Fandom is a wiki internet hosting service, co-founded by the wiki king himself Jimmy Wales, and it’s massive enterprise. Not like Wales’ different ventures Fandom is a for-profit firm and its homepage is without doubt one of the hottest web sites on the earth. The corporate was acquired in 2018 by personal fairness agency TPG Inc., following which it went on one thing of an acquisition spree itself and acquired, amongst different issues, Curse LLC’s wiki service Gamepedia: host of numerous official wikis together with The Witcher, Minecraft, Dota 2, COD and Wowpedia.
Gamepedia’s content material was regularly migrated to Fandom’s service earlier than, in mid-2021, the positioning was rebranded as Fandom. However ever for the reason that acquisition contributors and editors have been uneasy about Fandom’s massive cash house owners making use of the nipple clamps and, as the positioning design has modified and there is been a rise in adverts and popups, these emotions have lastly boiled-over in one of many greatest wikis of all: Minecraft.
The Minecraft wiki editors are mad as hell they usually’re not gonna take it any extra. What started as unease and Discord chat is now a vote on a full-scale migration of the Minecraft wiki away from Fandom, with the present Fandom wiki being left as-is however not maintained whereas a fork of the Minecraft wiki goes to a different host and lives fortunately ever after.
Minecraft wiki editor SonicWave has now created the dialogue web page the place that is all happening and, when you’re unfamiliar with wiki politics, that is now principally an emergency board assembly, and one the place the numbers in help of a transfer are overwhelming. SonicWave summarises a number of the editors’ causes thus:
Degraded logged-out reader expertise, due partly to the big variety of adverts (together with adverts inserted in the midst of wiki content material to seem like a part of it), the obtrusive yellow Fandom navigation bar, and popups, together with one asking readers to substantiate their age to personalize the adverts shownAdding options like Fandom-created quizzes to the highest of pages, typically citing obscure statistics on “engagement” as justificationThe aforementioned yellow sidebar, which was justified as reinforcing Fandom’s branding, however seems to be misplaced on the wiki, is uncustomizable, and was added with out dialogue or alternatives for feedbackAdding hyperlinks to different wikis (a few of which cowl questionable matters) and unrelated Fandom articles in locations just like the Fan Feed and full-page search outcomes
There may be additionally deep disquiet amongst wiki editors over a latest controversy with the McDonalds wiki, through which Fandom changed the present Grimace web page to a paid-for McDonalds advertorial, with out the consent or data of the McDonalds wiki editors. No I am not making this up.
Two hosts have already reached out to the Minecraft wiki (Bulbapedia, which has its personal usability points, and ABXY), with one other most well-liked possibility being wiki.gg which is run by former Gamepedia workers.
A dialogue that may determine whether or not or not the Minecraft Wiki will go away Fandom, and the place it would transfer to if that’s the case, has begun.When you have an account, you could have the power to voice your opinion on the matter, and we strongly encourage you to take action. 3, 2023
“After all, switching hosts won’t be a easy job,” writes Sonicwave. “Notably, Fandom’s forking coverage requires the present wiki to be left intact and any hyperlinks to the brand new wiki to not be displayed for longer than the primary two weeks. Which means that we’ll principally be creating a brand new wiki […] The Fandom wiki, whereas now not having its current editors, will proceed to stay up with none indication that it is moved, competing with and sure outranking the brand new wiki in Google search outcomes resulting from Fandom’s excessive search engine optimization.”
There are different issues, too, corresponding to Google hiding duplicate content material in search outcomes, which means a lot content material will want a major rewrite, what Sonicwave calls a “lack of transparency from Fandom” in direction of communities, the lack of sure wiki options, and the truth that the Minecraft wiki is accessible in 21 languages. The present pondering right here is that, as these are maintained by distinct teams of contributors and editors, the English wiki will make the transfer first whereas the others see how profitable it’s.
In an act of self-sacrifice that might make a wiki editor proud, I learn via the complete dialogue web page and calculated the help for and in opposition to the transfer. Of the 47 responses, lots of that are substantial and cope with technical features or the logistics of the transfer, an entire 5 are in opposition to the transfer and want to stay on Fandom. Regardless of the difficulties of the transfer, 42 Minecraft wiki contributors and editors have voted to inform Fandom to fork off.
Practicalities apart, the large query right here is whether or not the Minecraft wiki would be capable of escape its personal gravitational pull. A brand new fork can be basically competing with its personal long-established origin level, and a subject as widespread as Minecraft goes to draw extra contributors and editors to Fandom in some unspecified time in the future: whereupon we may have the oddity of two competing Minecraft wikis, each with a declare to being the unique or official one. The neighborhood behind the Minecraft wiki desperately dislike Fandom, that a lot is obvious. However whether or not it will possibly escape its personal appreciable shadow stays to be seen.