Stop using Fandom - lemm.ee

Could you give a summary? I stopped using youtube.
Stop using Fandom
Why?
Sorry, that’s the best summary I could find up with

Did you stop using YouTube because of the intrusive ads and monetization?

Same issue with Fandom.

Tbh mainly because of dumb content. I grew up with free TV so i understand and can life with some ads if the content can be used for free. Also tbh i still sometimes use it for music and that one video gaming magazine’s channel that i really like.

I feel like I’ve become somehow allergic to youtubers and such.

Where’s that bot w the fedi links for videos?
Be the change you want to see.
You want me to be pipedbot ?
Yes, integrate yourself with the digital world! Translate the videos for us!

The video pretty much describes why Fandom is so bad and why many games are moving their wikis to alternative services, and why you should stop using it in general. Some examples include:

  • Ads everywhere, including autoplaying video ads that play another ad when they’re done. There are also ads sneakily inserted in the middle of articles that are related to the wiki, like a Gamespot review (Gamespot is owned by Fandom)

  • A sidebar you can’t remove that promotes their content

  • Fandom hijacked the community’s Mcdonald’s wiki to turn it into a giant advertisement

  • Accounts that are 4 days old can bypass restrictions and easily vandalize pages

  • Fandom sometimes introduces things nobody wants, such as AI generated answers that are usually wrong, take up the top half of the page, and with no way for wiki admins to remove it. They removed it after a lot of backlash but still…

  • When people fork their wikis to other sites, fandom refuses to let admins delete their old wikis. This makes new wikis difficult to start because Fandom usually ends up as the top result on search engines, even if they’re old abandoned wikis.

Fandom seems like my experience on Fextralife
And then you learn about Fextra’s embedded twitch player that artificially inflates their twitch view count and pushes out smaller content creators who are actually trying to engage with a game’s audience.
God, I hate constantly seeing their channel with 50k+ views on Twitch. It’s insane that embedding the player throughout their entire website isn’t against TOS.
The good thing is that they are going to stop abusers of the embed system like Fextralife, the new policy was announced at TwitchCon blog.twitch.tv/…/everything-we-announced-at-twitc…
Everything We Announced at TwitchCon Las Vegas

It’s day one of TwitchCon Las Vegas and we couldn’t be more excited to kick off the ultimate IRL party celebrating the Twitch community. This weekend is filled with incredible things to see and do, with shows in the Glitch Theater, Meet & Greets, the Drag Showcase, Artist Alley, musical performances, Rivals competitions, and a sneak peek of some of the new products launching over the next year. You can tune in from home to see content streamed from various stages, including /twitch, /nomnom, /TwitchRivals, and /creatorcamp.

You can block the element behind the player with the UBlock Origin element picker and it won’t comeback. I took the time to build this into my UBlock filters list since I regularly use the WotR Wiki.
Oh yeah… Gamespot, that place existed and it was terrible always. Then you look at the other things Gamespot own and realize they all got butchered in terms of reliability and impact.
When the OG crew left, so did I.
Seems like on that last one someone could go through and change all the content in every page to a link to the new wiki. A PIA? Certainly, but at least it would get the ball rolling and use the built up SEO from fandom to help your new site get views.
It gets rolled back by fandom staff for vandalism if it’s a popular wiki, even if you own it. This has been tried before.
Unfortunately they just use a bot to revert those. You’re not allowed to truly migrate off fandom, all you can do is fork your own data and try to out-SEO the fandom wiki, because as soon as you put it.on fandom, fandom owns it too.
I wonder if you could use a bot and AI to write fake information and post that instead. Seems like fandom wouldn’t have enough game specific info to judge the accuracy, especially if it happened over time.
You’re the best, thanks

Accounts that are 4 days old can bypass restrictions and easily vandalize pages

What can we do with this information, I wonder…

The video also calls out that one of the challenges in moving off of fandom is SEO. The fandom sites often are above the new sites even when the fandom site becomes a pile of unmaintained, vandalized garbage. This suggests that vandalism actually helps fandom.

The best thing we can do is not visit the sites and don’t link to them, instead using and linking to their new sites.

Nice write-up, I appreciate it

When people fork their wikis to other sites, fandom refuses to let admins delete their old wikis. This makes new wikis difficult to start because Fandom usually ends up as the top result on search engines, even if they’re old abandoned wikis.

We have moved to another instance, which is here."

  • Hyper aggressive ads
  • Restricted access to moderation and admin features of wiki
  • Restrictions in layout/formatting to maintain compatibility with ad placements
  • Forced addition of an AI generated section in wikis which contained gibberish or straight up wrong information

Worst TL;DR:

Fandom is a wiki farm, meaning it hosts a bunch of wikis. Also they run on freely available software mediawiki.

Fandom has a couple main problems:

  • Barriers to entry are super low, verification for users takes place 4 days post account creation, with no other steps needed by the user. Paired with the limited options that moderators have for editing access on wikis and you have a wiki that is much tougher to moderate.

  • Ads. Fandom is for-profit. And that means super obtrusive ads that we’ve come to expect. But fandom also shoved ads in the middle of wiki pages, with admins having no control of where those should be placed. There’s also the matter of sketchy ads that are served to minors. Also, some of the ads are outdated but are for subsidiary companies of Fandom.

  • The Grimace Incident. Basically Fandom took over and turned the McDonald’s and grimace wikis into huge advertisements, wiping out the hard work that the actual wiki maintainers did. They also put in a bunch of factually incorrect information, literally going against the whole purpose of a wiki and really worrying other wikis, because what’s stopping Fandom from getting paid again and repeating the event with their wikis?

  • I’m sure I glossed over a bunch of the details but that’s the best I can do from memory.

    How about an alternative Link to the same video? inv.vern.cc/watch?v=qcfuA_UAz3I
    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: https://hollowknight.wiki/ Download the Indie Wiki Buddy extension: https://getindie.wiki/ Read more about why the HK wiki community decided to leave Fandom: https://hollowknight.fandom.com/wiki/Hollow_Knight_Wiki:Moving_from_Fandom If you want to learn more about the various alternative to Fandom, this discussion thread by the Minecraft wiki is a very interesting read: https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Minecraft_Wiki:Moving_from_Fandom Check out my Discord server, mossbag & friends! https://discord.gg/mossbag Please follow me on Twitter. I equate my self worth to my follower count: https://twitter.com/mossbag69 Wishlist my upcoming game, Titan Shell, on Steam! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1964860/Titan_Shell/ Link to script/list of songs: https://mossbag69.blogspot.com/2023/10/stop-using-fandom-script.html Translate this video into another language using Amara: https://amara.org/videos/S7nxdFTx1SIN/info/stop-using-fandom 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

    mossbag | Invidious
    No thank you they’d still get that click. Also i think i just don’t really like those clickbaitsocieties. It’s less the platform itself
    What does this even mean
    How do you find these? You search alternative video players or is there some site where you enter a youtube url and it gives you alternatives?
    It is called individious, there are many hosts you can choose from. In any instance, a youtube link you paste in the search bar gives you that video in individious. If a certain video is not working, you can use “Switch Individious Instance” to quickly jump to another.
    Invidious Instances - Invidious Documentation

    The official Invidious documentation

    Personally I use a browser extension called LibRedirect.
    LibRedirect - Privacy-friendly Redirector

    A web extension that redirects YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, etc. requests to alternative privacy-friendly frontends

    libredirect.github.io