I am an admin on another wiki that used to be on Gamepedia before the Fandom buyout. We forked immediately. I have also been self hosting a wiki for another game since early 2017. Completely worth it. Fandom has always had terrible user experience, and frankly they do not care about their users at all. Maybe their community-level staff do, but definitely not the higher ups. I’ve chatted with them directly when we were planning to fork. They’re only in it for the money, not for the good of the editors or readers. They make ridiculous changes that are great for advertisers but completely subvert the user experience and actual content on the page. They’ve also let go a lot of their staff for nonsensical reasons. I really hope the Minecraft wiki goes through with the fork, and that more and more wikis follow. It’s absurd how much of a monopoly they have, given how awful their service is. I for one will be happy to visit the Minecraft wiki again, as someone who plays occasionally, but not often enough to be keeping tabs on all the new features and updates. But I boycott Fandom wikis on principle so I haven’t been there in years.
As a matter of fact, there are opportunities here for other companies that don’t have general wikis for gamers to create a better hosting service. They have not done this and I don’t understand why. Steam could easily do this, I think. Just imagine Steam creating a wiki for games, with links to the best guides, etc. It would be a modern version of GameFaqs (which still exists) but improved. When I do a search on a game and I get Fandom in my results, I tend to skip over it and look for something better without ad bullshit. I would think that other gamers tend to do the same thing. I mean, it’s that bad, even for a user without a registered account (like me).
Don’t think it’s really necessary. The different wikis don’t really need to talk to each other. But an open source Gamepedia-like wiki software would be great. Maybe it exists already.
That’s a separate issue from federation altogether. Federation might have some benefits, but I don’t see “crowding out Fandom with SEO” as one of them.
Ability to contribute to all wikis and to federate content from the wikis across one another without having them all owned by one company like fandom.com
Why would you contribute to multiple wikis, there should only be one, and I don’t know how or why you’d federate content when you can just simply link a url. Having people host wikis on their own servers already accomplish that. The fedi makes no sense here, nor does it make sense to have forks of wikis.
? Literally the same reasons for multiple lemmy servers?
There would be a star trek wiki and a star wars wiki run on different servers by respective fan bases but people who mainly use one wiki could still contribute to the other. Having the content federate instead of just linking to a url would help prevent the data being gone if a server goes down.
Not that directly, but you can still have a “communities” tab with other Wikis. With the same kind of framework, it would be easy to share the same code and look, but still have it set up as one big mega site like Fandom is.
Or just one instance host a bunch of different Wikis, based on subject, and they agree to federate. There could even be a discussion tab for each page that allows any instance to post.
how is this so confusing? it would be exactly like lemmy but wikis instead of threads. startrek.wiki would focus on startrek info but still have overall wiki stuff. just like db0zero lemmy focuses on piracy but still has other communities and content from other lemmy servers
It’s not confusing, there’s just nothing to gain from it. Federation makes sense for communication like e-mail and social media like Mastodon or Lemmy, where you have a “home” and want to be able to interact with others regardless of their server. But with wikis, it over-complicates things with little gain. Right now, people browse wikis on different websites. You don’t have a “home,” and that works just fine.
What makes a good wiki sustainable is if its articles are under a libre license, and if its database can be downloaded.
Federation for wikis doesn’t make sense, IMO. For wikis that are intended to serve as authoritative resources, you actually want to require editors to be local accounts because if they’re remote, you can never end trolling / vandalism edits. Also, local accounts give more accountability for editorial control since, among other things, editing locally means editing the toolset (eg.: parser modifications, buttons, smileys, custom emojis, whatever) of the local instance.
I’m an editor for a community wiki that moved off fandom a few years ago to Mireheze. When the recent discussion about Miraheze shutting down happened I briefly inquired about where we would migrate to, expressing my hope to not return to fandom, and was quite thouroghly assured that fandom is not somewhere that would even be considered returning to. I don’t think I’ve had a single positive experience on a fandom wiki ever, or at least not in over 8 years, with issues ranging from intrusive ads, to the comment section pop in making scrolling inconsistent, to even something as simple as it universally looking fucking ugly, I can’t wait for people to leave and am actively cheering on its slow death as a website.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Thank god, fuck that site. I hope they move to wiki.gg
Is wiki.gg meant for only developer-sanctioned wikis?
That question is above my pay grade, sorry. All I know is when I use the wiki on wiki.gg it’s a good experience overall.
I did see a form where you can request a game to be added, but beyond that I’m fairly ignorant.
UESP is one of the best parts of Elder Scrolls games; forever may it reign
Fandom wikis are such bloated trash that I will always look elsewhere for info.
I am an admin on another wiki that used to be on Gamepedia before the Fandom buyout. We forked immediately. I have also been self hosting a wiki for another game since early 2017. Completely worth it. Fandom has always had terrible user experience, and frankly they do not care about their users at all. Maybe their community-level staff do, but definitely not the higher ups. I’ve chatted with them directly when we were planning to fork. They’re only in it for the money, not for the good of the editors or readers. They make ridiculous changes that are great for advertisers but completely subvert the user experience and actual content on the page. They’ve also let go a lot of their staff for nonsensical reasons. I really hope the Minecraft wiki goes through with the fork, and that more and more wikis follow. It’s absurd how much of a monopoly they have, given how awful their service is. I for one will be happy to visit the Minecraft wiki again, as someone who plays occasionally, but not often enough to be keeping tabs on all the new features and updates. But I boycott Fandom wikis on principle so I haven’t been there in years.
Stardew Valley did the right thing by self hosting a wiki, makes it both official and independent
Several have, including the old school RuneScape wiki!
Now there’s two, and one is far more content full
Fandom is so utterly annoying with those unrelated videos. Really annoying website.
A lot of people are moving to wiki.gg l. It has so many more features
Dead Cells wiki is great there. Far better than fandom
Deep rock galactic wiki looks much better on wiki.gg also
I love wiki.gg. Such a pleasant site to use.
Fandom is a huge headache to even navigate, I couldn’t imagine what it’s like to maintain it
If they don’t migrate to a wiki running on a Minecraft CPU virtual VPS, I riot.
I despise fandom, hope they do end up getting the hell outta there
As a matter of fact, there are opportunities here for other companies that don’t have general wikis for gamers to create a better hosting service. They have not done this and I don’t understand why. Steam could easily do this, I think. Just imagine Steam creating a wiki for games, with links to the best guides, etc. It would be a modern version of GameFaqs (which still exists) but improved. When I do a search on a game and I get Fandom in my results, I tend to skip over it and look for something better without ad bullshit. I would think that other gamers tend to do the same thing. I mean, it’s that bad, even for a user without a registered account (like me).
An ActivityPub wiki would be nice
Don’t think it’s really necessary. The different wikis don’t really need to talk to each other. But an open source Gamepedia-like wiki software would be great. Maybe it exists already.
Wiki.gg is very good though.
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That’s a separate issue from federation altogether. Federation might have some benefits, but I don’t see “crowding out Fandom with SEO” as one of them.
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I hadn’t considered that previously, but I think that is a great idea!
Idk if that makes any sense tbh. I guess it could work though. I don’t really see the application.
Ability to contribute to all wikis and to federate content from the wikis across one another without having them all owned by one company like fandom.com
Why would you contribute to multiple wikis, there should only be one, and I don’t know how or why you’d federate content when you can just simply link a url. Having people host wikis on their own servers already accomplish that. The fedi makes no sense here, nor does it make sense to have forks of wikis.
? Literally the same reasons for multiple lemmy servers?
There would be a star trek wiki and a star wars wiki run on different servers by respective fan bases but people who mainly use one wiki could still contribute to the other. Having the content federate instead of just linking to a url would help prevent the data being gone if a server goes down.
How would you federate content though? A Star Trek article in a Star Wars wiki makes no sense
since federation is the new hammer, there are going to be people who think everything is a new nail. just like what happened with blockchain
Let’s put the edit history on the blockchain!
Probably the most apt analogy I’ve heard.
Not that directly, but you can still have a “communities” tab with other Wikis. With the same kind of framework, it would be easy to share the same code and look, but still have it set up as one big mega site like Fandom is.
Or just one instance host a bunch of different Wikis, based on subject, and they agree to federate. There could even be a discussion tab for each page that allows any instance to post.
how is this so confusing? it would be exactly like lemmy but wikis instead of threads. startrek.wiki would focus on startrek info but still have overall wiki stuff. just like db0zero lemmy focuses on piracy but still has other communities and content from other lemmy servers
It’s not confusing, there’s just nothing to gain from it. Federation makes sense for communication like e-mail and social media like Mastodon or Lemmy, where you have a “home” and want to be able to interact with others regardless of their server. But with wikis, it over-complicates things with little gain. Right now, people browse wikis on different websites. You don’t have a “home,” and that works just fine.
What makes a good wiki sustainable is if its articles are under a libre license, and if its database can be downloaded.
Federation for wikis doesn’t make sense, IMO. For wikis that are intended to serve as authoritative resources, you actually want to require editors to be local accounts because if they’re remote, you can never end trolling / vandalism edits. Also, local accounts give more accountability for editorial control since, among other things, editing locally means editing the toolset (eg.: parser modifications, buttons, smileys, custom emojis, whatever) of the local instance.
fandom wikis half the time are trash and redundant
I’m an editor for a community wiki that moved off fandom a few years ago to Mireheze. When the recent discussion about Miraheze shutting down happened I briefly inquired about where we would migrate to, expressing my hope to not return to fandom, and was quite thouroghly assured that fandom is not somewhere that would even be considered returning to. I don’t think I’ve had a single positive experience on a fandom wiki ever, or at least not in over 8 years, with issues ranging from intrusive ads, to the comment section pop in making scrolling inconsistent, to even something as simple as it universally looking fucking ugly, I can’t wait for people to leave and am actively cheering on its slow death as a website.
The old Minecraft Wiki was so great. I was pissed when I heard they got bought by Fandom…