Not watching a YT video.
Anyone got a synopsis?
Stop using Fandom
Submitted 1 year ago by simple@lemm.ee to games@lemmy.world
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcfuA_UAz3I
Comments
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Azzu@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Fandom is for-profit and making their service ever more shitty in pursuit of that.
mrchampion@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You could always use Invidious or Piped (instance list here) to avoid using YT directly if you want. You won’t get any ads or anti-adblocker bullshit with Invidious, so I usually use that. I’m not sure about Piped, but it seems good too. Unless your point is to simply stop using YT for anything, in which case just ignore what I said.
cyanarchy@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
I think it’s the fact that not everything needs a 20 minute video. There’s a lot of topics that I’m interested in but skip because I don’t have 20, 30, 40, 60 minutes for it.
morgunkorn@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
My easy solution is whenever I land on a fandom page to add “anti” in front of the domaine name, “antifandom” will filter out the crep out of the original page and present a clean version of the wiki.
Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 1 year ago
That’s really cool!
TheNanaimoBarScene@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
I agree with the premise; fandom sucks. But does it really require a 20 minute exposé though?
I’ve seen a few links to the Indie Wiki Buddy extension page. I’m not too interested in installing a browser extension to find new wikis, but I bookmarked their listing page: getindie.wiki/listings/
w3dd1e@lemm.ee 1 year ago
TLDR; Fandom has a lot of QAnon articles written to make the scams seem legitimate to less computer savvy people.
My mom has fallen in a Qanon conspiracy world. The people from that world write Fandom articles about themselves to make it seem legitimate. I found them when I started investigating these people trying to convince her to steer clear.
I don’t trust a single thing on Fandom anymore.
terrehbyte@ani.social 1 year ago
An extension called Indie Wiki Buddy can also help with this by helping direct you to known alternatives to fandom for specific franchises or falling back to Breezewiki-based instances that rehost Fandom content without all of the Fandom bloat. It also provides this filtering and hinting to search results too, so you don’t have to change your workflow too much to use it.
Vipsu@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Fandom hosts a lot of wikis for long forgotten nich’e games and with these games there usually isn’t enough interest to move to another wiki. When it comes to these wikis theres rarely if ever a team behind updating the wiki and more often than not the content is just being updated and maintained by random invidividuals who just happen to be engaging with the content at given time. The very low barrier of entry makes this possible as you don’t really need to join a team to edit pages or even coordinate with other people.
When playing one of these games I like to record and share some my observations and findings about games mechanics etc but more often than not the only wiki I can find is fandom wiki that is either incomplete and possibly even abandoned. I cant be bothered to create my own Wiki for these games so I’ll just start editing that one instead because it’s easy, the foundation is usually already there and I don’t need to bother taking any sort of mantle of maintainer or admin.
While Fandom may not be the most optimal choice and there may be better ways to host wiki out there its still better than some obnoxious google document or poorly formatted steam guide that no one else can edit.
wildginger@lemmy.myserv.one 1 year ago
The reason you often cannot find smaller wikis is because this site killed them off.
Vipsu@lemmy.world 1 year ago
All too common within attention economy for people to go for the more popular choice.
Search engine algorithms tend to make things even worse.But there are games out there that might not even have wikis if Fandom didn’t make the barrier of entry so low.
xvlc@feddit.de 1 year ago
You might have heard of alternative frontends to services such as YouTube (Piped, Invidious), X/Twitter (Nitter), etc.
Something similar exists for Fandom: Breezewiki. This instance seems to occasionally result in errors, other instances seem to work more reliable.
mana@lemmynsfw.com 1 year ago
This is one of the main reasons I use Kagi. I have sites like fandom and fextralife blocked in my search results.
One of the things I miss about early internet years was all the independent fan sites and forums people had. Now, so much is just posted to these garbage platforms that control everything.
Jarmer@slrpnk.net 1 year ago
and recently the AI written garbage “gamer” websites have become a problem as well. You can tell instantly that some ai just collected and regurgitated a bunch of text that doesn’t even make sense.
Now I pretty much stick just to the fan created wikis. Stuff like bg3.wiki and uesp.net
janAkali@lemmy.one 1 year ago
I use Metager - it’s FOSS and also has an option to filter out choosen domains from the search results.
YarHarSuperstar@lemmy.world 1 year ago
What’s wrong with fextralife? I’m ootl
mana@lemmynsfw.com 1 year ago
Fextralife embeds their twitch stream into their site, artificially inflating their twitch viewer numbers, which in turn hurts smaller streamers since fextralife will be sorted first by viewer count.
val@infosec.pub 1 year ago
They game SEO to flood search results with articles that are pure, useless placeholders which most of the time will never be written. Even when they’re more than a placeholder page, they’re often wrong outside of a few games because they’re just their to get clicks. Downvote bots were used against links competing wikis, and while Fextralife denies, it they were conveniently spared.
thorbot@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Okay, I will stop using the thing I have never used once in my life
Pxtl@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
You probably did use it if you’re a nerd under its old name, Wikia, back before it got enshittified.
Smacks@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’ve always advocated against using Fandom. Not much customization and so many ads it makes the platform downright unusable.
A much better alternative is Wiki.gg, created by some of the original founders of Fandom.
Boiglenoight@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Great suggestion, thanks.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 1 year ago
Mfw you want to check some quick Minecraft details and you get a pop up then half your screen covered with one video. Thank heavens that they created minecraft.wiki as a wiki is basically essential for playing that game.
bigredcar@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The biggest insult is that Jimbo Wales of Wikipedia helped create fandom because he was fed up of people using Wikipedia to create detailed articles about fictional characters and video games. Wikipedia now has an artificially strict notability policy where things are falsely declared as not notable so they can be monetized on Fandom, all while Jimbo Wales has the gall to ask for money for his “non profit” Wikipedia while he makes the real money on Fandom.
Cris_Color@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’d be very curious to hear more details on this, do you happen to have a source handy, or any recommended reading?
In fairness, the money he gets from being a scumbag with fandom probably can’t be used to fund Wikipedia unless he wants to donate the money he’s making from his business to run his nonprofit. It’s not surprising he wouldn’t do that (even if thats the way the world ought to work) and I don’t presently have reason to believe he personally gets anything out of the donations that are given to keep Wikipedia running
Moneo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I love hearsay and dramatic “quotations”.
nodimetotie@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Given the criticism of Fandom, why not use a Piped link instead of YT? It’s like criticizing YT on YT.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 1 year ago
YT isn’t fandom-level bad.
nodimetotie@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s certainly heading in that direction
dx1@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I got special Stylish CSS blocking half the shit on Fandom. IDK about any politics about them but the site is borderline unusable.
overkill0485@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Whats the alternative?
simple@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Aside from self-hosting your own wiki, wiki.gg seems to be the popular option. Terraria’s official wiki is now terraria.wiki.gg and it’s great.
SPOOPYGHOST@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The main WoW wiki has moved to wiki.gg too :)
bingrazer@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’ve also used miraheze (miraheze.org)
MargotRobbie@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Independent wikis for those media franchises that have them.
Vipsu@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Does this mean self-hosting the wiki? Because that increase the barrier of entry by tenfold as a lot of publishers/game studios do not host their own wikis.
stebo02@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
for Minecraft, minecraft.wiki
for others i don’t know, some will have alternatives and others won’t…
1simpletailer@startrek.website 1 year ago
It really just depends on the fandom. Three more I know of are Bulbapedia for Pokemon, The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages for the Elder Scrolls, and Wookiepedia for Star Wars. They are all very comprehensive and functional.
XbSuper@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Unless the game your playing made their own, or someone else decided to self host and actually fill it with content (and finding it can be a pain), there isn’t one.
Hoping someone knows a good fallout wiki, I hate using fandom, but it’s the only one I can find with good info.
ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de 1 year ago
Self-hosting using MediaWiki
g6d3np81@kbin.social 1 year ago
Regarding SEO, What's stopping maintainers from vandalizing their own fandom page?
It would not be difficult to make a bot to update fandom page with a convincing but slightly wrong info, after a few hundred iterations, it's all useless. Go look at what google recommend and do complete opposite. I'm convinced this will bomb ranking and put whatever wiki they migrated to at the top.
djsoren19@yiffit.net 1 year ago
The disinformation doesn’t really matter. The fandom wiki’s naturally become incorrect over time, since they’re typically no longer maintained after a community switches, so vandalizing it after the fact won’t really change anything. For Path of Exile, it took the developers linking to the new wiki, and about two years of the community sending new players to the correct wiki, before it even started to show up in searches. Even then, I believe the fandom wiki still shows up first if you look at some of the very old entries.
Stovetop@lemmy.world 1 year ago
UESP has also been the best information resource for Elder Scrolls since forever but that doesn’t stop Fandom’s Elder Scrolls Wiki from being the first result if you Google “Dunmer”.
g6d3np81@kbin.social 1 year ago
Misinformation may reduce repeat visit, that part, I have no idea if google take into account when they rank the result. Domain/page age also plays a role. But what about other "problems"? If I try to de-optimize every items on that guide, will it speed up the de-rank as well?
jacktherippah@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Honestly, fuck Fandom. Do we have a Fediverse alternative?
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 1 year ago
Why would we need a fediverse alternative 😂 unless you want to go around editing wikis with your mastodon account, wikis are basically just static webpages. It’s called HTML 😂
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 1 year ago
I, for one, would be totally cool having a single account to do everything online. 🤷🏻♂️
DestinyGrey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Wikis like Fandom typically make it easy/easier to create and edit pages. Wiki editors are rare and you want to make it as easy for them to latch onto helping and volunteering as is possible.
Maybe a fediverse option isn’t needed (though the below comment’s point about having a central account would make it easier for a lot of users), but having a convenient and easy way to create a wiki for your favorite fandom, without using Fandom would go a long way toward breaking Fandom’s hold over the entertainment sections of the internet.
astral_avocado@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Just use dokuwifi or media wiki or any of the already made OSS self-hosted solutions…
Natanael@slrpnk.net 1 year ago
There’s Fossil which is a version control system with a wiki, so you can just straight up fork and mirror existing wikis.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
I learned about this plug in the other day. Indie Wiki Buddy. It’s not a fediverse alternative, but it’s the next best thing. It can redirect your Fandom results to their independent alternatives.
AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 1 year ago
For just about every single pokemon fan game I play, the fandom wiki pages have pretty much been utter garbage. Either they’re out of date, contain almost no useful info, or have a slew of other problems making it as painful as falling in a bunch of cacti. Same for most other ones I used to visit.
Will admit, Pokemon Empire having their own site for their fan game is still infinitely better than the fandom pages for it.
ElectricTrombone@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Does serebii.net or bulbapedia only cover the original franchise games? Just curious. Haven’t played a Pokémon game in a long time.
AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I think bulbapedia cover just about any official content as far as I’m aware, so long as it’s licensed or made by nintento directly. Anything from the games to the anime to the trading cards to things like obscure licensed Japanese arcade games based on the franchise.
Don’t know if serebii does all that or if it just focuses on the games since I don’t use it.
Chetzemoka@startrek.website 1 year ago
I don’t see a lot of Hollow Knight fans around here yet so I popped over to the HK community on that other website. Confirm: this video is one of the top trending on YouTube today lol. I figured, mossbag is…shall we say a very well-known figure in the community, if you’re not in the know.
I absolutely still rely on the wiki for HK shit I can’t remember like boss HP scaling and where tf was that last item I need for that one upgrade god dammit?? Glad to see them move to somewhere independent. Will donate.
Pringles@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I used to have the app, but that was ad galore. Now when I browse it, usually for some book series, with firefox and some ad blockers, it’s perfectly fine to read and browse. So I don’t really get the hate, but that might be because I don’t usually browse it for new content, but as a reference for finished series, like the wheel of time.
val@infosec.pub 1 year ago
Another comment without watching so I might be repeating something in the video, but did they mention how poor bloated the site is? I was trying to use the Forgotten Realms wiki and after a few tabs it would grind my browser to a halt. For something that really just needs to be serving text and a few images it’s wild how badly the site performs.
cttttt@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yah. Fandom is an Adblock-required site. And even then it’s pretty hard to browse.
hal_5700X@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Who knows of a good Final Fantasy wiki?
Lizzy_Wizzy@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Saw this yesterday. Great video that informed me on something I was completely oblivious to. Fuck fandom
Sabakodgo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
I only use it for WoWpedia, because it has a lot of information from years ago. I still remember when they added so many unnecessary interface elements and the website became slower. Luckily, I found userstyles.world/style/5722/clean-fandom-wiki, which made it usable again.
SPOOPYGHOST@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The wow wiki has recently moved to wiki gg and they ported everything over so definitely Check it out!
Sabakodgo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Thanks! Didn’t know they tried to leave fandom for a while. warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Warcraft_Wiki
Resol@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I wish I could, but I like browsing Logopedia which is hosting on Fandom and has announced no plans to leave the site. If they did, I’d completely abandon that place and block everything that has to do with them.
And no, it’s not easy to migrate a database of hundreds of thousands of logos to another wikifarm, especially if new stuff arrives all the time.
Jhogenbaum@leminal.space 1 year ago
Easy. Never heard of it. Done.
venia_sil@fedia.io 1 year ago
Starting up wikis is so easy nowadays that there's no excuse. I maintain a few Dokuwiki-based ones, it's my preferred engine for simple wiki stuff, but Mediawiki (the same one that powers Wikipedia) is not bad either and not really too difficult, just a bit more demanding storage-wise. Heck, you can currently fire-and-forget DW-based wikis on SDF's "one payment" access tier, even! Probably on Neocities too, haven't checked.
EyIchFragDochNur@feddit.de 1 year ago
Could you give a summary? I stopped using youtube.
simple@lemm.ee 1 year ago
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…
GrammatonCleric@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Fandom seems like my experience on Fextralife
EyIchFragDochNur@feddit.de 1 year ago
Thank you
Paradachshund@lemmy.today 1 year ago
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.
Th3D3k0y@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
Zoidsberg@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
What can we do with this information, I wonder…
ThrowawayPermanente@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
You’re the best, thanks
theneverfox@pawb.social 1 year ago
Nice write-up, I appreciate it
NightAuthor@lemmy.world 1 year ago
T4UTV1S@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
Skasi@lemmy.world 1 year ago
How about an alternative Link to the same video? inv.vern.cc/watch?v=qcfuA_UAz3I
EyIchFragDochNur@feddit.de 1 year ago
Pringles@lemm.ee 1 year ago
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?
H1jAcK@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Stop using Fandom
EyIchFragDochNur@feddit.de 1 year ago
Why?
NightAuthor@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Where’s that bot w the fedi links for videos?
Th3D3k0y@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Be the change you want to see.
WeLoveCastingSpellz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
summarize.tech