Corporate-owned wikis have ads and other issues, so fans have decided to go their own way
That’s fantastic news. It’s so lame how there hasn’t been any serious move to take wikis off Fandom and make them independent or even just on another platform. Fandom is just the worst, and it’s terrible that Google suggests it as the top result now over the independent wikis.
Like, Bulbapedia is head and shoulders a better resource than the Fandom Pokemon wiki. It’s been around forever, it’s very active, it has far more information, yet Google always suggests Fandom first anytime I do a Pokemon related search. It’s gross.
If anyone ever gets annoyed at Wikipedia asking for donations, go spend time on Fandom with ad blockers off, and remember that’s the end result of public information wikis relying on ads.
I really cannot stand fandom sites. It always lacks content so pages are filled with useless information such as links to review sites. Also, it’s an atrocious experience on mobile.
The number of CSS hacks needed to make the site anything but obnoxious even on desktop is obscene. Not just the ads, but the constant pushing of unrelated content and wikis, popovers, auto-play videos… it’s awful.
Content is all on the people contributing to the wiki, it’s not Fandom’s problem.
The shite experience though, totally is Fandom’s.
One of the few successful fan wikis that got away from fandom has been the Path of Exile community. I don’t play the game anymore because it just got to be too much for me and demand too much time, but I really appreciate that they collectively got pissed enough at fandom that they made sure that poewiki.net took off.
Edit: even better, the developers (Grinding Gear Games) apparently agreed to take over hosting of the wiki about a year ago so that the community members that started it didn’t have to deal with the financial burden. Definitely a good idea for them to take over hosting so there’s no concern of the owners taking a valuable resource offline.
uesp.net is another one. It’s actually quite a bit older than fandom but I’m still going to count it.
UESP is ancient in game wiki terms, even just internet terms, wasn’t it made shortly after the release of daggerfall?
Successful games really should have the dev/publisher hosting the wiki. It’s better for everyone involved. I’ll always appreciate Arenanet for hosting the Guild Wars 1 and 2 wikis.
It’s so lame how there hasn’t been any serious move to take wikis off Fandom and make them independent or even just on another platform.
there is wiki.gg
point stands that Google still favors fandom so high that not many will actually find them
Direct link: https://bg3.wiki/
It’s very good already, and as a fan-run site, I’m willing to spend time contributing to it. What a refreshing change it is to get away from Fandom/Wikia and Fextralife. Nice work, Taylan!
FTA:
“(Essentially, if you add something to their wiki, you’re doing unpaid work for their company. Not to be a hater, but I dislike that.)”
Posts to reddit… LOL.
Very awesome. Anyone who hasn’t played it yet should buy it and play it. It’s so good. I’m almost done with playing through it twice and already planning out a third run.
