Even with uBlock Origin installed, I find Fandom to have a very high proportion of ads. For a while I tried blocking them individually through uBlock’s element zapper, but that proved a very short term solution. Too often, it worked only on that page and if I went to another entry on the same wiki, it would be loaded down with ads again. I gave up trying. uBlock is really good with ads on most sites, but Fandom has so many that uBlock can’t get rid of them all.
It varies between browsers. On my phone (which is how I use Fandom most often - finding out information that ought to be in a game I’m currently playing), I’ve tried several different adblockers and none of them effectively de-ads Fandom. On desktop, Firefox with ublock is generally okay, but Chrome with ublock always has a couple of ads that try to sneak through.
This might be going back a while, I haven’t played or looked anything up in along time, but back in the early days was the minecraft wiki not already its own site. At what point did they move to fandom? It’s good they’re moving, but why did they ever go there in the first place?
a core issue for moving wikis is that Fandom refuses to delete the old wiki so you 1) have to fight an SEO war against them; and 2) have to contend with directing everyone to the right place or else you have two competing wikis (one of which will gradually lapse out of date). it’s very irritating.
It "should" be as easy as a global template inclusion kinda like how wikipedia does donations, but i wouldn't be surprised if fandom doesn't allow that to happen
they’ll revert that and ban you for “vandalism” (i assume they have automated sensors for checking this), and/or turn your wiki over to new administrators.
The Path of Emilie community made an extension to remove fandom from Google results and automatically link to the real wiki. Hopefully more communities make something similar.
Most Terms of Service don’t do that, instead asking you to provide a “perpetual” “irrevocable” “transferable” license for your content – and while some absolutely stretch the terms to allow them to use it for things like language model learning or shifty monetization practices, such a license is also legally necessary for the website to function at all.
For “open-source” websites like Wikipedia or OSM, the terms are usually even simpler - you agree to license your posts under the same license that they use to distribute it.
As for Fandom specifically, they seem to mostly operate on the latter model – though you still need an additional commercial use waiver if you want to submit to NC or ND-licensed wikis (which once again goes into the “legally necessary” box).
The same open-source license that lets people edit the wikis and fork them to independent websites without having to ask permission from every single contributor also lets Fandom admins reject attempts to delete or redirect pages.
i’m pretty sure this is because of two things: 1) they actually host the wikis and the administrators of them simply steward them; and 2) everything is licensed under CC-BY-SA anyways, so you don’t retain the right to revoke things you contribute or the right to move the wiki.
ugh yeah. especially the SEO war thing, the new website doesn’t even register on DuckDuckGo yet. at least there’s this extension called Indie Wiki Buddy which will hide Fandom results from search engines and redirect you to an independent wiki if you end up on Fandom anyway
The only thing more rage-inducing than getting stuck in a game and needing to Google the information I need… is finding that information on a Fandom Wiki composed of 90% ads and 10% useful content. Especially since I’m usually searching for that information on my phone, due to not all games handling Alt+Tab particularly well, and Fandom is somehow even worse on a phone. I have genuinely had moments where I’ve just closed a game and stopped playing because the information I need isn’t in the game but has to be found on a Fandom Wiki.
SEO wars only go so far when the user experience on Fandom is so awful that plenty of players would rather scroll down to use the #2 entry in the search results if it means not having to click a Fandom link. They’d only need a few occasions when the #2 entry is a better experience than using Fandom, and they’ll start using the independent Wiki purposefully.
I’m trying to figure out how to contact DuckDuckGo, so they can redirect the !mcwiki command to the new site, but no luck so far. EDIT: Nevermind, I found the form.
DuckDuckGo has a page for adding or updating !bang commands (used to redirect searches to other sites). I requested they change which URL !mcwiki searches get directed to, using the minecraft.wiki search pattern instead of the gamepedia or fandom one. duckduckgo.com/newbang
Fandom has since become one of my least favorite websites, simply because of the ads, and the “Honest Trailers” videos that automatically show up (and follow you) regardless of the topic of the page you’re on, not to mention that their mobile site is pure garbage. It’s just pure garbage, alright.
And I’m a person who browses Logopedia regularly, which is still hosted on Fandom. Boo. Thank goodness the Minecraft Wiki left that.
I’m not arguing that tho. Im not arguing what makes random different from social media sites.
For example news sites are also littered with ads. Porn sites, littered with ads. Blog sites, littered with ads. Google searches even come up with search result ads.
It’s everywhere man, I’m just arguing that fandom is no worse than anywhere else.
But yes, switching to respectful amounts of ads or none at all if possible is preferable to what fandom is right now.
My original comment is just pointing out that I don’t really think anyone actually cares that much about this stuff, and that I personally dont like all these negative echo chambers everywhere.
Everyone’s obviously valid in venting and what not, but I figured I’d point out my viewpoint too while we’re at it 🤷🏻♂️
I hope the OSRS wiki really influences others, that wiki is top quality, the best out there honestly. Fandom, fextralife and such can all die in a hole.
I am happy Weird Gloop have decided to host the Minecraft wiki.
It’s embarrassing that huge and ongoing successful games can’t shell out to host official wikis, but instead leave it to the community to either pay out or pocket (not happening) or pick whichever crappy provider they can find willing to host it for ads.
A good wiki needs to have mosly text, a modest amount of pictures, no self-hosted video, and low computing needs. While an unpleasant expense for a private individual, it doesn’t cost a company much to host.
Looking it up, there is WikiWikiWeb implements Federated Wiki, which Wikipedia describes its primary features as:
adds forking features found in source control systems and other software development tools to wikis. […]The software allows its users to fork wiki pages, maintaining their own copies. Federation supports what Cunningham has described as “a chorus of voices” where users share content but maintain their individual perspectives. This approach contrasts with the tendency of centralized wikis such as Wikipedia to function as consensus engines.
Gonna look more into Federated Wiki today, because this sounds super interesting to me c:
I don’t think a built-in wiki should be a priority for Lemmy. The sysadmin of an instance.com instance can host a separate web app as a standalone wiki at wiki.instance.com.
For example, you could host an mdbook at this subdomain to serve as a docs-style wiki.
While I agree that it’s rather sad for developer not hosting their Wiki, I really never had any problem with the old hoster of the Minecraft Wiki. I certainly didn’t perceive it as a “crappy provider”. It did exactly what it needed to and there weren’t any intrusive adds or at least not to my attention. But maybe I’m just really good at ignoring adds myself.
Edit: Or mabye my add blocker did help, hard to tell since I haven’t seen the internet without it since years now.
Ya, not all are the level of Fandom. The old one for Minecraft was somewhat tolerable without an ad-blocker. I don’t really feel it is fair to blame the providers either - even Fandom. They are stepping up to offer something nobody else feels like paying for.
While fandom sucks (although I think it used to be fine before the redesign many years ago) and game companies/publishers are cheap, I still think 3rd party wikis is going to better, even shitty ones like fandom, because guess what?
Just like every other ‘live service’ (or even just old games!?! if you’re Ubisoft) everything will be fine and dandy until one day some suit decides to shut down the wiki to cut down on costs and all that information and community work gets flushed down the toilet.
With that said, instead of them making some wiki website, it’s nice when games lets you look up information in the game itself, without having to open the web browser and going to some wiki.
Arenanet provides a Wiki for Guild Wars 1 and 2. They are both amazing and the second one even integrates into GW2. When GW1 came out it started as a community service but Arenanet took it in officially.
Honestly, without the wiki and the massive work by the community I’d be very lost in GW2.
They should have gone the terraria way of handling a wiki before. Terraria has a functional wiki because it’s its own thing. I am not even sure the fandom websites is meant to be read given the amount of ads that litterally cover the whole page.
The Terraria wiki is hosted on wiki.gg, which the Minecraft wiki editors strongly considered (reading through the discussion, it seemed like a strong second choice behind Weird Gloop/RuneScape wiki). But wiki.gg really has a lot of the same problems as fandom, just to a lesser degree. Still has a fair amount of ads, still has wiki.gg branding on the website, and most importantly in the discussions I read, they wouldn’t be able to use a domain the Minecraft wiki owns (as in it wold have been at minecraft.wiki.gg rather than minecraft.wiki). The big problem with not having their own domain is that if things ever go south with wiki.gg (for example if they get bought by Fandom), they would be starting from scratch as far as SEO/discoverability goes, same as they are now.
Weird Gloop (the host for the RuneScape wikis) offered fewer ads, a comparable hosting infrastructure, and the ability to use their own domain, as well as a lot of experience forking from fandom successfully, which sounds like it was really valuable to them.
I only just switched over to firefox + UBO on my phone, and it’s so much better. I had just assumed that the beautiful ad-free experience I get on my PC wasn’t available on phone, but by jove it is.
U matrix is also a great option, it takes original to the max and lets you automatically allow list or deny list specific domains and their components (html, css, JavaScript, cookies, frames, and xhr(i think that was the last option not sure)
It also lets you block mixed content, referrer information and a lot more. It’s been incredibly helpful
Setup a Pihole and never face this issue again. Blocks ads at dns level which doesn’t get everything but gets the majority of ads.
All you need to do is make sure to keep the lil guy updated. You can even view your traffic and see which ads aren’t getting caught and manually add those domains.
Lastly, you play minecraft in steam? What is wrong with you 😝
minecraft.wiki
Aktywne