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The Problem
The Minecraft Fandom wiki is an extremely important resource for millions of people that play Minecraft. It provides us players with tons of important information about how the game works. If you've ever designed a mob grinder, needed to know a crafting recipe, or where to find a specific block or mob, then odds are you've used it too.
Recently there's been multiple issues with the site that the wiki is hosted on (Fandom). Fandom has done a poor job respecting the thousands of wiki pages that use their site, and have consistently put their own interests above others. These include:
- Hiding file history to boost search rankings (impossible to view old info).
- Forcing extra elements into every page like fandom quiz prompts./li>
- Filling every page with an excessive number of ads (this includes multiple banner ads, a video ad at the very top, and plenty more sprinkled throughout the page. This makes it hard to find the info a player needs and degrades the user's experience.
- Converting and changing wiki pages without announcing or recieving permission from any of the wiki page editors.
- Forcing links to completely unrelated pages and fandom articles.
The fact of the matter is that Fandom is taking advantage of the editors that put in hard work to provide free and accurate information to all Minecraft users. Hence the reason to switch to another platform.
The Decision
There were multiple different sites that were being considered for the move. These include:
- wiki.gg - a wiki farm host run by Freedom Games, a game publisher formed by former Curse/Gamepedia and later Fandom executives and staff, and is hosting gaming wikis such as the Official Terraria Wiki.
- Bulbagarden - hosts multiple wikis such as Bulbapedia and NintendoWiki.
- ABXY - hosts several gaming wikis including Inkipedia (Splatoon), StrategyWiki and Zelda Wiki.
- RuneScape Wiki - hosts itself, the OSRS Wiki, and the RS Classic Wiki.
Recently, the editors have aquired the domain minecraft.wiki as well. Regardless of the hoster, this will be the new URL for the wiki.
As of August 17th, the Minecraft wiki editors HAVE recently decided on which host to use, which is the company hosting the runescape wiki (Weird Gloop). The process to switch over will take quite some time, but will be beneficial moving forward.
What Can I Do?
The switch to a new wiki platform does raise some serious issues, which is that the old wiki page will still be at the top in google search results. Since this wiki won't be updated anymore, it will continually grow out of date. This shows the importance of spreading awareness of the new site. People will become more and more misinformed if the internet as a whole cannot push the new site above in search results
To help the issue, stop using the fandom site alltogether. Google indexing is based off of the number of active sessions, so if we as a collective stop using the site, we can let the new and improved wiki rank higher. Spreading the word is the best thing you can do.
I'm SeazonRightz, and this was my Ted Talk. Thank you.