User blog:Landon Foster/Guys, this is my final day on FANDOM.

Recently, I read an article about FANDOM on the now-closed Rotten Websites Wiki. Fortunately, said wiki is now on Miraheze. This is what I read:

Why It Sucks Really Hard Now

 * 1) Before being rebranded as FANDOM, the site was far more focused on fan made communities, with its homepage being far easier to navigate. By logging into the FANDOM homepage, however, you will be assaulted with an array of random posts covering various pop-culture news. Even if you use the search function in the "Discover Wikis" section you'll still be greeted with various blogs and the search results for wikis are crammed away pathetically in the corner, almost as if the site had forgotten what it's supposed to be about.
 * 2) Speaking of blogs, the majority of them are literally Buzzfeed level clickbait garbage. With some more focused on left-wing ideologies than creating content that fans would like to read, from blogs complaining how Soul Caliber VI's female characters is "a letdown", to blogs defending Battlefield V's historically inaccurate choice to add women in the frontlines, to blogs claiming that Yaoi and Yuri is harmful for the LGBT community. These blogs eventually became less common after numerous creative staff members got laid off.
 * 3) The videos are just as bad at times, containing multiple inaccuracies and normally only feature a summarized version of the page. A good example is on Castlevania Wiki's Alucard page, the video uses footage of Alucard from Hellsing (Anyone who watched the OVA will know that the Hellsing Alucard is actually Vlad Dracula himself). The ones on RWBY Wiki was so bad that they have to add disclaimers on the pages. The fact that these autoplay videos were added without wiki users' agreement didn't help either. Not to mention they also hog the CPU and RAM for older computers. Thankfully the videos start off as muted.
 * 4) Like many other pro-SocJus websites, FANDOM will try and insert politics at any given opportunity. For example, on Piper's page on Nukapedia (Fallout Wiki), FANDOM inserted an introduction video of her that includes a reference to “fake news” and an allusion to President Trump. This annoyed the admins of Nukapedia as they format pages to educate readers about Fallout and editorializing is simply out of place.
 * 5) Fandom runs on a heavily modified version of MediaWiki version which was rendered obsolete years ago. This editing system, despite being easier to use, is much more restricted in terms of function.
 * 6) Thanks to the many amount of advertisements and multiple features that often cannot be turned off that hogs CPU and RAM, it is very unfriendly to older computers. Prior to the rebrand, it was more accessible for unregistered users but now it's almost impossible to browse without getting infested with ads unless you have an adblocker.
 * 7) Some seem to believe that FANDOM has been manipulating Google search results as it's hard to find any criticism directed to it with Google.
 * 8) FANDOM recently has become more and more pro-Political Correctness and censorship, a good example is when they marked the term "SJW" as spam and prevented any edits containing the words from being submitted and pages containing the words from being edited until any mentions of "SJW"s are removed. Needless to say users were quick to come up with alternatives.
 * 9) *Another example was when they shut down Trollpasta Wiki for no apparent reason in mid 2018 (For those of you who are unaware, Trollpastas are parodies of Creepypastas, in which they are deliberately poorly written in order to mock the stereotypical bad Creepypasta stories tropes like their clichés, bad grammar and dumb characters). The excuse they've given was that "communities which consist only of offensive material and personal attacks will be closed" which is clearly a false claim as Trollpasta Wiki is not actually designed to offend. Also, the wiki purged thousands of pages that contained offensive terms (such as the N word back) in 2015 to 2016 after being warned that VSTF (Volunteer Spam Task Force) has been pushing to shut it down.
 * 10) Speaking of VSTF, they take anything some random, unknown person's complaints very seriously, recently they even suggested to close down wikis for "Pushing GamerGate thoughts". (However, the user who wanted to close wikis for being pro-GG was banned from another wiki for posting actual bestiality porn, so there is a good chance of them being globalled soon.)
 * 11) Another aspect is that FANDOM is seemingly allergic to negative content or any type of criticism (positive or not), even fact-based ones, as if the site cares so much about its precious ad revenue. Because of this policy, FANDOM staff closed down the popular Crappy Games Wiki and Awful Movies Wiki.
 * 12) Referring to the last pointer, FANDOM staff does not work coherently, leading to discrepancies and disappointment. For example, Crappy Games Wikia had been reviewed mere days before its closure, obviously by another staff member, who deemed it didn't actually warrant closure.
 * 13) They almost never listen to feedback and other people's criticism. Despite backlash within VisualEditor, autoplaying videos, and rebranding the entire website to fandom.com, they still do not listen to their users and instead actually argues back at them saying that it will benefit everyone. They also state they try to reduce the memory and CPU required to access FANDOM but cramming more ads (especially video ads) and autoplaying videos does not solve this problem.
 * 14) They used to have a skin named Monaco that was quite beloved by the userbase, which was replaced with one called Oasis that decreased space for actual content in favor of space for ads.
 * 15) Inconsistent policy about creating wikis. Everyone is free to create his own wiki without restrictions but any wiki can still be closed if one of FANDOM higherups thinks it must be closed because it violates their ToU, making the whole concept of being free to create your own wiki pointless.
 * 16) Hypocritical advertising. FANDOM claims to offer a friendly and welcoming environment for everyone, yet the staff can abruptly close even very old and very frequented wikis without a warning obviously not caring about any lost content related problem the users they should care about may experience. They are often using a sort of courteously intolerant behavior when their decisions are questioned, often using the same copypasted reply in their messages. Community Central, the core of the service, is full of users biased in favor of FANDOM whose comments are left untouched.
 * 17) *FANDOM also claims that adding video to Wiki pages will help decrease the number of overall ads, which should be a “better experience.” However, you may get stuck watching a whole minute worth of ad before the featured video plays if you have no ad block.

Redeeming Qualities
I understand what has happened to FANDOM, so I am leaving this website for good. Luckily, I have AdBlock.
 * 1) As mentioned above, it's a bit easier to use and understand than MediaWiki.
 * 2) There are still quite a few well-designed wikis on the site.
 * 3) You can make those clickbait blogs disappear when viewing wikis by using an adblocker or editing your global CSS on Community Central.

I hope you all on this wiki have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Don't forget to protest Sound Ideas and Hollywoodedge to remove all the sound effects that irritate or disturb you. Do everything you can to prevent Sound Ideas from letting sound editors worldwide use the Diddy Laugh, the Whelm Scream, the red-tailed hawk scream, the Cartoon Trax Vol. 1 horn honk, etc. Any sound effect that is in one of the five categories: Sound Effects from Hell, Annoying Sound Effects, Irritating Sound Effects, Disturbing Sound Effects and Nightmare Sound Effects should be removed from media for good.