Stop using Fandom

The Hollow Knight wiki community is another in a long line of wiki communities choosing to leave Fandom behind. But why is that? What is it about Fandom that is pushing so many communities away recently? To answer that question, I talk for 22 minutes and 18 seconds.
Check out the new Hollow Knight wiki here:
hollowknight.wiki/
Download the Indie Wiki Buddy extension:
getindie.wiki/
Read more about why the HK wiki community decided to leave Fandom:
hollowknight.fandom.com/wiki/...
If you want to learn more about the various alternative to Fandom, this discussion thread by the Minecraft wiki is a very interesting read:
minecraft.wiki/w/Minecraft_Wi...
Check out my Discord server, mossbag & friends!
/ discord
Please follow me on Twitter. I equate my self worth to my follower count:
/ mossbag69
Wishlist my upcoming game, Titan Shell, on Steam!
store.steampowered.com/app/19...
Link to script/list of songs:
mossbag69.blogspot.com/2023/1...
Translate this video into another language using Amara:
amara.org/videos/S7nxdFTx1SIN...
Video Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:36 Fandom
02:25 Fandom's unwanted ads and features
05:32 Fandom community restrictions
07:37 The Grimace Incident
09:24 Leaving Fandom is difficult
13:42 If not Fandom, then where?
14:12 Wiki.gg
15:18 Miraheze
16:00 Self-hosting
17:13 Wiki Alliances
19:17 Weird Gloop
19:58 Conclusion

[@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

[@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

[@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

[@Kollnox]

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

[@portalmast1177]

@@Kollnox 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💀

[@LynnHermione]

The fact that a corporation claims to own "fandom" is so gross

[@FrozenBusChannel]

This. I have always called the site & company by its former name "Wikia", refusing to embrace their unwarranted new name.

[@realtalk6195]

There's a corporation called Apple.

[@thewhitefalcon8539]

Welcome to capitalism!

[@rourose]

Yes, but you dont buy an apple product expecting to get an apple. When you enter a page called fandom with contribution of the fandom you expect that it is "owned" by the fandom

[@iditrirajan]

​@@FrozenBusChannel I didn't even know it was called fandom until a few months ago. I used to call it Wikia lmao

[@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.

[@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

[@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.

[@LaprasTrainerLiam98]

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 man. 😆

[@igniteshadow2902]

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

[@tacolord2485]

​@@igniteshadow2902SAME XD

[@anstropleuton]

@@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

[@thecatbrat42]

@@jamsquan9415 dont kill yourself please

[@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

[@kyrab7914]

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

[@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

[@Vulpilux]

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]

@@Vulpilux 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)

[@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

[@amazingakita]

i'm genuinely surprised the blaseball wiki didn't get included here. they managed to get the fandom wikia *deleted* because they left it in such a bad state after migrating to self hosted

[@tigaliyt]

Lol the absolute legends

[@anotherwaterfrog]

its still up?

[@amazingakita]

@@anotherwaterfrog no, they moved to self hosting

[@maiselph7456]

How did they do it? This is important knowledge

[@JohnvanCapel]

@@maiselph7456My guess? Make the new wiki, migrate silently, then absolutely vandalize the wiki on fandom before announcing their fork.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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

[@jaslueasi554]

I don’t like how fandom keeps asking me if I’m a kid or adult each time I go to a new page, it’s so annoying

[@NotsoPrussian]

I believe, correct me if I’m wrong, but it's used for advertising to show age-appropriate ads.

[@rodrigocoockiemonster4460]

3:01 And once the ad is finished on mobile it redirects you to the beggining on the page, meaning you have to scroll back down

[@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

[@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.

[@rob679]

There is also another wiki that won SEO battle with Fandom - Path of Exile. It migrated 2 years ago as a community project, once it was set up and migrated, it was picked up by game developer themselves and now they host it so community don't have to deal with the costs and it runs completely ad free.

[@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.

[@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).

[@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 😂

[@josefinae1403]

@@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.

[@eerolz8758]

The most annoying part of Fandom for me was always the sidebar. So many times when I've found myself on a Fandom wiki site, I've clicked the top of the sidebar, expecting to get to the main page of the wiki like on every damn other wiki. But no, it sends you to the Fandom main page.

[@Snrasha]

For me, this is than you have 70% of the page which are useless for your research, the side bar is useless, the footer is useless and the page is very slow because of all these videos/ads.

[@bruhwrecksnoobs]

lmao

[@SolarShado]

When they first added it, I spent a few minutes trying to cook up the right ublock filter rule to hide it, but ended up giving up. It's annoying, but at least it's not animated and distracting...

[@CoralReaper707]

For me, it's just that fandom wikis tend to feel cheap. Not to mention the bombardment with ads. Just simply terrible website design.

[@astrid1660]

Fandom won’t even let me use their site with my adblocker up. There’s a pop-up on my screen where they’re all like “😢😢😢” and it won’t let me close it

[@CatFace8885]

It's like they want people to migrate off their shitty site faster or something 😂

[@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

[@officialsamumix]

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

[@Luke-pv8gr]

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

[@chaoslord8918]

0:00 Dung Defender 2:30 Greenpath 3:52 Hornet 7:37 Torvus Bog 17:25 Dire Dire Docks 19:58 Phendrana Drifts Main Theme, not to be confused with Phendrana Depths I know there's more songs, these are just the ones I recognize.

[@FDL_1401]

In the description there's a link with the script of the video with the song list at the end

[@utaatu4576]

My problems with Fandom are also the new pop-up that comes up with certain shows, demanding your age before you be allowed to read any of that precious data. Usually, it will be on shows aimed for younger audiences- sometimes, however, this is not the case. I find it extremely invasive, and honestly, I shouldn't have to declare my age just to know what breed of cartoon dog showed up in the show I'm watching with my friends and their small child. If it's not age-restricted content, a website should not need to know your age. This is just another example of internet enshittification, and it's even connected to the add bullshit KZbin is trying to pull now: they need to know information about us, they need us to turn off adblockers, they need to know our ages- because they think they need to sell us as products to advertisers.

[@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

[@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)

[@SpanielTower]

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

[@ThommyofThenn]

​@@SpanielTowerwhat 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.

[@DieAlteistwiederda]

I like hearing how these wikis also work together to get away from Fandom as a group. Love fandoms actually sticking together as a unit to make a better experience for all of the fans.

[@gpoop23]

The most annoying thing about Fandom for me is when I get the urge to look up some obscure information on a video game or movie when I'm not on a wifi connection. I'm not using half of my monthly data to load a page full of videos unrelated to the single paragraph of text I was actually looking for.

[@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.

[@fragileshock6975]

No one asked.

[@Hawkatana]

​@@fragileshock6975 Nobody cares that you didn't ask. Not everyone operates on the same middle school "logic" you do, kid.

[@XS-03_Apollo]

Wait, YOU play Calamity??? I had no idea! Love your streams btw.

[@xraider927]

​@@fragileshock6975know your place, slick.

[@shirotako6249]

@@fragileshock6975 No one needed to ask, kid

[@_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%

[@Troisnyx]

I used to be an admin on the Kingdom Hearts Wiki, which did once run on Wikia (before it became Fandom), and we were one of the first Square Enix-related wikis to go indie, when we saw the writing on the wall. Said writing on the wall happened a decade ago or so, because the admins of Wikia wanted, as early as a decade ago (2013), to put the distractions that would become the hallmark of Fandom. Also, their layout changes messed up any skins and layouts we created, and their ads only made it worse. So yeah. Fandom has only gone from bad to worse, and all of this feels like old news to some of us.

[@Sukhoi_Su-25]

Another thing you can do is get an extension that removes fandom from search results so you'll never accidentally click on a fandom wiki again.

[@SuperSonic-9999]

I don't use fandom much anyways, but I already had a website blocking extension for like a month now, but the only reason y I installed it is to block FUCKING QUORA from my search results because google ALMOST ALWAYS quotes Quora and I swear to god I was recognising a LOT of misinformation from random people who probably dont even know what they're talking about and just want upvotes; reddit seems to be fine tho. but now after watching this video I went ahead and blocked fandom too

[@huldanoren951]

Problem is, most wikis don't have an equivalent outside Fandom

[@Sukhoi_Su-25]

@@huldanoren951 Honestly fine with me. I'd rather just be forced to figure something out myself than use Fandom.

[@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

[@user-sb7dc4ge1d]

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.

[@brynnelaquerre5779]

I actually had fandom open in another tab while watching this and realized with my ad blocker it doesn't load anything under the popular pages section. its literally all ads

[@franslair2199]

It's important to note that the encroaching of wikia/fandom on user generated wikis has been going on for a long while. Fans would host community wikis on other wiki farms instead rather than deal with wikia's increasing amounts of bullshit. Those wikifarms were then bought by wikia and subjected to their trademark mangling.

[@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]

🎉

[@daigjjjjhhvhitr]

🥳🥳🥳

[@karukalua]

Smart men

[@Borux0]

Which wiki is it?

[@KingShinyRotom]

Very good job, sir

[@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.

[@tlozfreak888]

As the editor on another wiki that moved from Fandom, which was... shoot, 2020? 2021? I agree with this wholeheartedly. We were lucky enough that we already had the existing wiki to work with, but I was mostly just surprised about how restrictive Fandom was about the move. It was entirely because they just kept breaking everything, not even anything special. We'd put hours into doing something, an an update would snap it in half a week later plus several other things.

[@MekachikuMerikukutashi]

Another thing is how fandom basically LEAKS the IP of anyone who isn’t signed in that has edited/commented in discussions. This will risk the saftey of anyone who just wanted to insert an image or fix a vandalized page could possibly get swatted/doxed.

[@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.

[@racimlongou5178]

Man, I've been watching you for a while now, but seeing you use threat - shoreline for the Rain World ost, that was such a hit in the feels. You really made me smile, thanks!

[@deafhobbit]

hey, if you want to do a follow up to this, you should look into what the Blaseball community did to their old Fandom wiki. you know what's better than moving off Fandom? creating such an unfixable mess on the way out that Fandom PERMANENTLY DELETES their old wiki.

[@destroyer4929]

Ah so we engage in all of the vandalism

[@singerofsongs468]

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😮!

[@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. 😅

[@mattwo7]

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

[@deepspacemachines]

when fandom first came onto the scene, i was very much worried that so many formerly independent communities moved their wikis to their site. so it's really good to see people finally moving away from their walled garden of wikis

[@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

[@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

[@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?

[@iceace4277]

I don't know if this message I'm about to post is too late or if it was mentioned in the video, but we need to talk about Fandom's policy towards identical wikis and those dealing with more or less similar subjects. Basically, Fandom has adopted a policy against wikis dealing with the same subject, i.e. the smallest wiki (in terms of number of pages) will have to merge with the largest to form a single wiki, and discussions will have to take place to decide what to keep from the smallest wiki. Except that if the administrator of the larger wiki decides to act in bad faith and not accept any proposals to change his wiki, then a deadlock arises, because the merger will happen anyway, and the neutral Fandom administrator has no way of forcing him to accept any proposals. So, if nothing is accepted, the merge goes ahead anyway. And Fandom doesn't care about the consequences, they just want the merger to happen. It's also absurd that only the number of pages is counted, not their content. You can have fifty well-written pages, but if the other wiki has three hundred badly written pages, then that wiki will host the merge. It's just too easy. I've spoken to a few people and I've heard a few stories about people for whom the merger didn't go well, one of whom moved to Miraheze for that reason. The other absurd thing is the zero tolerance towards wikis with relatively similar subjects. For example, if you want to create a wiki about the Sherlock TV series, it's impossible, because the content is related to the Baker Street Wiki, your wiki will be deleted within a day and you'll be advised to contribute to the Baker Street Wiki. A similar situation occurred with the creation of a wiki on Arcane TV series, which was quickly deleted as it was linked to the League of Legends Wiki in principle. In short, I left Fandom several years ago because of a lack of freedom to create wikis and, above all, because of a merger that went very badly. Fandom could have been great, and I'm sure it was, but for me it's over.

[@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

[@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.

[@Jwayspillz]

I didn’t realize that’s how fandom operate. I thought it was similar to wikipedia. It sucks that they have prioritized advertisers over the community.

[@maniacmohawk5513]

For context of why Hornet somehow has older sister the AI probably confused HK Hornet whit Azur Lane Hornet (I think)

[@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.

[@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!

[@darkamyclone8186]

i had no idea about this issue so thank you so much for educating me on this! i had thought it was oddly worst to use the last few years so im glad to know its not in my head and that there are alternatives.

[@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!

[@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.

[@ZeepTheWocky]

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.

[@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.

[@oopdi]

UESP for Elder Scrolls has been going strong since 1995!

[@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.

[@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.

[@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

[@LettuceGayming]

2:39 it’s gotten much worse, to the point of an ad following my cursor around while trying to check the lethal company wiki. Physically could not click on anything

[@vitamins-and-iron]

lol

[@randomtexanguy9563]

good thing there's an indie lethal company wiki that does not have that horrid retina-burning background and piss-poor quality articles

[@heyitsnyixie_1559]

It's funny when you think about the fact that the pokemon fandom has 3 main wikis and none of them are on fandom because everyone regards the fandom wiki as garbage. (For anyone wondering the big three are Serebi, Bulbapedia, and Pokemon Database, although for competitive it's Smogon)

[@CoralReaper707]

The fact that Pokémon has a fandom/wikia wiki at all is just...why.

[@heyitsnyixie_1559]

@CoralReaper707 for real, and what kills me is that they tend to use the bulbapedia interfaces

[@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.

[@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.

[@DreamingNightmares]

The worst part about the ads is that every time a video finishes on mobile, it scrolls back up to the top of the page ;-; But I have been seeing these types of videos a lot lately, Fandom just sucks now and yet the new wikis are so underrated that they don't even show up on google searches anymore unless you're looking for the newest stuff... I am personally waiting for the FNAF fandom wiki to move across. It's impossible to navigate at the moment because of the bad layouts that fandom has for it's wikis. The annoying thing about all wikis moving across is that I wanted to make my own little personal wiki for me and my friends about our roleplays but thankfully fandom has that no private wikis rule otherwise I would have made it on there. I ended up using miraheze because it allows me to make the wiki private so nobody else can view it apart from my friends so we can just add our lore into it and can easily find information that we need during our RPs and also unlike making one from scratch, it's free and has no ads. The thing that's annoying is that I can never find info I want on things because Fandom takes up all the search results. Sure it's good how it is being left outdated and abandoned but as a downside, those who don't know the new wiki link suffer having to spend ages trying to find info that's actually reliable. It's also complete lies when Fandom say they give communities priority. Sure it's their site but saying fans of communities can create sites for others then demodding everyone and locking pages just for their own selfish desires then trying to guilt trip is completely messed up. It's false advertising what the site is supposed to be representing. I have no regrets for not using such a horrible site.

[@AwholelotofAlek]

Just one of many voices put there in the ether, but i just wanna say, thank you for shining a light on this subject. Like the meme ” i came looking for copper and found gold”. My take is ”i came looking for hollow knight lore videos but i found a deeply insightful video about the wrongdoings done on the internet by companies”.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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

[@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".

[@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.

[@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?

[@sophie2724]

Yes, it's on miraheze now iirc

[@nest9595]

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

[@Gwehyr]

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

[@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.

[@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

[@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.

[@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

[@repyukJC]

I love the way you wrapped it up, really brought it all together in the end there.

[@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.

[@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.

[@xiarno3373]

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

[@xsmasherintothespace.2772]

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]

@@xsmasherintothespace.2772 you mean fandoms wiki or the official wiki?

[@xsmasherintothespace.2772]

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

[@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.

[@AbsoluteChazmania]

As a suggestion that I'm already aware will never happen but would be very effective against the continued existence of this horrible place that genuinely deserves to have so much mean stuff said about it, the admins of all fandom wikis that still have proper actual community management slowly quietly prepare the move with private wiki pages, then proceed to strike as close to simultaneously as possible, deleting all backed up data on the fandom wiki, deleting all existing fronting data on the fandom wiki, replacing the front page with "we've moved, find the new one" and making the wiki that they have prepared public

[@ptolemaicfoxxo3032]

Its wild how a company will absolutely disregard the community and actively fight them instead of listening to their constructive feedback

[@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

[@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.

[@DreamingNightmares]

I personally think that this is messed up. No site should be allowed to keep up things you did forever against your will, let alone false advertise by saying it's the perfect place for communities to make wikis when they show they have power to just prevent anyone doing anything or change everything up whenever they don't like what you do.

[@imphie]

The ai confusing Link from tLoZ and Link from *hairspray* on their own wiki made me laugh so much

[@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.

[@maria_remedios]

It's funny how the brain builds such strong associations based off UI. Because whenever I look at Fandom Wikia pages my mind starts sounding the "get tf out of here" alarms, cause I associate the site's UI with frustration and obfuscation. It's why I found myself subconsciously scrolling further in searches, to find other hosts.

[@fandroid6491]

Based on one megathread in Fandom about the Fandom rebranding, majority of the commenters there (me included) agree that that yellow we see everywhere on their website now is just a UI abomination at that time (and probably still is today although maybe just mildly), no matter if it's in dark or light mode. It's just distractingly bright.

[@nullimpact497]

if there is no analog, then fine, i'll use fandom, but if i know there is something not fandom, tyler1 scream starts (the "GET THIS SHIT OFF ME" one)

[@ThommyofThenn]

GREAT comment! I agree, there are some great alternatives and for years now I have mentally filtered the top search results as they are invariably paid adverts or the worst quality content. It's not "searching" for the best content, it's dumping the results most likely to result in clicks/money for them

[@gmestanley2214]

Yeah, it's really interesting to think about. I do believe it's related to how our brains are wired to automatically make associations for our survival, so since in the past we've seen how cluttered UIs only mean disaster and ads that might have viruses, we link the two and back off from them. @@nullimpact497Be sure to use breezewiki for any wikis with no analog out there.

[@aboxinspace]

Same, this happened to me for years while playing Skyrim. I would always look up things on UESP only

[@shiethegal]

Fandom can go fork itself.

[@Thekitty0706fan]

So glad to know that fandom is hitting the shitter. It stuck out to me when the minecraft wiki went from independent, to fandom at one point, after not having used it. And its from there when i learned what fandom was and wide spread it was. I grew to hate it, because of the adds, or at least attempts of since i had an ad blocker. As well as the mostly outdated or lacking information. I can understand, as someone who does light cataloging and documentation like this, though not to a wiki extent, how you wouldn't want to bother putting effort into a fandom site because it'd ultimately be messed up by the ugly ads, banners and side bar not to mention creative limitations, which i now understand the reason behind. Since before i wondered how other wiki sites that wasn't fandom had much more inspiring artworks and better layout. I can't hope for its downfall soon enough, what an awful media conglomerate.