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Helping wikis move away from Fandom

weirdgloop.org

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Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#291

Post by Tomte »

wpietri wrote: post #285
bombcar wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Dwarf Fortress wiki https://dwarffortresswiki.org is perhaps the most impressive I've seen, as it maintains namespaces to maintain (and update!) information about particular versions, because many players end up staying on a version for various reasons.

Could you say a bit more about that? Normally I think "have to support people stuck on old versions" is something that happens when you're selling enterprise software to insurance companies. This is the first I've heard of it in games.

Players comfortable with the ASCII graphics version (the one that existed for years) often just paid for Steam release with pretty graphics just to support the brothers. And then kept playing the "hardcore" version they are used to.

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#292

Post by booleandilemma »

marxisttemp wrote: post #175
sph wrote: post #84

A thing that bothers me is that Jimmy Wales, a founder of and arguably the face of Wikipedia, is also the founder and president of Fandom, Inc. (2004–present) I respect the work of Mr. Wales immensely, and I cannot explain how he has allowed his creation to become synonymous with ad-ridden borderline unusable gaming wikis.

Jimbo is a dyed-in-the-wool libertarian, and as such I find it unsurprising that he has created both a wonderful, decentralized, communitarian project as well as a capitalistic nightmare. Libertarians are essentially anarchists who selectively turn their brains off when they see dollar signs.

Are they turning their brains off or on?

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#293

Post by Capricorn2481 »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #194

What is weird gloop doing exactly ? Is it hosting it on cloudflare / using cloudflare workers or what exactly (because I heard cloudflare being mentioned here) I am all ears because hosting a static site is basically free thanks to github pages / cloudflare pages , but having a site which changes a lot (a wiki can have changes be applied to at an insane rate , though I am not sure if we could use something like git a…

> but having a site which changes a lot but is still static can cost a arm and leg

How so? Seems like it would be trivial in PHP

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#294

Post by jjcm »

johnklos wrote: post #247

This illustrates a problem that I wish more people would see. People, usually businesspeople, consider adding some craptastic thing such as intrusive ads, to make more money. Who doesn't like more money? They add the thing, and revenue goes up! What they don't see is the effect that comes when fewer people visit the site because they're too annoyed to come back over time. They see and take credit for the small increa…

It's the classic question of "how much of our brand did we sell to achieve this bump in revenue?".

Selling your brand is a very real thing, and I wish more people would take it into account. Brand health correlates with long term health.

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#295

Post by bombcar »

wpietri wrote: post #285
bombcar wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Dwarf Fortress wiki https://dwarffortresswiki.org is perhaps the most impressive I've seen, as it maintains namespaces to maintain (and update!) information about particular versions, because many players end up staying on a version for various reasons.

Could you say a bit more about that? Normally I think "have to support people stuck on old versions" is something that happens when you're selling enterprise software to insurance companies. This is the first I've heard of it in games.

As mentioned, some versions of the game introduce breaking concepts that earlier players may not want to deal with (either because it breaks save compatibility, or they don't like the mechanic, etc).

Minecraft has this somewhat also, with some people sticking on various versions because of mods, or play style, or combat, etc.

For example, one huge change was going from a 2D map to a 3D one, another was how world generation was done.

See "Eras" here for the big ones: https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Release_information

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#296

Post by marxisttemp »

sph wrote: post #265
marxisttemp wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, I am talking about Jimbo. From that website he founded: > Wales has previously referred to himself as an Objectivist, referring to the philosophy of writer Ayn Rand in the mid-20th century that emphasizes reason, individualism, and capitalism.

What has objectivism got to do with anarchism? I take offence at being put in the same pile as Rand fanatics.

I’m an anarchist too, and I would also take offense to being lumped in with libertarians! I only meant to say that they often seem to have the seeds of an anarchism in some of their thinking e.g. individual liberty and volunteerism, but then immediately embrace contradictory positions due to their inability to critique property.

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#297

Post by Aachen »

rjmunro wrote: post #261
diggan wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cloudflare get the best deals on bandwidth. If you want to pay for bandwidth then yeah, CloudFlare is a great option. Otherwise, if you like the experience of not paying per GB/TB, go for a dedicated server with unmetered connection that has the same price every month, regardless.

Cloudflare don't charge per GB/TB. You get unlimited bandwidth even on their free plan. The problem with paying per GB is that it's in the CDN's interest for you to get a DDOS attack so they can charge you for all the bandwidth. It's in Cloudflare's interest to reduce DDOS attacks and unwanted bot traffic because it costs them bandwidth, not you.

> it's in the CDN's interest for you to get a DDOS

What kind of conspiracy is this? As if anyone charging for bandwidth hopes to get their infrastructure attacked

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#298

Post by Nux »

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…

> At the time of selling out, the Minecraft Wiki and Minecraft Forum cost tens of thousands of dollars per month to run.

What kind of decisions got you in that position? Hard to phatom.

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#299

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

I've noticed how many wikis for games I look up are on fandom and, probably because of my experience with web development, I take special note of the fact that they're always at game-name.fandom.com (I'm also a bit disappointed, like when I bought Chrono Trigger on Steam and looked up why the cat wouldn't follow me). I don't think I've ever seen a wiki with their branding/style that is not also on their domain. Perhaps some exist which use their software but I've never heard of such a vendor then also demanding a new style to be used, though I guess that's possible.

Anyway, I've always doubted it to be an accident that seemingly all of their wikis are hosted on the same domain[1]. Glad to see someone doing good work about that, even if it's just incidental while they solve a different problem. Seeing the official LoL wiki on leagueoflegends.com suggests they don't intend to do the same sort of -- admittedly presumed -- widespread tracking.

Regardless, it sounds like the wiki maintainers prefer working with Weird Gloop rather than Fandom and I don't otherwise have a lot of sympathy for Fandom. I have no specific bone to pick with them but I also can't help but feel glad for people who are finding other wiki software vendors.

(It's also kind of interesting to see the Minecraft wiki at minecraft.wiki instead of something like wiki.minecraft.com. I guess it's a community project, just noting that Microsoft/Mojang don't seem interested in maintaining it(?). Maybe the community prefers it that way and they're respecting that.)

1: Turns out it definitely is not an accident: https://support.fandom.com/hc/en-us/articles/360021258554-I-...

> We can only change the first part of your wiki's URL (i.e. example.fandom.com) - we do not support wikis outside of fandom.com.

Re: Helping wikis move away from Fandom

#300

Post by xp84 »

lupire wrote: post #279
mossTechnician wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't it be worrying that companies are required to make consistent gains* for shareholders and investors? At some point, a company will naturally reach a market saturation point. * ETA: I meant "growth" here, not profit

If it can't generate profit, it's worth more liquidated than operating. Employees should buy out investors if they want to keep operating for their own personal profit.

>If it can't generate profit

This wasn't exactly the question. The question was about growth. A company could be very profitable without growth (say, they own a mine which produces $40 million worth of ore each year with expenses of $10 million with no end in sight) or can have growth without profit (Open AI is a great example, or for history, the first 5 years of Facebook.)

I know most of stock investing is about capital gains and not dividends, but I think GP was saying it's inherently impossible to have growth forever.

On a financial level I get why people prefer to invest their money in a stock that goes up rather than one that pays them 8% a year consistently in dividends, but it seems unfortunate that somehow it seems like we aren't allowed to just have sustainable companies that don't depend on infinite growth to stay in business.

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