Wikia / FANDOM - The ugly result of giving aspies control of their own wiki websites

[Miss Violet Beauregarde]

I've gotten tempbanned from two separate Wikis and I wear those bans like a badge of honor.

What did you do? Made funny edits on one of the articles?

 

[NerdShamer]

Found some interesting drama over at the Turtlepedia concerning one of its most prominent editors for the last 9 years, a 42 year old genderfluid weirdo and self-proclaimed gaymer with a lot mental issues and insecurities who was banned last year after he had a complete mental breakdown and started harassing users and making idiotic edits. His most notable contributions aside from excessive perfectionism was putting more focus on the LGBTQ elements and "discrimination" present in a dumb turtle franchise for kids while also finding ways to insert his homoerotic fanfiction into articles as fact for the last decade.

https://turtlepedia.fandom.com/wiki/Message_Wall:Gilgameshkun

https://turtlepedia.fandom.com/wiki/Special:contributions/Gilgameshkun

He claims his real name is Dermot Mac Flannchaidh and googling it will unsurprisingly lead you to plenty of cringy furry and other weird fetish accounts all with the same profile headers.

https://twitter.com/dermotmacflann

View attachment 3492166

Well, his wall of text was archived several months ago. It almost makes me feel sorry for these admins; after all, being some spastic's therapist isn't in the job description...But it's not that hard to manage an wiki, anyways

 

[Xanen]

What did you do? Made funny edits on one of the articles?

Pretty much.

 

[scathefire]

Did they seriously change the search function on the site to search though all of the different wikis rather than just the one you're on? Jesus Christ, I can't look up "gene" on a pet site wiki without Gene Belcher from Bob's Burgers popping up, the search is so much more difficult to use now.

 

[NerdShamer]

Did they seriously change the search function on the site to search though all of the different wikis rather than just the one you're on? Jesus Christ, I can't look up "gene" on a pet site wiki without Gene Belcher from Bob's Burgers popping up, the search is so much more difficult to use now.

It's just another "improvement" that the owners had, along with the ads that eat up your RAM, and publishing vids that nobody asked for.

 

[fartsnstuf]

I can only recommend this enough. Even if you prefer the "convenience" of Wikia, there are several other things I have encountered through personal experience that make owning and operating your own Wiki that much better and rewarding than relying on Cuckdom. I'll elaborate if there's sufficient interest, including namedropping some of the website's biggest offenders.

I'm genuinely interested in hearing the pros of owning and operating a wiki outside of cuckdom

 

[Zay-Two-Kay]

Did Wikia ever not look and run like total shit? I can’t see a single pro of using it. The admins exert top down control on every wiki to force them to abide by SJW rules, the site is filled with ads and spyware, and it’s fucking hell to use even without that. It’s the ugliest looking wikifarm by far. What the fuck is the appeal? Yeah, it’s free, but it’s not the only free one, and it’s by far the worst. No wonder it’s overrun by autists.

 

[The Demon Pimp of Razgriz]

Did they seriously change the search function on the site to search though all of the different wikis rather than just the one you're on? Jesus Christ, I can't look up "gene" on a pet site wiki without Gene Belcher from Bob's Burgers popping up, the search is so much more difficult to use now.

Its still possible to search the old fashion way. Originally, you just had to use the magnifying glass at the top left and not the search function at the top right. Now, they just have the magnifying glass, and it automatically searches whatever wiki you are on.

 

[NerdShamer]

I'm genuinely interested in hearing the pros of owning and operating a wiki outside of cuckdom

Outside of feeling good over documenting things with little overhead, there's really isn't an lot of pros beyond the obvious benefit of being an wiki about whatever. Sure, you might have to learn some coding here and there.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

Did Wikia ever not look and run like total shit? I can’t see a single pro of using it. The admins exert top down control on every wiki to force them to abide by SJW rules, the site is filled with ads and spyware, and it’s fucking hell to use even without that. It’s the ugliest looking wikifarm by far. What the fuck is the appeal? Yeah, it’s free, but it’s not the only free one, and it’s by far the worst. No wonder it’s overrun by autists.

Like 15 years ago when it more or less looked like Wikipedia but with sidebar ads. Everything since was a long decline into horrifying.

 

[Creep3r]

So they completely trashed the original main page system and replaced it with lame ass blogs now rather than actual articles or even featured article and news showcases?

Majority of the blogs aren't even on topic or are just shitposts, and there's hardly any effort on the new main pages to show off the content of the wiki other than one box for popular articles and one for recent changes.

These sites are barely wikis anymore. They're social media outlets with the articles being secondary (admittedly most of the articles these days are either awful or full of politically correct nonsense but my point stands).

 

[Least Concern]

So they completely trashed the original main page system and replaced it with lame ass blogs now rather than actual articles or even featured article and news showcases?

I looked at the front page of a few wikis, including Wookieepedia, and they all looked the same to me. Maybe what you saw was part of an A/B testing thing or a temporary bug, or maybe my ad blocker is blocking all the non-wiki content.

 

[A_throwaway_name62919]

Did Wikia ever not look and run like total shit? I can’t see a single pro of using it. The admins exert top down control on every wiki to force them to abide by SJW rules, the site is filled with ads and spyware, and it’s fucking hell to use even without that. It’s the ugliest looking wikifarm by far. What the fuck is the appeal? Yeah, it’s free, but it’s not the only free one, and it’s by far the worst. No wonder it’s overrun by autists.

It did okay early on. Other than that it's mainly inertia. When wikipedia first started out, people put all kinds of shit on there as it was theoretically the "everything" encyclopedia. Then they started instituting rules about "notability" and they started deleting lots of stuff people had put on their about various works of fiction. Irrate fans were told that those sorts of things were for wikia not wikipedia, and so fans went to wikia. Which in turn drew in even more people as it was the known option compared to its competitors. It was only once they were firmly establish and in the lead that wikia started doing more and more shitty things in an attempt to monetize its fan provided content. That was still passible as it otherwise still mostly served its purpose of being a wiki for fictional material. It's been only relatively recently that they started going through to purge actual content they find objectionable or impose shit like they did on the One Piece wikia.

 

[The Demon Pimp of Razgriz]

So they completely trashed the original main page system and replaced it with lame ass blogs now rather than actual articles or even featured article and news showcases?
View attachment 3539896View attachment 3539900
Majority of the blogs aren't even on topic or are just shitposts, and there's hardly any effort on the new main pages to show off the content of the wiki other than one box for popular articles and one for recent changes.

These sites are barely wikis anymore. They're social media outlets with the articles being secondary (admittedly most of the articles these days are either awful or full of politically correct nonsense but my point stands).

I looked at the front page of a few wikis, including Wookieepedia, and they all looked the same to me. Maybe what you saw was part of an A/B testing thing or a temporary bug, or maybe my ad blocker is blocking all the non-wiki content.

Okay this is a result of confusion. For a lot of wikis, if you click the title at the top of the page, which used to redirect you to the main page, it will instead redirect you to that blog page instead. You have to actually mouse over "Explore" and once the drop down menu appears, click "Main Page". Not all wikis have this issue, so it might be something that Fandom activated and some wikis turn it off later.

 

[Chaos Theorist]

https://osm.fandom.com/wiki/Operating_System_Mockups

bruh

 

[scathefire]

Not all wikis have this issue, so it might be something that Fandom activated and some wikis turn it off later.

Yeah, the thing with the search function seems to be something you can turn off because the wiki I was having that issue with is working normally again. It must be the default setting now and wikis have to manually turn it off.

 

[Becky McDonald]

Aight, here goes.
Powerlevelling a little bit here, so I'm going to change some names here and there. If it doesn't make sense, don't worry; if you knew the actual circumstances you'd understand 100%. If you're interested in hearing more, I'll type out all of what I have to say. But I'm not wasting a significant amount of time writing out all my grievances if you're not interested.

My problems with Fandom as a service begins in mid-2019, when Fandom introduced something called "Wiki Representatives" and "Wiki Specialists". These were about 10 - 20 people Fandom randomly assigned the role of basically being a super-admin for all Wikis of a particular topic. Right away, you don't need to be a genius to see the immediate problem here, given there are thousands of wikis for every single topic. The person I got assigned was named something like "BobsBurgers123" and had a picture of Louise Belcher as their avatar, as it was decided this person would control all TV-related wikis. Already, this guy was giving me bad signs since he showed no interest in my Wiki prior to being assigned it, and the very idea of these individuals rubbed me the wrong way since the means in which Fandom introduced them said something that was tantamount to "Bureaucrats are no longer, and in fact have never been leaders of their respective Wikis, but these people will be".

What the institution of Representatives and Specialists really meant was that Bureaucrats such as myself could no longer issue wiki-wide orders without approval from these people, who in turn don't GET permission to approve your orders without subsequent approval from a Sysop. This included, but was not limited to:

• Adding an extension
• Changing the Wiki's name
• Changing the Wiki's focus (this will become important later)

It meant we could write pages, add images, and do other stuff that was additive to the Wiki, but they would no longer let us do what was needed to make them more concise. To trim the fat from them. Everything you wanted to do had to be agreed by a consensus of members (even if you were the ONLY active editor) and then had to be approved by a Sysop. We couldn't clean up the Wiki if we found spam or anything else that shouldn't have been on it without a consensus being established, again, even if you were the only editor. We couldn't significantly restyle it. How the Wikis looked in early 2019 were essentially set in stone thanks to Specialists and Representatives.

In the rest of my story there are two main antagonists:

• The main culprit is a 50-something lifelong weeb who has a well-storied history of being a histrionic little bitch obsessed with power, who proceeded to absolutely ruin a wiki for a certain extremely popular video game. This caused most of the community to revolt and subsequently mass exodus to one of what was then Wikia's main rival, only for many years later said rival ended up being bought out by Wikia anyway, with this individual put back in charge. Since the buyout, this wiki has become a ghost town since NO-ONE in their right mind would ever want to work with this fucking tyrant.
• The second is a bald nonce obsessed with a very long-running sci-fi series, and lucked into controlling its Wiki, which basically forces its community to use it even though they can't fucking stand him and his rules. Pretty much ever single person in this sci-fi fandom unilaterally hates this guy's guts, and wishes he was out of power.

If you want to hear more, let me know and I'll take a couple hours out to type out everything.

 

[scathefire]

These were about 10 - 20 people Fandom randomly assigned the role of basically being a super-admin for all Wikis of a particular topic.

Why the fuck would you randomly assign people that job, that's as stupid as assigning a random US citizen to be president of the United States. Then again, the people who get either of those jobs tend to be power-hungry narcissists.

 

[Becky McDonald]

Why the fuck would you randomly assign people that job, that's as stupid as assigning a random US citizen to be president of the United States. Then again, the people who get either of jobs tend to be power-hungry narcissists.

It's a bit more complex than that, admittedly.
These people were selected due to their proficiency on other wikis, but it's still very bad since as you can see, there aren't many of them. If doing this full time, you can maybe actively contribute to ~5 wikis in a day, no more, unless you're a mega autist. But these people have been given control over hundreds, if not thousands of wikis. There is no feasible way they could ever do their job efficiently when given that much scope to work with.

This was completely foisted upon us by surprise, after their Community Builder project spectacularly failed. No-one was approached before announcing it, and there wasn't an application to become a Specialist/Representative, and by the looks of things, there still isn't, given how few there are. And yet these are the people Fandom entrusted every single wiki on the site onto.

 

[Creep3r]

Aight, here goes.
Powerlevelling a little bit here, so I'm going to change some names here and there. If it doesn't make sense, don't worry; if you knew the actual circumstances you'd understand 100%. If you're interested in hearing more, I'll type out all of what I have to say. But I'm not wasting a significant amount of time writing out all my grievances if you're not interested.

My problems with Fandom as a service begins in mid-2019, when Fandom introduced something called "Wiki Representatives" and "Wiki Specialists". These were about 10 - 20 people Fandom randomly assigned the role of basically being a super-admin for all Wikis of a particular topic. Right away, you don't need to be a genius to see the immediate problem here, given there are thousands of wikis for every single topic. The person I got assigned was named something like "BobsBurgers123" and had a picture of Louise Belcher as their avatar, as it was decided this person would control all TV-related wikis. Already, this guy was giving me bad signs since he showed no interest in my Wiki prior to being assigned it, and the very idea of these individuals rubbed me the wrong way since the means in which Fandom introduced them said something that was tantamount to "Bureaucrats are no longer, and in fact have never been leaders of their respective Wikis, but these people will be".

What the institution of Representatives and Specialists really meant was that Bureaucrats such as myself could no longer issue wiki-wide orders without approval from these people, who in turn don't GET permission to approve your orders without subsequent approval from a Sysop. This included, but was not limited to:

• Adding an extension
• Changing the Wiki's name
• Changing the Wiki's focus (this will become important later)

It meant we could write pages, add images, and do other stuff that was additive to the Wiki, but they would no longer let us do what was needed to make them more concise. To trim the fat from them. Everything you wanted to do had to be agreed by a consensus of members (even if you were the ONLY active editor) and then had to be approved by a Sysop. We couldn't clean up the Wiki if we found spam or anything else that shouldn't have been on it without a consensus being established, again, even if you were the only editor. We couldn't significantly restyle it. How the Wikis looked in early 2019 were essentially set in stone thanks to Specialists and Representatives.

So its become an even more bureaucratic mess of power hungry autists in charge while wiki staff members like that landwhale Sannse and disney rep Brandon Rhea rake in the cash? Not surprising in the least, especially after that massive ad spam overhaul they made to their site.

In the rest of my story there are two main antagonists:

• The main culprit is a 50-something lifelong weeb who has a well-storied history of being a histrionic little bitch obsessed with power, who proceeded to absolutely ruin a wiki for a certain extremely popular video game. This caused most of the community to revolt and subsequently mass exodus to one of what was then Wikia's main rival, only for many years later said rival ended up being bought out by Wikia anyway, with this individual put back in charge. Since the buyout, this wiki has become a ghost town since NO-ONE in their right mind would ever want to work with this fucking tyrant.

You mean the Zelda wiki? Talk about having no way out. Either way, it goes to show that there are really no alternative options. Every single one will end up getting shut down or bought out by Fandom (hot damn that name will never not sound stupid for a company).

• The second is a bald nonce obsessed with a very long-running sci-fi series, and lucked into controlling its Wiki, which basically forces its community to use it even though they can't fucking stand him and his rules. Pretty much ever single person in this sci-fi fandom unilaterally hates this guy's guts, and wishes he was out of power.

No idea what this one is.

If you want to hear more, let me know and I'll take a couple hours out to type out everything.

Please share more. Could give the Fandom thread some potential new drama.