Helping wikis move away from Fandom • Hacker News Board

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#121

Post by rideontime » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 2:59 PM UTC

yakz wrote: post #119

zoeysmithe wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we stop it with the "bad apples CEO" thing. These guys are doing what any for-profit enterprise would do. They're not exceptions. Theyre the norm. The reality is that ads and such are (probably) the only effective way to go and founders will sell to capital groups for profit. Over and over. Look at image hosting, which is a similar case. We went from ad laden tinypic's and such to ad-free imgur and now imgur is a…

They are objectively bad for some definitions of bad. What do you want for them? Universal respect? Just because taking something good and making it shitty is one way to make money doesn't mean that it is the only way to make money.

I think the point is that if we want this to stop happening, we have to address the cause of the problem, not just complain about its effects.

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#122

Post by epiccoleman » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 2:59 PM UTC

ryukoposting wrote: post #87

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…

I remember reading the Minecraft wiki back in the early 2010s, back when Fandom was still Wikia. It would have been much more appealing at the time than it is today - not just for the reasons you list, but because Wikia actually kicked ass in the early 2010s. It was sleek, modern, and easy to use. And today, it isn't.

Every time I wind up on some garbage Fandom page I reminisce about the good old days of Wikia. I remember many a fun night trawling through pages while playing Fallout or Skyrim or whatever - all the information you could ever need, right there at your fingertips. It's an ethos you don't see so much on the modern net.

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#123

Post by rideontime » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 3:00 PM UTC

languagehacker wrote: post #74

Former Wikia engineer, here. I left right around when they changed their name to Fandom and kind of saw the writing on the wall. Despite the tremendous amount of information they have at their disposal, they never really saw themselves (or positioned themselves) as more than a low market cap media company. I spent a lot of time in the mid-teens trying to encourage them to be early on AI/NLP kind of stuff and use that…

I didn't think I could Fandom being worse than it already is, but imagining it stuffed with AI-generated slop...

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#124

Post by rightbyte » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 3:00 PM UTC

There is something fundamental here. It used to be the case that you could form communities around commercial entities. But nowadays it seems to be too many short term profit vultures roaming around looking for targets, to not end up selling out the community. Efficient market I guess.

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#125

Post by thinkmassive » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 3:00 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #81

oreally wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with the availability of Cloudflare, running high-traffic websites is much more cost effective. sidetrack but how does cloudflare make things cost effective? wouldn't it be cheaper if i just hosted the wiki on a simple vps?

Ten years ago bandwidth was expensive. Still is, even if not as much. A simple VPS gets overwhelmed, but a simple VPS behind cloudflare can do quite well.

    s/cloudflare/a CDN/

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#126

Post by ARandumGuy » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 3:02 PM UTC

teddyh wrote: post #76

tombert wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use ublock now too, but it's this really annoying feedback loop; people use ad blockers, making the websites less money, so they add more advertisements for the people who don't have ad blockers, and making the website worse and more likely for them to install an ad blocker etc... I know that running a website isn't free, so I understand the need for ads. Fandom is just a terrible version of it.

> people use ad blockers, making the websites less money, so they add more advertisements for the people who don't have ad blockers I have serious doubts about this step in the spiral. IIUC, people who use ad blockers are still vanishingly few , and therefore the loss of ad impressions should not be that large.

It's clearly enough of an impact for Google to spend effort killing uBlock on Chrome, and (attempting) to block it on Youtube. Obviously Google is huge, and even a small percentage of users is still a lot of money on the table.

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#127

Post by evanfarrar » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 3:02 PM UTC

They should promise not to become wikimedia board members. That is the main thing that allows fandom to be so bad.

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#128

Post by tjbiddle » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 3:03 PM UTC

Decided to give OSRS (Old School RuneScape) another try after more than a decade break from the game. Without their wiki, I don't think I would've continued to play; it's open constantly - incredibly easy to use, very well up to date, and just an all around wonderful resource. Above and beyond what used to exist.

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#129

Post by Dwedit » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 3:03 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…

Ah Cloudflare, where you constantly get captchas for attempting to read a web page.

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#130

Post by anthonymartinez » Thu, Oct 10, 2024, 3:05 PM UTC

zoeysmithe wrote: post #92

burkaman wrote: post #25

If you're wondering what happened to Fandom, just look at who runs it now. > In February 2018, former AOL CEO Jon Miller, backed by private equity firm TPG Capital, acquired Fandom. > In February 2019, former StubHub CEO Perkins Miller took over as CEO - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fandom_(website) It's hard to imagine a worse leadership team than private equity + StubHub.

Can we stop it with the "bad apples CEO" thing. These guys are doing what any for-profit enterprise would do. They're not exceptions. Theyre the norm. The reality is that ads and such are (probably) the only effective way to go and founders will sell to capital groups for profit. Over and over. Look at image hosting, which is a similar case. We went from ad laden tinypic's and such to ad-free imgur and now imgur is a…

I'm with you for the most part but we definitely need to hold PE and the Ticketmasters of the world more accountable- there's no escaping modern capitalism but better markets are definitely possible.