Fandom: Difference between revisions
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===User freedom=== | ===User freedom=== | ||
<blockquote>''"Admin or not, the staff doesn't care about it, neither do the filters. If Fandom staff wants the word censored: you don't have any rights to be against it. Not even us"''</blockquote>- Message posted by one of the [https://archive.ph/IWuY5 SOAP moderators], which was sent following a complaint from Fandom's automated system.[[File:Fandom Wiki - Zionist Ads.png|alt=Fandom Wikia Zionist Ad|thumb|Users do not have the right to restrict or decide which advertisements appear on the pages. Fandom would sometimes insert advertisements from [https://archive.ph/KB8yo political organizations] without prior consultation with the editors involved.]] | |||
[[File:Fandom Wiki - Zionist Ads.png|alt=Fandom Wikia Zionist Ad|thumb|Users do not have the right to restrict or decide which advertisements appear on the pages. Fandom would sometimes insert advertisements from [https://archive.ph/KB8yo political organizations] without prior consultation with the editors involved.]] | |||
Users on Fandom have little control over the content they upload to the platform. Furthermore, Fandom staff clarify that all content uploaded by users to the platform is their property,<ref name=":0" /> and they can modify or alter it without the prior consent of the writers involved. | Users on Fandom have little control over the content they upload to the platform. Furthermore, Fandom staff clarify that all content uploaded by users to the platform is their property,<ref name=":0" /> and they can modify or alter it without the prior consent of the writers involved. | ||
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===Censorship=== | ===Censorship=== | ||
<blockquote>''"The way Fandom displayed that they would permanently lock (and eventually delete) LyricWiki based on “We want Fandom to be a family friendly site…We also have some advertisers, for example Google, who have rules on what their ads can be shown next to” motivated us to censor content more aggressively.''</blockquote><blockquote>''Because we received no actual guidance from Fandom on what counts as e.g. “pornographic” or “obscene” besides a literal “I know it when I see it,” this led to a lot of inconsistency, a lot of back-and-forth, and a lot of headache for editors and readers alike."'' </blockquote>- Quote from the page [https://vocaloidlyrics.miraheze.org/wiki/Vocaloid_Lyrics_Wiki:Fandom_Migration Fandom Migration] via Vocaloid Lyrics[[File:Fandom Wiki - South Park Public Library Censorhip and Ads.png|alt=South Park Archives Fandom Wiki Censored Streaming Services (2025)|thumb|400x400px|Screenshot of the episode "Crippled Summer" along with intrusive ads for streaming services that were implemented without prior consent from users. Additionally, all profits from these affiliate links go to Fandom instead of the editors who wrote the original articles. ]] | |||
''Because we received no actual guidance from Fandom on what counts as e.g. “pornographic” or “obscene” besides a literal “I know it when I see it,” this led to a lot of inconsistency, a lot of back-and-forth, and a lot of headache for editors and readers alike."'' | |||
- Quote from the page [https://vocaloidlyrics.miraheze.org/wiki/Vocaloid_Lyrics_Wiki:Fandom_Migration Fandom Migration] via Vocaloid Lyrics | |||
Since Fandom is a company that relies on advertising to operate, part of the staff has to sanitize content to appeal to most of its brands and partners. This has caused certain clashes with editorial teams that discuss mature topics. | Since Fandom is a company that relies on advertising to operate, part of the staff has to sanitize content to appeal to most of its brands and partners. This has caused certain clashes with editorial teams that discuss mature topics. | ||
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===Anti-competitive practices=== | ===Anti-competitive practices=== | ||
<blockquote>''"People on the fandom wiki are taking a bunch of new pages from http://jojowiki.com that I and other editors spent lots of time creating just to have it on their site. They aren't explicitly plagiarizing (they tried to before) but the content and layouts are really similar. This time it's FANDOM's own employees getting paid to take our pages and replace words with synonyms. I wouldn't mind if they at least credited us (which they are supposed to do as per our copyright policy), but they have a filter that bans anyone who links to our site."'' </blockquote>- Quote from [https://archive.ph/rDtMx @Vishkujo], administrator of the JoJo's Bizarre Encyclopedia (2021) | |||
In a blog post published in 2025 by editor Violet, who had previously worked on moving Death Battle Wiki to the non-profit host ''Miraheze'', he explained that one of the reasons for moving the wiki to a different host was due to Fandom's attempts to remove links or mentions to wikis on different platforms, explaining that this has led to a lot of internal discussion regarding external links, where editors are forced to promote dead wikis that are still hosted on Fandom instead of independent options that are actively maintained.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2025 |title=Leaving Fandom |url=https://deathbattle.miraheze.org/wiki/DEATH_BATTLE!_Wiki:Leaving_FANDOM |access-date=2025-08-19 |website=Death Battle Wiki! via Miraheze |quote=Aside from this dodgy language being used to try and justify their anti-competitive practices, this also actively hinders our own editing by preventing us from providing external links to wikis that have migrated out of Fandom and are being actively supported, which means we are not "organically sharing" accurate information for franchises acknowledged by the show like, say, Terraria, Bendy, and Guilty Gear.}}</ref> | In a blog post published in 2025 by editor Violet, who had previously worked on moving Death Battle Wiki to the non-profit host ''Miraheze'', he explained that one of the reasons for moving the wiki to a different host was due to Fandom's attempts to remove links or mentions to wikis on different platforms, explaining that this has led to a lot of internal discussion regarding external links, where editors are forced to promote dead wikis that are still hosted on Fandom instead of independent options that are actively maintained.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2025 |title=Leaving Fandom |url=https://deathbattle.miraheze.org/wiki/DEATH_BATTLE!_Wiki:Leaving_FANDOM |access-date=2025-08-19 |website=Death Battle Wiki! via Miraheze |quote=Aside from this dodgy language being used to try and justify their anti-competitive practices, this also actively hinders our own editing by preventing us from providing external links to wikis that have migrated out of Fandom and are being actively supported, which means we are not "organically sharing" accurate information for franchises acknowledged by the show like, say, Terraria, Bendy, and Guilty Gear.}}</ref> | ||
===Business Model=== | ===Business Model=== | ||
<blockquote>''"I briefly worked for Fandom last year, and I worked closely with GameSpot and TV Guide. After ten years in the editorial industry I had never seen editorial brands treated so poorly. Fandom is fundamentally a company that ONLY knows how to operate using an army of unpaid volunteer editors and have no clue whatsoever how to manage paid writers and editors. It was an absolute nightmare of mismanagement, and while I was going to bat hard for the editors (like what do I care about Fandom after a few weeks of working there, I literally only care about journalists being resourced well enough to keep their jobs and do great work) my management started drilling down on me pretty quickly. I wound up going on disability because the working conditions there exacerbated a mental health crisis (having to do with the nightmare layoffs at Condé that I'd just gone through), and eventually I left"'' </blockquote>Quote from a former FANDOM Employee in the article [https://gemvidio-navi.neocities.org/Tech/fandom-working-environment Behind the moderation of Fandom Wikis: Controversies, incidents, and toxicity] | |||
In mid-2008, the British newspaper The Guardian published an article about the ''[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/jul/31/wikipedia Transformer Wiki]'' migration, which was the first formal piece of criticism that the company described as “The typical digital sharecropping website is a capitalist's fantasy,” explaining that users who contribute to Fandom wikis do not receive rights, protections, or remuneration for the work they contribute to the website, while Fandom claims 100% of the ad revenue generated by user-generated content. | In mid-2008, the British newspaper The Guardian published an article about the ''[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/jul/31/wikipedia Transformer Wiki]'' migration, which was the first formal piece of criticism that the company described as “The typical digital sharecropping website is a capitalist's fantasy,” explaining that users who contribute to Fandom wikis do not receive rights, protections, or remuneration for the work they contribute to the website, while Fandom claims 100% of the ad revenue generated by user-generated content. | ||
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===Portable Infoboxes (May 2017)=== | ===Portable Infoboxes (May 2017)=== | ||
<blockquote>''"Honestly, what allowed me to never put 100% of my trust to the FANDOM Staff was the fact that they disregard the concerns of their userbase most of the time. They'd introduce certain features and implement them without considering all of the potential flaws that'd persist. Remember the Portable infoboxes? They didn't think of inserting official tabbers in them when they first introduced them. It took several months before tabbers in PIs finally became a thing."'' </blockquote>- Quote from [https://archive.ph/UUvUT @QueenPinksweets], former Vocaloid Wiki Moderator (2021) | |||
In mid-2017, Spanish programmer Jesús Martínez Novo, who had been working on the WikiDex project since 2006, published a note discussing his experience with the platform as well as the forking of the largest Pokémon wiki in Spanish. Martínez explained that in 2017, Fandom had forced users to abruptly change the code of some of their templates. This decision was not previously consulted with the users who had previously coded much of the site voluntarily, and the company gave them one week to convert the rest of the templates.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |last=Martínez |first=Jesús |date=2017-05-07 |title=Wikia — When the site you spend most of the time goes evil |url=https://medium.com/@martineznovo/wikia-when-the-site-you-spend-most-of-the-time-goes-evil-1ce9d3f79285 |access-date=2025-08-19 |website=Medium}}</ref> | In mid-2017, Spanish programmer Jesús Martínez Novo, who had been working on the WikiDex project since 2006, published a note discussing his experience with the platform as well as the forking of the largest Pokémon wiki in Spanish. Martínez explained that in 2017, Fandom had forced users to abruptly change the code of some of their templates. This decision was not previously consulted with the users who had previously coded much of the site voluntarily, and the company gave them one week to convert the rest of the templates.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |last=Martínez |first=Jesús |date=2017-05-07 |title=Wikia — When the site you spend most of the time goes evil |url=https://medium.com/@martineznovo/wikia-when-the-site-you-spend-most-of-the-time-goes-evil-1ce9d3f79285 |access-date=2025-08-19 |website=Medium}}</ref> | ||
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===Online grooming and sexual harassment (November 2023)=== | ===Online grooming and sexual harassment (November 2023)=== | ||
<blockquote>''"When you're just trying to speak out and get a pedophile off the site, or they say that everything happened on Discord we can't do anything, [...], saying that pedophilia is okay if it's offsite this is just disgusting"''</blockquote>- Quote from @bruhwrecksnoobs on the video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXqWuIcugrY FANDOM Is Disgusting] | |||
In 2023, writer and video game developer Christopher Howard Wolf, under the alias "Slimebeast", posted several videos discussing how Fandom had allowed minors to be exposed to inappropriate content and citing concerns that child moderators had to maintain contact with groomers. Additionally, Howard Wolf criticized the fact that Fandom was using under-age volunteers to moderate its platform instead of proper employees to moderate the situation.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |date=2023-11-19 |title=Wikitubia has a Minor Issue - Plus CreepsMcPasta Caught in 4k |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bKb6-xr4Qg |access-date=2025-08-18 |website=Slimebeast via YouTube |quote=That mod he referred to WAS THE UNDERAGED MOD THAT DID WHAT HE REQUESTED, proving that Wikitubia having on minors as mods puts them in direct contact with groomers. Imagine EDP DMing a kid mod who has a "duty" to talk to him.}}</ref> | In 2023, writer and video game developer Christopher Howard Wolf, under the alias "Slimebeast", posted several videos discussing how Fandom had allowed minors to be exposed to inappropriate content and citing concerns that child moderators had to maintain contact with groomers. Additionally, Howard Wolf criticized the fact that Fandom was using under-age volunteers to moderate its platform instead of proper employees to moderate the situation.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |date=2023-11-19 |title=Wikitubia has a Minor Issue - Plus CreepsMcPasta Caught in 4k |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bKb6-xr4Qg |access-date=2025-08-18 |website=Slimebeast via YouTube |quote=That mod he referred to WAS THE UNDERAGED MOD THAT DID WHAT HE REQUESTED, proving that Wikitubia having on minors as mods puts them in direct contact with groomers. Imagine EDP DMing a kid mod who has a "duty" to talk to him.}}</ref> | ||
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*''[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcfuA_UAz3I "Stop using Fandom"]'' (2023) published by game developer "Mossbag" | *''[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcfuA_UAz3I "Stop using Fandom"]'' (2023) published by game developer "Mossbag" | ||
*''[https://awa.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Anti-Wikia_Alliance Anti-Wikia Alliance]'' | *''[https://awa.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Anti-Wikia_Alliance Anti-Wikia Alliance]'' | ||
*[https://getindie.wiki/listings/ Indie Wiki Buddy Listings] | |||
==References== | ==References== | ||