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There's a new "Google Jail" for independent wikis

weirdgloop.org

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Re: There's a new "Google Jail" for independent wikis

#221

Post by cookmeplox »

thesuitonym wrote: post #217

This is not going to be the popular opinion but at this point, if your project is not for profit (As I assume most fan-made wikis are), I've found it's best to just ignore Google. Leads from Google are typically not good anyway, especially if what you're trying to build is some type of community. I understand that Weirdgloop is probably some kind of business, so it makes sense that they would care. And if you care, m…

"You shouldn't care about Google if you run a wiki" is really common take, and I think it's really harmful/wrong because it badly misunderstands the way that wiki communities actually form, and how losing all of the readers means you eventually don't have any editors. I talk about this more in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49606772

Re: There's a new "Google Jail" for independent wikis

#222

Post by thaumasiotes »

mitxela wrote: post #155
thaumasiotes wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... why? Is he involved with either of them now? Is there a shared persisting influence of some kind?

Fandom used to be Wikia and it was just a thing that hosted wikis. Its story is a bit like Sourceforge's.

Ok, but... what is it that we're taking note of?

Re: There's a new "Google Jail" for independent wikis

#223

Post by xp84 »

jmuguy wrote: post #116
raincole wrote: post #100

When I still payed Dota, there was a wiki hosted on fandom. The experience was terrible. It wasn't always update-to-date with the latest patch, and on mobile there were so many ads rendering the whole thing unreadable. The catch is that there was a better wiki, called Liquipedia. But Google never showed it first and I kept getting tricked to click that shitty fandom site. (It was years ago. But I just tested it a bit…

Yeah fandom has done this to several games. its taken a huge effort on the part of the Satisfactory community to make sure people know the official wiki is https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/ and not the garbage on fandom. Using an extension to block fandom.com results is helpful because for other games I'm not really thinking about it when searching for something and find myself on that tumor of a website.

I'm really enjoying a plugin (Indie Wiki Buddy) for replacing fandom links in search results with those of the corresponding independent wikis, and if you don't have an alternative, it converts any other fandom links to BreezeWiki which is like a 'reader view' of Fandom.

In theory I can imagine somebody feeling bad for 'poor fandom' getting scraped (and I do feel bad for some websites that have parties like Google take their content and regurgitate it without sending traffic) but nope, F*k Fandom because they cynically exploit the open CC licenses that this content was created with to guarantee themselves the right to compete with the original creators forever even when the creators want to leave.

Re: There's a new "Google Jail" for independent wikis

#224

Post by r3trohack3r »

alightsoul wrote: post #212
mitxela wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why people recommend Kagi.

But it's paid. Some people use brave because it's free and not google. More than duckduckgo

Free isn’t free, you get what you pay for and you’ll pay one way or another

Re: There's a new "Google Jail" for independent wikis

#225

Post by xp84 »

mitxela wrote: post #196
whstl wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Jimmy Wales launched Fandom, then called Wikia, a shit-ton of (actually encyclopaedic) content about fictional stuff was deleted from Wikipedia to be moved to Fandom, with the excuse that it was a "sister project", that it was the right place for things to be moved, etc. Fandom was pure corruption even before the tenth round of enshittification.

Are you trying to say Jimmy Wales is corrupt because he didn't let you have a separate page for every Lord of the Rings character?

Self-dealing is a bad look no matter how you try to spin it. Being fussy about what is and isn't "encyclopedic" (arguably a self-defining idea anyway though) is fine, until it benefits you to rule a certain way, then people are going to speculate.

Also, nobody knows how much money Jimmy Wales took home from selling Fandom to TPG/IMC.

Re: There's a new "Google Jail" for independent wikis

#226

Post by xp84 »

mitxela wrote: post #197
charcircuit wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It wasn't always update-to-date with the latest patch In case you didn't know Fandom is not the one who is writing the wiki. The pages are community contributed. If it's out of date it means no one has contributed information about newer patches.

This doesn't actually matter, the user experience is just as bad. If you want visitors then you have to find a way to fix it.

Fair, but that's not their business model. They don't create any content. Their model is to trick naive (but obsessive) people into filling their wikis with information, then when they realize how enshittified the site is, using their SEO advantage to crush any later attempts by those same people to build a real community wiki.

> If you want visitors then you have to...

They'd say "Or, we can just have really good SEO and get those visitors without earning them!"

Re: There's a new "Google Jail" for independent wikis

#227

Post by Plont »

mitxela wrote: post #196
whstl wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Jimmy Wales launched Fandom, then called Wikia, a shit-ton of (actually encyclopaedic) content about fictional stuff was deleted from Wikipedia to be moved to Fandom, with the excuse that it was a "sister project", that it was the right place for things to be moved, etc. Fandom was pure corruption even before the tenth round of enshittification.

Are you trying to say Jimmy Wales is corrupt because he didn't let you have a separate page for every Lord of the Rings character?

I believe they are just saying that fandom.com sucked and made the internet worse even from the start, not necessarily that Jimmy Wales is corrupt.

Wikipedia actually does appear to have separate pages for every Lord of the Rings character. Frankly I think it makes sense for this series, since there's a truly unusual and effortful amount of worldbuilding behind its scenes, and since it has been so influential to fiction (even regardless of medium).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings

Anyway, Jimmy Wales doesn't unilaterally make article inclusion/exclusion decisions; there's a whole debate and voting process that Wikipedians use to make decisions like that. So if anyone were to be called corrupt for making ill-fated decisions to delete articles, it would be a bunch of pseudonymous Wikipedia users. And I think they likely acted in good faith, trying to improve the encyclopedia, even though it didn't work out well and wasn't what I would have done.

Re: There's a new "Google Jail" for independent wikis

#229

Post by mitxela »

xp84 wrote: post #225
mitxela wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you trying to say Jimmy Wales is corrupt because he didn't let you have a separate page for every Lord of the Rings character?

Self-dealing is a bad look no matter how you try to spin it. Being fussy about what is and isn't "encyclopedic" (arguably a self-defining idea anyway though) is fine, until it benefits you to rule a certain way, then people are going to speculate. Also, nobody knows how much money Jimmy Wales took home from selling Fandom to TPG/IMC.

So when Stack Overflow operates Stack Overflow, for programming questions, and Super User, for usage questions, and directs a computer usage question to Super User, that's corruption?

Re: There's a new "Google Jail" for independent wikis

#230

Post by mitxela »

panarky wrote: post #198
mitxela wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that independent wikis don't pay the fandom tax to google for preferred search placement. Have you tried contacting your local corruption bureau to negotiate a rate tailored for your circumstances?

Payment for search placement is not a thing.

Proof?
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