Helping wikis move away from Fandom • Hacker News Board

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#41

Post by mschuster91 » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 2:07 PM UTC

ta1243 wrote: post #35

homebrewer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason you're assuming the owners of the website have your interests at heart, and not the interest of their bank account.

Sure, but how does serving me a 15 minute video help their bank account? If it were a youtube style video advert I could understand it.

You watch it, and Google Ads records a veeery long "user is present on website" time, which is a boost in SEO - Google ranks how long people spend on a website, hence the "trend" of endless waffling around in stuff as basic as cooking recipes, or inline videos that entice the user to spend time on the website. Even if all of it (nowadays including videos) is AI-generated slop. But if the user immediately finds the information and goes back or closes the tab, then the site will get punished for being actually efficient and useful.

SEO has ruined the Internet.

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#42

Post by jdoss » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 2:07 PM UTC

I play a lot of Path of Exile and one of the best quality of life improvements I did this summer was adding the Fandom Path of Exile wiki URL to my Kagi deny list so it never shows up in search. The official one that is maintained and kept up to date by the game developer poewiki.net/wiki/Path_of_Exile_Wiki was always third or forth on my searches.

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#43

Post by philipov » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 2:07 PM UTC

ta1243 wrote: post #35

homebrewer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason you're assuming the owners of the website have your interests at heart, and not the interest of their bank account.

Sure, but how does serving me a 15 minute video help their bank account? If it were a youtube style video advert I could understand it.

Putting autoplaying videos on every page farms their view count and gets the algorithm to show it to more people, which drives ad revenue. It's quite similar to how Fextralife embeds twitch streams to farm viewer counts.

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#44

Post by xcode42 » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 2:08 PM UTC

By the way, you can replace the fandom in the url with breezewiki and get a much more pleasant experience without ads. it's not that much of a difference on desktop, and the layout might debatably be uglier, but it's a godsend on mobile where the search bar doesn't even work half the time for me.

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#45

Post by paranoidxprod » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 2:08 PM UTC

A few years ago, Path of Exile migrated from the fandom to a new site. GGG (Path of Exile's company) even decided to host the new wiki on their servers (https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3292958)! At this point, the new wiki ranks higher then the old one, but for a time it was an issue. Interesting to see more cases of games wikis leaving Fandom with how horrible the site is, and hopefully this is just the beginning of a trend.

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#46

Post by ykonstant » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 2:10 PM UTC

tombert wrote: post #6

Fandom is one of my least favorite things now. The site ends up having more ads than the average porn or piracy website, it manages to slow down my relatively beefy laptops without even trying. I love the idea of fan wikis, but Fandom is basically the worst possible implementation of that idea.

I have blocked the domain on my browser; this helps with mindless clicking on fandom sites appearing on top of Google searches while the communities have moved on to other wikis.

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#47

Post by abound » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 2:10 PM UTC

DrillShopper wrote: post #21

EcommerceFlow wrote: post #12

Google giving Fandom powerful rankings bothers me too, since their intrusive ads clearly go against Google ranking factors. Still, I'm glad for some competition. However, even after browsing their site, is contacting them the only way to get something up and running?

I assume that Fandom pays Google for that placement

Theoretically, you can't pay for placement on Google without it being labelled an ad.

Practically, you can pay SEO experts to help you keep your rankings up.

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#48

Post by jagermo » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 2:11 PM UTC

citricsquid wrote: post #38

As the person ultimately responsible for the Minecraft Wiki ending up in the hands of Fandom, it is great to see what Weird Gloop (and similar) are achieving. At the time of selling out, the Minecraft Wiki and Minecraft Forum cost tens of thousands of dollars per month to run and so it didn't feel too much like selling out, because we needed money to survive[1]. 15 years later, the internet is a different place, and…

holy crap that minecraft wiki is fast now. I actually stopped going to fandom because it was so slow.

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#49

Post by ykonstant » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 2:11 PM UTC

paranoidxprod wrote: post #45

A few years ago, Path of Exile migrated from the fandom to a new site. GGG (Path of Exile's company) even decided to host the new wiki on their servers ( https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3292958 )! At this point, the new wiki ranks higher then the old one, but for a time it was an issue. Interesting to see more cases of games wikis leaving Fandom with how horrible the site is, and hopefully this is just…

Fandom PoE still pollutes the top of Google searches :(

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#50

Post by AlienRobot » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 2:12 PM UTC

I'm happy that people are creating alternatives, but personally I never had a problem with Fandom.

Yes, they will monetize the content, but they'll also manage it because it makes them money. Content on fandom is probably going to still be available 10 years later. It's the same with DeviantArt, it's worse now than it has ever been, but artwork uploaded 10 years ago is still available, and it will probably still be available 10 years later. You could also say this about Youtube, Google, and many other platforms.

I hope the emerging alternatives prove to be successful, but so far I still don't see a reliable alternative for Youtube, Google, or DeviantArt (or even Twitter, Reddit, etc.). In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a replacement win in the long run. Maybe I'm just too young.