this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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Baldur's Gate 3

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Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)

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Corporate-owned wikis have ads and other issues, so fans have decided to go their own way

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[–] deweydecibel@lemmy.world 205 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

That's fantastic news. It's so lame how there hasn't been any serious move to take wikis off Fandom and make them independent or even just on another platform. Fandom is just the worst, and it's terrible that Google suggests it as the top result now over the independent wikis.

Like, Bulbapedia is head and shoulders a better resource than the Fandom Pokemon wiki. It's been around forever, it's very active, it has far more information, yet Google always suggests Fandom first anytime I do a Pokemon related search. It's gross.

If anyone ever gets annoyed at Wikipedia asking for donations, go spend time on Fandom with ad blockers off, and remember that's the end result of public information wikis relying on ads.

[–] HereticalDoughnut@lemmy.world 72 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I really cannot stand fandom sites. It always lacks content so pages are filled with useless information such as links to review sites. Also, it’s an atrocious experience on mobile.

[–] yukichigai@kbin.social 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The number of CSS hacks needed to make the site anything but obnoxious even on desktop is obscene. Not just the ads, but the constant pushing of unrelated content and wikis, popovers, auto-play videos... it's awful.

[–] HidingCat@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago

Yea, half of my custom rules in Ublock is all for Fandom.

[–] HidingCat@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Content is all on the people contributing to the wiki, it's not Fandom's problem.

The shite experience though, totally is Fandom's.

[–] Graphy@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

If there’s a current existing wiki for a game but it’s a fandom then I don’t even try to contribute.

[–] JustAnotherRando@lemmy.world 49 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

One of the few successful fan wikis that got away from fandom has been the Path of Exile community. I don't play the game anymore because it just got to be too much for me and demand too much time, but I really appreciate that they collectively got pissed enough at fandom that they made sure that poewiki.net took off.

Edit: even better, the developers (Grinding Gear Games) apparently agreed to take over hosting of the wiki about a year ago so that the community members that started it didn't have to deal with the financial burden. Definitely a good idea for them to take over hosting so there's no concern of the owners taking a valuable resource offline.

[–] Can_you_change_your_username@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

uesp.net is another one. It's actually quite a bit older than fandom but I'm still going to count it.

[–] Jimbo@yiffit.net 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

UESP is ancient in game wiki terms, even just internet terms, wasn't it made shortly after the release of daggerfall?

Arena was 94, uesp was 95, and daggerfall was 96. It was originally fansite that followed development news for daggerfall.

[–] HidingCat@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Successful games really should have the dev/publisher hosting the wiki. It's better for everyone involved. I'll always appreciate Arenanet for hosting the Guild Wars 1 and 2 wikis.

[–] rambaroo@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

How is that better? They would stop hosting it once the game was old which leads to the same problem.

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

Heck, Blizzard was doing that in the D2 days, don't know if it's still the case, but everything was there!

[–] EddyBot@feddit.de 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's so lame how there hasn't been any serious move to take wikis off Fandom and make them independent or even just on another platform.

there is wiki.gg

point stands that Google still favors fandom so high that not many will actually find them

[–] Callie@pawb.social 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

it's fairly annoying how SEO'ed Fandom and Fextralife are. The Don't Starve wiki is borderline useless through both Fandom, but good luck finding the better Don't Starve Wiki being listed through just a google search.

Thankfully we have extensions for browsers like IndieWikiBuddy that redirect to much better wikis https://getindie.wiki/

[–] funnystuff97@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

osrs wiki >>> runescape fandom wiki

[–] M500@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago

I hate fandom with a passion.