although then people will be DDoSing your home when they try to DDoS the site. You can also host at home with Cloudflare (free) in front to defend against attacks, but Cloudflare is going to go the same direction as Fandom so you probably shouldn't rely on it.

[@Timeward76]

The more aggressive companies get, the more people will feel insulted enough to buy server racks and relearn the art of self hosting. Its not your site if its not in your rack.

[@usernametaken4023]

I am so happy that the Croc Wiki community finally got the recognition it deserves, thank you Mossbag once again for your incredible analysis of the Croc videogame franchise!

[@Mcflycoolvideos]

On behalf off the oneyplays fanbase I’d like to apologise for the vandalism incident btw

[@ieatmice751]

@@Mcflycoolvideosnuh uh fight the power

[@dfunnyitc2]

i remember the classic croc poop incident. smooth moves, zach

[@belstar1128]

There have been no new croc games for over 20 years

[@1967sluggy]

Its so bizarre that the Star Wars and Star Trek fan communities have still not managed to make their move off fandom. Like, if anyone would have the interest and manpower to do it...

[@MariusKennedy]

yeah. along with the resident evil, devil may cry, and silent hill wikis...

[@arnox4554]

Actually, I think their size is precisely the problem. Those two properties are HUGGGGEEEE and Fandom now has accumulated years and years of information on it. To migrate away from Fandom would require an ABSURD amount of work and some information is probably going to be lost in the process.

[@TooMuchThought]

I believe, from my own Memory, that they used to. Wookiepedia used to be its own website, but got moved into Fandom and is so much worse that it was when I was a kid, when it looked so much better and had few ads.

[@arentan5844]

@@arnox4554 Plus, it's going to take lots of editors simply to fork away from Fandom.

[@clairdeloona]

there’s actually a star wars wikia off site, but wookieepedia might just be the most recognizable wiki name of them all. the brand name recognition probably causes people to overlook the over one. but to switch wookieepedia, like arnox said, would take forever. each article has two versions for legends and canon and every minor character, mentioned planet, piece of technology, and species has one.

[@Tdubble0100]

6:08 After the Minecraft Wiki left Fandom, the Minecraft wiki on Fandom was extremely vandalized in some pretty harmless ways

[@abraveastronaut]

TFWiki left Wikia way back in 2008 and literally everything that's happened since then has validated that decision. It's great to see so many other wikis making the jump.

[@raydhen8840]

What I love about TFWiki, along with Runescape wiki, is that they always come up at top of search engine, burying their fandom counterpart, effectively giving fandom the middle finger.

[@concept5631]

​@@raydhen8840 TFWiki is a giant monolith of Transformers content. It's great.

[@Javifaa]

IIRC, Touhou wiki does too. Well, mainly because it forked a decade or so ago.

[@slightlyuncomfortable]

​@@concept5631Tfwiki has more GI Joe content than the actual GI Joe fandom wiki.

[@concept5631]

@@slightlyuncomfortable That's hilarious and I wouldn't doubt that for a second.

[@tikatoo]

My favourite feature of Fandom is how if you domain-block their video embed script for performance reasons, they drop a massive rectangle over the first few paragraphs and you have to open dev tools to get rid of it.

[@nickxelyt5660]

I mean they clearly want the website to just be nothing but ads with zero content whatsoever.

[@arthilas_]

That is why you use Ublock origin and block all ads with it, no domain block needed.

[@GimOA]

I love it! It's like flipping off users in your website, because they really need to watch those ads!

[@Liggliluff]

That does sound more like an error than intentional malice. It seems that if you remove the video, it pushes the content up behind the panel that holds the video, causing the panel to cover the content. Of course, Fandom have no intention to fix this because they don't want you to remove the video, but it still doesn't sound like it's intentional. Especially since a proper adblocker doesn't cause this issue.

[@Luigicat11]

The biggest shame is how many wikis on the host formerly known as Wikia are all manner of weird niches that'll never be transferred off, and once Fandom goes under for its greed, they'll go down with it.

[@ShadowOfTheSPQR]

The time to mirror is, a long while ago, but now's a good start.

[@Luigicat11]

@@ShadowOfTheSPQR Is that a thing that's allowed if you're not anyone high up in the old wiki, just taking a wiki you like and pushing it somewhere else?

[@ShadowOfTheSPQR]

@@Luigicat11 Depends on the license really, I believe fandom syncs up well with sharealike licenses that would allow content to be mirrored without looking over your shoulder legally. And if not people tend to do it anyway although that's where it gets blurry.

[@thewhitefalcon8539]

@@Luigicat11 Who's going to stop you?

[@Luigicat11]

@@thewhitefalcon8539 Mostly my own laziness TBH. If that's the appropriate term. A lot of these wikis are really big so it's hard to transfer everything over, especially manually.

[@hugehermitguy]

One time i got an ad on fandom that covered the ENTIRE SCREEN! I couldnt click ANYTHING but the ad.

[@yellowice0]

Wow, didn’t know Fandom issues ran that deep, I never used it due to the few times clicking the links and being plastered with Ads which borderline makes the information hard to find and is problematic for the entire format to what the user needs Edit: oh my god that ending was absolutely unexpected, like a chef’s kiss type send off to a fairly well done informative video

[@05degrees]

Me too. I didn’t think Fandom is _that_ evil and obtuse, and power play posts like the one at 10:28 are absolute shit move. I say evil because for me what they do amounts to a legitimate form of evil. Being self-serving is often okay but pretending to be otherwise, and aggressively so, is not fine.

[@WhenDidYouTubeAddThisFeature]

Fandom lost my respect when it decided to kill the entire Monster Girl Encyclopedia Wiki that had been clearly labeled as adult-only and running peacefully for almost a decade up until that random day.

[@XYZB0RG]

they lost my respect when they disabled the live chat feature

[@TheTrueBrawler]

Did the Monster Girl Encyclopedia ever manage to migrate anywhere else after the takedown?

[@walkingsophie]

Yes, it's on miraheze now iirc

[@nest9595]

@@XYZB0RG Bruh, same. The live chat was epic.

[@EgoRenovarem]

frandom lost my respect when they absorbed the minecraft wiki. i miss gamepedia.

[@sproins]

The problem is, without wiki buddy which most people won't use, fandom is pushed so far up in google searches that independent wikis don't stand a chance.

[@Agh0sty]

Fr

[@meatmobile]

A lot of the new wikis don't show up at *ALL* in searches because of how badly Fandom abuses SEO.

[@deleetiusproductions3497]

That's why these videos exist. They're to spread awareness about these independent wikis and get more people to use Wiki Buddy.

[@HaxAras]

It can't be understated just how importany word of mouth is to helping indie wikis get established as well. Not everybody is in the know, so it really makes a difference for us.

[@OnboardG1]

The same problem exists with fextralife. There’s a Starfield wiki run by the team behind uesp but I don’t think I’ve seen it on google at all, while fextralife’s inaccurate rubbish is always top.

[@yeetyoot4433]

Growing up, Fandom (I still remember it as Wikia...) hosted my first and only real online community for a long time. It was never perfect, but before the rebrand, it worked fine. Then the forums got nuked... you started having to click to see older messages every 20 or so... the layout changed, the ads changed... It makes me sad to see it like this. Even with adblocker, it just... sucks. I'm happy for all the wiki contributors that manage to get theirs onto a different site.

[@ImSquiggs]

Glad to see Fandom lose such big communities. I will never forget how angry I was when they rolled out some insanely aggressive iPhone ad scheme that locked the entire page down. I can’t remember what game I was playing at the time that needed a wiki but I was going crazy trying to pull pages up, I couldn’t find any way to read a single page with their new anti-consumer super broken system. Never forgave them for that, haha.

[@tehswordninja4915]

I was an admin for a Fandom wiki for a flash game back in the day. Eventually there was a majority formed via some members of the wiki staff, the flash game's website moderators, and even the developer of the game itself to move to Miraheze. That's when I learned that Fandom are greedy assholes and wouldn't take down the wiki so long as it was generating ad revenue. To this day, like 3-5 years after the Miraheze wiki was made (its been long enough that I don't remember when it was made) the Fandom wiki STILL shows up first, despite a direct link to the Miraheze wiki being present on the game's website. They wouldn't allow for any links to the Miraheze wiki either, but in the end I managed to get away with the fandom wiki's homepage saying "Welcome to the unofficial wiki" along with instructions on where to find the official wiki link on the game's website. Better than nothing

[@nickxelyt5660]

Good work. Its clear to me that large corporations are funding fandom as a way to control the flow of information to one place where they can control it. I guess its up to the fans of miraheze and others to spread the word to use the independent wikis.

[@thewhitefalcon8539]

Have you considered either suing them for copyright infringement, or reporting them to Google for copyright infringement? You're the copyright holder of whatever you wrote on the wiki, even if the terms of service say you aren't. And Google is supposed to be aggressive about enforcing copyright, and won't check the fine print anyway.

[@satanyanko]

@@thewhitefalcon8539​⁠​⁠​⁠This would never work. How is a group of admins who are unpaid volunteers supposed to have enough money to successfully sue a giant corporation that has their own in house lawyers? A community can’t provide that much money and I doubt anyone would be willing to take actual legal responsibility and serve as the plaintiff, no matter how much they love their community

[@thewhitefalcon8539]

@@satanyanko Well you don't have to pay for the corporation's lawyers.

[@ana-esthesiac]

As a staff member on the Independent Fallout Wiki, thank you for making this video. It's super important that this be spread around, and to support independent wikis. And we're flattered to be mentioned in a video eeee!

[@SpongeBobsTikiLand]

Fandom: “We love our communities, all the power goes to them!” Also Fandom: Replaces a page with an ad for a milkshake, adds AI generated misinformation, and demotes admins for wanting to let users know they have forked the wiki

[@cameronshand8874]

That ending was so perfect, because it's just so true. You hear a line like that and you're primed for the "But", but with Fandom there is no but, just the greedy execs showing you their ass.

[@leospence8529]

Honestly good demonstration of thematics and subtext Even leaves room for a sequel to this video if the company ever locks in

[@LeBonkJordan]

Fandom's justifications for why they should be allowed to continue their illegitimate forks eerily mirrors the justifications of AT&T circa 1982 for why they should be allowed to continue monopolizing US telecoms. We know from history, however, that breaking up their monopoly massively improved things for everyone, cutting prices and allowing new breakthroughs in technological innovation and the birth of the modern internet.

[@souffle-d-eclair]

not too eerie if you consider capitalism always poisons everything it touches the same handful of ways but otherwise i agree

[@StonedtotheBones13]

I can't break the 269 but just gonna agree: diversity- better for everybody

[@Stillbraixentho]

My peanut sized brain could not understand a word but im with you

[@fandroid6491]

I AWAIT THE DOWNFALL OF FANDOM

[@jahredharrison4069]

One of the worst things about this whole mess is that Fandom is NEVER gonna remove the old wiki as long as they can farm ad revenue off it, they're always gonna leave it there no matter how outdated it gets and keep the wiki split. I know more than one community that deliberately had their old wiki vandalized in an attempt to get it pulled but it rarely works.

[@cyberteaaa]

the best way to outplay fandom in seo is simply totally ignore it and keep boosting the new one, but it has to be a real, coordinated community effort, like w/ JJBA and RS wikis

[@survivinggamer2598]

Couldn't that also be a good thing in a way, though? That way wikis for very old games that aren't as popular anymore can still stay up in a semi-archived way. I recall seeing a very old wiki and a wiki for a very obscure game that almost no one else plays that was useful to me.

[@Ezekiel_Allium]

​@@survivinggamer2598 when they're talking about "the old wiki" they don't mean forgotten or abandoned wikis, but wikis that have moved to other platforms trying to get the fandom wiki taken down because it's no longer being updated and will quickly become a source of out of date misinformation. I doubt anyone has an issue with leaving up mostly dead wikis, but wikis that actively want to be deleted should have the option to do so.

[@csrjjsmp]

They shouldn’t. That’s not anything they are doing wrong the fault is 100% on google

[@PotionSmeller]

​​@@survivinggamer2598It wouldn't really be archiving if anyone can just vandalize them with misinformation. In fact, the lower the number of active contributors, the more damage a single troll can cause without being noticed.

[@SomeGuy-tr2hi]

Fun fact: did you know the reason the new Fandom logo is represented by a flame is because of the overheating that occurs if you try to open the website on your phone?

[@Xylophytae]

Holy shit the fact the "fandom representative" just straight up threatened the pizza tower fandom like that

[@Dice-Z]

The dude was pathetic, can't even be honest about being a bootlicker.

[@average4400]

Because its true (im a pizza tower fan)

[@annaairahala9462]

Not the first time either. Back when they were Wikia they would do the same over 10 years ago. Their goal has never been to benefit fandom communities

[@Azurfan]

That's only the tip of the iceberg. Even if a fandom wiki is deserted for years and years Fandom will send a team of goons every times a new game or new season for the wiki's topic is released to pretty up the corpse with copied pages and even wrong information so the can rake in some more ad revenue.

[@Mnnvint]

A rather big thing you missed is that Fandom didn't just hurt wikis on it, it also hurt Wikipedia. Because Jimmy Wales effectively controlled both, but could only take direct profit from one, he had a huge conflict of interests when it came to deletionism on Wikipedia. It was in his clear economic interest to drive as much content as possible over to the site he could profit on.

[@hazukichanx408]

That, and if he wanted, he could fun Wikipedia with the money he was making on Wikia/Fandom, instead of constantly pestering users for "donations" to "keep it free". He just _didn't._ Because apparently free information was not quite as high a priority to him as a fat wallet... also he used to run a shitty porn site, apparently, then tried to wipe any record of that _from his own Wikipedia page._

[@GregorMcIntosh]

@@hazukichanx408interesting… I never knew that.

[@Selesnya]

Yeah, anyways hoaxes always get removed from wikipedia in under 5 minutes, but I have seen so much misinformation on fandom.

[@alexia3552]

That's absolutely not okay

[@GregorMcIntosh]

Stupid thing to do.

[@Fluffernater]

This completely convinced me to stop supporting fandom by using it, thank you. Also, the ending was gold.

[@maddieS117]

I was about to say something similar about the ending. My jaw literally dropped But yeah, I've been using Fandom less and less lately because of the intrusive ads and shitty performance, but this video was that last push to get me to stop using it entirely

[@WhatDillionYT]

The ending really caught me off guard.

[@agme8045]

@@WhatDillionYTpls explain lol I didn’t get the joke. What did he mean lol

[@SiegfriedoExMachina]

​@@agme8045 you usually expect a "but" after a sentence like that, followed by them saying something good about Fandom, but that wasnt the case 🤣

[@augustleded]

oh man i remember the pizza tower vandalism controversey. was actually super calm in the pre-release days, but when the game came out the entire wiki got nuked

[@clarfonthey]

I've been helping out with the Rain World wiki on Miraheze for months now and I can't say enough just how much nicer it is to be able to foster your own wiki community. It feels silly, but I feel proud whenever I see RW Wiki content on display in videos because I know I personally contributed to making it better. That feeling alone is enough to encourage anyone to switch to an independent hosting community, and Miraheze is still a great option if you're a smaller community and don't have the resources to host yourself.

[@shuraoo]

ruffles

[@ponponpatapon9670]

@@shuraoopepsi

[@ezersial5559]

Been loving the new Rainworld wiki, thank you for your work!

[@ragemonster4277]

I hope fandom folds in on itself. Their rules are also so outrageous on what they consider “inappropriate” and there will sometimes be random files missing from view, essentially the company tampering with its own data (which is no surprise)

[@AluminumFusion22]

They're getting too big and own too many properties. Inevitably they will collapse. The same thing's gonna happen with Disney.

[@habama1077]

It's funny, because they had a golden recipe for success, and they still fucked it up. Capitalism breeds innovation.

[@SomeThingOrMaybeAnother]

@@AluminumFusion22 It's not that they are getting "too big". They monetize too hard and have to make moves justifying aggressive monetization, like adding useless features. They are well on their way down the enshittification cycle.

[@hazukichanx408]

They do it because they can. We all need to get loud and pushy with our crappy governments until they make it so these slimy corpos can't keep doing all this crap, but of course most of us are either too overworked, too depressed or too convinced "there's nothing you can do" to realize we technically have loads more power than a handful of rich pricks with a lot of pieces of paper in their big metal cubes. We're the ones who decide that paper still means a thing!

[@TheLivingOdyssey]

We support independent wikis!!! I hate the Fandom Wiki’s, they’re more often than not awful and unhelpful in addition to destroying mobile devices.

[@JP_Crimson]

80% is ads

[@tuomasgaming4210]

The video creator is lying. There aren't nearly that many ads on the site, if at all. I also haven't seen any of these "quiz" things.

[@Vibrioidimp7]

​​​@@Nuva_Because literally everywhere you look is another ad trying to sell you something, oftentimes things you couldn't care less about. There are ads at the top of pages, loading between pages, inbetween articles back to back, even on the screen border where they're so big that they impede your sight and ability to scroll through. Sometimes that last type is so bad, you get the Google feedback bit on it and it'll just stay there, or the ad will spread over the entire screen border. Not only is that extremely annoying, but it makes it unnecessarily difficult to click on anything

[@PopeMical]

I've never had any issues with Fandom. Then again I use an ad blocker on every device.

[@digimonlover1632]

@@PopeMicalI don’t have one and my experience was fine on Fandom.

[@user-Skyn3tD1dN0th1ngWr0ng]

And you get a company, and you get a company, AND YOU get a company!, the "editors" will work for free and makes us money out of advertisement...