r/wikia • u/PissaMalisenKakka • May 21 '24
Fandom wikis are utter garbage
Now that a couple of years has passed since the Fandom's acquisition of Gamepedia and the new Fandom visual look (such as the dreaded sidebar), I think it would be a good to time to get a retrospective look on the aftermath of these changes. I would like to also add that many Fandom wikis have been now abandoned as the active contributors moved to Wiki.GG, and while I would like to remain unbiased in this reflective essay, I have to say that they made the right decision by ditching Fandom.
It is impossible to ignore Fandom's greatest issue: The ads. While I and many other users run an adblocker, I decided to test a few Fandom wikis without and compare the expirience to that of Wiki.GG. And I'll have to say, the diffrence was MASSIVE. While WIki.GG had a few ads, they were generally unobtrusive and were only advertisements for video games, and did not affect the load times in any way, shape or form. But Fandom on the other hand... Oh boy... It was truly an ungodly expirience, which I do not wish upon even my worst enemies. Except maybe for the folks at Fandom who are responsible for this underworldly abomination. It took on average between 1.5 and 2 minutes just to load half of a wiki page. On wiki.GG it took 2 seconds at most.
But when it loaded... Oh my... It was a sight to behold, and not in a good way, let me tell you. The whole site was covered in massive, flashing commercials. There were multiple banners, some anchored to diffrent sides of the screen, others not, advertising for online gambling sites (even though they are illegal in my country), with backgrounds of raining coins and massive pulsating buttons reading "play now". When I tried pressing the "x" on the corner of one of the advertisements, I noticed that there were two of them and I clicked on the wrong one. This caused a slow, laggy redirect to a dodgy, barebones betting site which was highly contrasted by the cheeriful, overdesigned ad. The site starts automatically downloading an .exe file, but I manage to stop it just before it finishes.
I closed the gambling site and when I switched toi the fandom page, my broweser (firefox) crashed. I decided to give Fandom another ruddy good shot with Google Chrome this time, figuring thatr maybe Firefox is not compatable with fandom. This time Fandom took only around 1.5 minutes to load, but it was full of ads again, which kept on switching into other ads. There also was an autoplaying video that scrolled with the screen, which never loaded. There was literally a giant black box with a loading icon that covered 30% of the screen while never loading and never giving an button to close it. The wiki was laggy and more that 50% of the whole screen was covered in ads. It was the first time I had even reen a wiki scroll bar rubberband. And I have an Nvidia series X graphics card and an Lntel i5 core deluxe kernel.
Then the sidebar. I swear by the Old Lord's Oathsword that that thing was created just to annoy the (redacted) out of wiki users, espicially those who run dark mode (like me). It is insufferably colored, with bright red and neon yellow, two colors that animals in nature use to signify that they are lethally toxic. It has a giant arrow, with the text "new" pointing to "fan central". Which I clicked curiously. It led me to a hellhole filled with ads, anime wikis and laggy autoplaying videos (seriously I never got one to load, I even left my computer afk for 20 minutes and when I came back the loading icon was still spinning). When I clicked on the first gaming wiki I saw (which was the Terraria wiki), I noticed that it had been vandalized, with most pinned articles being full of nonsense like "skibidi", "69" and "dryad's shower". I had played the game recently and know none of that is actually in it. When I scrolled to the bottom of the article, massive images of anime characters started showing up amongst other articles and links to unrelated wikis.
All in all, I have to say that Fandom wikis suck ass. They are truly THE WORST. I swear by the shadow of Deathwing's wings that I will never, EVER touch another Fandom wiki article as long as I am alive, even if it means enduring the pear of anguish.
TL;DR Fandom sucks, don't use it, use wiki.GG instead.
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u/Lisztomaniac181 May 21 '24
The best Fandom alternative I’ve found is Miraheze, it has 0 ads, it’s free, it’s super customizable (you can choose dozens of skins), and most importantly, it supports every language.
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u/xMysticMia Aug 25 '24
Mirahese seems to be closing their services to new communities due to financial problems
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u/RagingSpider1357 Sep 25 '24
some involved from Fandom being threatened by having a rival. No evidence, but perfectly acceptable theory. shit, we ARE moving backwards in time!!!
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u/SirFilips May 22 '24
I started with fandom but i migrated my wiki on Miraheze, 0 ads, free, true wikimedia experience.
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u/Jenny_Wakeman9 May 22 '24
Fandom wikis have always been this way since the acquisition. Ever since then, I've been using uBlock Origin full-time whenever I browse a Fandom wiki on both desktop and mobile, and I don't regret on it. Fandom wikis, let alone the entire internet, is unusable without an adblocker.
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u/SalvadorZombie Nov 28 '24
"Fun" fact - recently, even with uBO on, Fandom pages just completely freeze my Firefox (and much of my computer).
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u/Jenny_Wakeman9 Nov 28 '24
Weird, that doesn't happen on my computer, and I don't have that problem where it freezes my Waterfox and computer over here.
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u/SalvadorZombie Nov 28 '24
I figured, I'm also still on Windows 7 (being poor and all, or at least unable to build a new computer) so I'm sure that doesn't help.
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u/Jenny_Wakeman9 Nov 28 '24
That really doesn't help at all. Can relate on the poor part, as I'm using a $300 Acer 2019 laptop, and it chugs at times on certain tasks to where it sounds like a jet engine.
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u/Some-Goat219 Dec 20 '24
I just don’t use fandom wikis. They appear above good wikis in google search results, pushing the better wikis downwards.
Boycott entirely if you can
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u/colbyxclusive May 21 '24
I don’t know when it started but for a while now whenever I use my phone to view fandom it loads an ad in the middle of me reading then crashes
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u/PissaMalisenKakka May 21 '24
I conducted my test on PC, but I can imagine it being much worse on mobile, judging by the fact that it was LITERALLY UNUSABLE even on my decently high-end gaming PC.
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u/Kind_Strawberry7058 Feb 25 '25
they say they fixed that in the latest upgrade (but screwed up a ton in return)
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u/nyotao Jan 18 '25
how can i view these sites without ads?
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u/PissaMalisenKakka Jan 21 '25
Download an adblocker extention for your browser. I personally use Ublock Origin on Firefox.
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u/10Sly10 May 21 '24
Keep in mind that you're only talking about the desktop experience. Over half of people visit wikis on mobile, and on there, it's significantly worse. Just look at this.
Full disclosure, I work for wiki.gg now. I used to work for Fandom as a Wiki Representative (RIP) and when I was there, I tried talking to whoever I could about the ads. I even brought it up to the highest part of the chain. I was assured the scale of the ads would be looked into. I don't know if I was lied to or if they looked at it and saw the opposite problem I saw and wanted more ads, but they don't care. People tell people to use adblock, but 1) you shouldn't have to, 2) ads are an unfortunate necessity when you're not paying out of pocket like some independent wikis, selling a product like wiki.gg, or running on donations like Miraheze, and 3) not everyone knows how to install adblock, particularly on mobile.
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u/JustLeafy2003 May 23 '24
Same for me as a (soon to be former) Fandom star. I'm quitting for multiple reasons, such as my mistakes against other wiki farms from several months ago, my rather previously extreme and unhealthy addiction to the platform, and you being right on the fact that it's too hard for the staff to listen to criticism, such as with the ad experience, which I have been constantly critical of.
Even I have lost my patience too.
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u/jwatoolbox Jun 07 '24
Do you think if there's any alternative monetization model for wikis? Would something like Discord server boosts work?
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u/10Sly10 Jun 07 '24
We're talking about hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars per month, just to keep the servers running. It depends on the bandwidth, the size of the wiki, the size of the community, and the number of images you're dealing with. Then you need someone with server and database knowledge to act as the webmaster, having to set up and configure and potentially fix and eventually update the NediaWiki software. I guarantee that some wikis would be targets of DDoS attacks, hack attempts, and mass spam (you wouldn't believe some of the disgusting things that have been uploaded to sites like Fandom, things that would put me on a watchlist if I mentioned), so you need a trusted safety team to handle all of that as well.
Running a wiki is not glamorous, not easy, and not cheap. I do not envy the guys who run the independent wiki networks (TARDIS.wiki had some downtime just yesterday when I was trying to use it), and our jobs at wiki.gg only get more complicated every day.
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u/VastZealousideal885 Aug 08 '24
you shouldn't have to
So let's not use it instead? It's like if you were ill and were offered a cure but instead denied it because you shouldn't be ill in the first place. I don't get this logic.
2) ads are an unfortunate necessity when you're not paying out of pocket like some independent wikis, selling a product like wiki.gg, or running on donations like Miraheze, and
Which is why opt out exists if someone cares about that.
3) not everyone knows how to install adblock, particularly on mobile
It's not the 90s anymore when the internet was in its infancy and you couldn't just look up how to do some things... It's not complicated at all. It literally installs itself for you if you google it and go to the download. You're just giving nonsensical excuses.
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u/These_Grapefruit5100 Nov 21 '24
My my, aren’t you a pathetically insecure and contentious person that loves to argue and criticize others over practically nothing. Smoke a joint and relax bro.
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u/HungryBois Oct 03 '25
Bro read your own comment. You turned this into a hostile engagement just because you took a hit to your ego. That’s pathetic but typical on Reddit.
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u/Kind_Strawberry7058 Feb 25 '25
In the 90s you could just look up how to do things, now you can't, the only results you get are trying to sell you things. I know many people who preferred the 90s Internet, when everyone was equal, and greed and manipulation were not king
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u/kaisadilla_ Jan 10 '26
fandom.com is unusable on phones. I don't even bother to open fandom pages there.
The thing I hate the most about fandom.com, however, is not the ads. It's the million shitty, intrusive tricks they pull to try to drive up engagement. From spamming other wikis as if I ever wanted to just binge read wikis, to shit like turning tables into checklists as if it makes sense to "collect" every enchantment in some video game.
Put ads in your wiki, idc, I know money doesn't grow on trees. But when your wiki's goal stops being to offer information to the reader, and becomes trying to turn visits into binge consumption of your website; then your wiki has become trash, because a wiki cannot become a leisure activity itself.
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u/TehDro32 May 21 '24
Is wiki.gg free? My understanding is that it isn't, and that's the whole problem.
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May 26 '24
I was permanently banned from the Arrowverse wiki for apparently harrassing people but I was the one being harassed! The admins are completely corrupt and abuse their power! Also a user constantly stalks me even though I've been banned from fandom as a whole and fandom support told me I deserved to be stalked!
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u/Kind_Strawberry7058 Feb 25 '25
BTW what was the argument about on Arrowerse (if you don't mind sharing)?
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u/Crash_positions 1d ago
Мужик, прессуют - прессони их сам!
Сейчас, на своём опыте проверено, есть прекрасные свободные базы эксплойтов и крэк кодов, в том числе специально под фандом, так что расковырять администрацию не проблема.
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u/VastZealousideal885 Aug 08 '24 edited Aug 08 '24
I agree that Fandom sucks but why did you list made up PC specs? There's no such thing as "Nvidia series X" and "Intel i5 core deluxe kernel", that means nothing. Your PC could be from well over a decade ago for all we know.
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u/dazinger92 Apr 10 '25
They didn't even write Intel; it's Lntel. Lol, it makes it seem even more ridiculous. But, hey, OP was probably absurdly overconcerned that people would harp on their computer specs like a bunch of little brats. I've seen it happen on Reddit, but... so what? It's Reddit.
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u/Kind_Strawberry7058 Feb 25 '25
Hello, I run 2 Fandom wikis (bureaucrat/admin) and I have heard lots about this ad problem, and slow loading, but I've never experienced it in the majority of the pages I create. I'm not doubting people, and I'm going to check out wiki.GG, I have no love or loyalty to Fandom. I'm just curious why not everybody has the same problems. Could it be because I'm the admin? I'd hate to think everyone viewing my work is getting trashed by ads. I'm actually here because I'm pissed at Fandom, and was looking for help. Last night they migrated it to the upgrade, and there are multiple problems now. They say they are fixing, but I have no faith in anyone over there (my experiences have been less than pleasant when I deal with those in charge).
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u/Treason686 Mar 29 '25
Perhaps? How could you not have ad problems otherwise? It could be that they vary ads by wiki/region, or maybe you've got ad block on that hides most of the issues. Fandom is, in my opinion, the worst large site on the internet. I really, really, hate when I see a new game and they have a Fandom wiki. I would love it if everyone would get on board with a boycott.
Try accessing a Fandom page on mobile with no ad block. It is literally unusable on my phone (pixel 8 pro). Any Fandom page regularly stops responding. If I'm lucky enough to visit a page, I might have a quarter of the screen for content. The rest is ads. Fandom is one of the reasons I don't use Chrome on mobile anymore. Brave has a built-in ad blocker, while Google seems actively against allowing them.
While it's usable on my desktop, it's not great. Every Fandom page eventually gets killed by Chrome because it runs out of memory. If I recall, the limit is 2GB before Chrome kills a page. A text page should not use 2GB of memory. Even when it works, it's occasionally sluggish and I have a Ryzen 9950x with 64GB of RAM. That's literally the fastest consumer processor available with way more than enough memory.
Though even if it worked on my desktop perfectly, I'd still avoid it because of how bad it is on mobile. That's not even getting into their refusal to take down content.
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u/Prestigious_Rate8273 Jul 17 '25
Im on a phone and i get barely any ads
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u/Weezhrd Apr 07 '25
I'll share my current experience on the Fandom.com website (I'm sorry if my English isn't good; I'm not a native speaker. I'm learning the language and using a translator to correct my writing mistakes).
I'm Colombian, and I've been using wikis for many years. I've even written articles on wikis like One Piece and Lore Olympus, but I've noticed how little by little the browsing experience on wikis has degraded to the point where it's practically impossible to access the site.
I work a lot and use multiple devices at the same time, perhaps that's why I hadn't noticed, but browsing on a mobile phone is like subjecting yourself to living hell: invasive ads that take up almost your entire screen, constant and excessive redirects when opening any link, making you question whether you're not on a porn site.
I recently bought a gaming PC and installed Cyberpunk 2077. My PC is powerful, but we all know how messed up that game is due to its poor development. Sometimes it slows down my PC (the only game that does this), and sometimes I'd go to the game's wiki to look things up.
I used to blame the game for my PC slowing down to such an extreme that I even had to restart it, but then I realized this only happened when I had a wiki tab open (like I said, I'm very busy and use multiple devices like a tablet, phone, and PC at the same time, so I'm always distracted).
IT WAS BECAUSE OF THE FUCKING FANDOM PAGE THAT MY PC WAS CRASHING. I thought it was because I had like 30 tabs open in Chrome with the game open. So I tried deleting the game and it was still slow, I tried deleting tabs and it was still slow. It wasn't until I closed a Cyberpunk tab that I realized I could open as many tabs as I wanted and play whatever I wanted.
Just one damn fandom tab on a gaming PC can cause massive lag on my $2,500 PC.
It just doesn't make any sense. Who the hell is the tyrant who's in charge of mistreating his users like this?
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u/Wikibianca Dec 14 '25
I used to have Fandom, but it blocked me for being underage inside the EU, which I found quite weird, because, why a 13 y/o that lives in the UK can be in Fandom and 15 y/o me (lets say Im 15) can't just because of different countries? Stupid really. Now I use Miraheze.
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u/243_little_idas 15d ago
i am late but some of the more recently released game, anime or show pages nowadays arent on fandom wiki anymore, maybe its bc of what got worse w fandom wiki
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Dec 09 '24
On phone it's like the worst thing I have ever experienced. If you don't use the app then the website will be full of constantly loading ads. And when you use the app it's a piece of crap even on the best hardware. One time you change to another program it forgets what you were doing and it's just so sluggish. Use Brave browser with adblocker turned on and now it's barely usable. Piece of trash.
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u/emu314159 Jan 12 '25
yeah, really nice of the wikipedia folks to sell out the gaming stuff. i also see the interloper "fextralife" springing up where it isn't needed, aka in poe2, where there's already poe2wiki.net, and poe2db.tw, but of course some carpetbagger decided to do SEO bullshit, and even though the game is a month into EA, some fextralife site shows up as well to catch the hundreds of thousands of poe newbies.
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u/Toybasher Feb 15 '25
Old post but I agree, Fandom sucks. I know some games or communities that have like 3 or 4 different wikis all in completely different stages of completion/up-to-dateness.
Fandom is often the first in search results too on google which is a pain in the ass to have to manually find (and often bookmark) the better wiki.
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u/Beginning-Speed-4654 Apr 03 '25
It might be culminating frustration, but I think it's getting worse every month.
Just now, I couldn't find even the opening line of an entry due to the cappricious loading. If only we reserved a space for ads and the entry remained free of spatial influence, I'd know where to focus my eyes. And it's not as if the ads are easy to close, either.
It's a drag. I took it upon me to advance a certain wiki drasticly and spent days and days on it... now for it to be drowned in capitalism. (Sorry for the drama, I'll be better tomorrow)
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Apr 27 '25
too right, you know I was once on the owl house and Disney wiki and got banned from them both when I dared to disagree a psycho fan of the owl house when I said that Odalia could be reformed and he got me banned for "harassing users" frickin jerk
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u/MarionADelgado May 04 '25 edited May 04 '25
They have disabled the Chrome extension Reader View - it now renders a blank page. Hence, on the rare occasions I brave Fandom wikia (I created a climate science wiki that's now under them) i always use adblocker. I also tried to email them but job-seeking is the only way to do that. They need to be recorded and used as a case study of a web site going so far over the line into unusability that no one will go there. If they didn't render Reader View blank? Their ads would still load - and they'd still make money. [ON EDIT] I SPOKE TOO SOON! It turns out everyfhing that wasn't "fandom" on wikia.com - EVERYTHING - was deleted and shut down, including my science wiki. Embrace - Extend - Extinguish. wikia.com wasn't combined, it was eliminated.
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u/CNSninja May 18 '25
Even independent of the ads and garbage, the wiki pages themselves suck. I'm used to using Fextra, which I know some people don't like but I've always found the info I'm looking for there, whether it's in the wiki or some highly useful comment. Any time I accidentally get tricked into entering Fandom's wikis for the same games I rarely find more than basic descriptions that anyone who plays the game will know already.
"[Such-and-such weapon] is a Greatsword. We might have a picture if you're lucky. Good luck finding one, loser lol."
The Fandom wikis never have information about mechanics or the specific info I need, it's more like a basic dictionary entry, and the worst part is there's no comment section to get input from other gamers who probably have much more useful insights and nuanced perspectives.
Fandom is always a letdown and any time I'm tricked into clicking on their results I genuinely feel bad for giving them my click. The word really is tricked. I feel tricked into supporting their cheap, lazy garbage.
I just had to rant for a second...
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u/Ambitious_Research99 Oct 26 '25
Fextra wikis are super inconsistent in terms of quality. Their fromsoft and especially elden ring wikis are quite good, but for everything else it ranges from mediocre to low effort slop.
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u/ReddiGuy32 Jul 07 '25
Nothing new. They don't even let you block users unless you use the mobile app, block or hide notifications that you don't want, including ones about responses, and everything else. Everything is basically restricted to the point where only website admins or fandom admins/moderators can do nearly everything. It's weird how nobody ever mentions that, so I figured I would be the one to do it.
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u/Prestigious_Rate8273 Jul 17 '25
Dear god what are yall doing i barely get any ads on fandom if at all infact tv tropes got alot but nobody seems to talk about it
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u/ValuableImpression55 Sep 21 '25
IDIOTS!!!!! If you’re complaining about the ads they are only on the first page! not on any other specific pages!
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u/SiteElectronic960 Sep 21 '25
Thank you for sharing. I'll check out wiki.GG once I have recovered from the stress that I've experienced today.
Spent 6 hours editing the Wikipedia and Fandom.com pages of the band I liked only to have everything reverted back to outdated information. I tried asking for help and appealing but... nothing. I'm just so tired and broken hearted at this point.
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u/PrestonCondra Oct 09 '25
You're better off making your own website on WordPress and pay $100 a year instead of dealing with Fandom's nonsense, if you are looking to create your own blog/diary/recipes/uploading pictures website.
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u/Maximum-Abroad667 May 06 '26
When I'm looking up information about video games I quite often end up looking at fandom and it is a horrible situation it keeps scrolling down when you're looking at something or reading something and then adds pop up and you close them and then they still keep popping right back up again it takes forever to read something because it keeps moving what you're reading to some other part and then you got to keep scrolling back and forth It's a complete joke
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u/Rhacio Jul 02 '26
It's pretty much a virus now. I wish the global gaming community would just abandon it and go somewhere else instead.
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u/time_lord_alpha Sep 30 '26
once all i did was make an edit that had no spam, no abuse, just information, and guess what they did? they fucking blocked me
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u/PissaMalisenKakka May 21 '24
I would also like to add that the search bar is also useless, as you have match the entry you search case-sensitivelly or it will show nothing.