User blog:Big the cat 10/A Veteran Admin’s Concerns Regarding FANDOM and UCP

Greetings users of Community Central Wiki. I’m Big the cat 10, the “Head Bureaucrat” and unofficial leader of the Death Battle Fanon Wiki (DBFW), a 7 year old wiki with over 22,000 pages. I have been contributing to the DBFW (as well as the FANDOM network as a whole) for nearly 5 years (since November 2015). As shown by the title, I have come here to express my concerns to the FANDOM Staff (and the users of this wiki) regarding recent actions and the introduction of UCP.

Before I get started I want to clarify a couple of things. Firstly, I do not intend for this blog to be an aggressive rant against FANDOM. It’s purpose is to make the FANDOM Staff more aware of the concerns myself and many other veteran Admins/Users have about the UCP since the FANDOM Staff don’t seem to be paying a lot of attention to the critical/negative views that are being expressed regarding their recent actions and the introduction of UCP. Secondly, my blog will not be going into extensive detail about the technical flaws of UCP as this blog already addresses these flaws.

My Previous Experiences with the FANDOM Staff
In order to emphasise that I do not have a malicious agenda against the FANDOM Staff, rather diving straight into my concerns regarding them and UCP, I’d first like to touch upon my past experiences with the FANDOM Staff.

My past experiences with the FANDOM Staff have been quite positive. I’ve approached them regarding technical issues and the behaviour of blocked users who were harassing DBF Admins on other wikis and sockpuppets on the DBFW which they have been happy to support me with. Upon my request, they also introduced an Abuse Filter to the DBFW back in December 2018, which kept away a group of internet trolls who had frequently targeted the wiki throughout the previous months. This action helped improve the well-being of myself and the other DBF Admins as we no longer had to worry about constantly reverting malicious edits that these trolls had a habit of making.

I will now explain why my attitude towards FANDOM has changed over the last couple of years.

My Concerns Regarding the FANDOM Staff and the UCP
From what I was aware of, during my first 3 years of using the FANDOM network, wiki features tended to remain the same with the FANDOM Staff not doing much to change the standard Forum, Chat and editor features which myself and many other DBF users found straightforward to use. In December 2018 however, the FANDOM Staff removed the Forum highlighting feature as part of their plan to eventually remove the Forums as a whole and replace them with the Discussion feature. While the wiki announcements feature was created as a substitute to the highlighting feature, me and the other DBFW Admins have found it to be less useful when compared to the highlighting feature, as it only allows Admins to bring a single thread or blog post to the communities attention at any one time.

Despite this setback, my faith in the FANDOM Staff largely remained intact until a few weeks ago when I found out that alongside removing the Forums, they were planning on introducing the UCP which would remove the Chat and Wiki Activity features in favour of them being replaced by wiki Discord servers and the Recent Changes feature. This decision has led me to express my concerns regarding the FANDOM Staff’s recent actions.

While I understand that the Forums, Chat and Wiki Activity are old wiki features which aren’t as popular as they used to be and are difficult for the FANDOM Staff to maintain, the fact that several wikis still actively use them (the DBFW included) makes me wonder why the FANDOM Staff have decided to completely remove them from their network rather than giving communities the option to choose between their older and newer features or at least replace the Forums, Chat and Wiki Activity with somewhat similar features that communities who have previously been reliant on said features can easily adapt to.

Some of you may be thinking that Discord servers, Discussions and Recent Changes are similar to the Forums, Chat and Wiki Activity features and that my previous statement is therefore invalid, however I disagree. Discord servers, Discussions and Recent Changes are significantly more difficult to navigate and use compared to the Forums, Chat and Wiki Activity which already has and is likely to continue putting off veteran FANDOM users from contributing to their respective wikis as a result of having these features forced upon them with said users having no say in the matter.

Having read several of the recent FANDOM Staff blogs, another reason they are promoting newer features including Discord, Discussions and Recent Changes is because a large number of their newer users are contributing on mobile and they claim these new features are being created to accommodate these mobile phone contributors. As a user who contributes to wikis using a mobile phone and a tablet, I have found the Forums, Chat and Wiki Activity features fairly easy to use compared to Discord, Discussions and Recent Changes (which have been more difficult to use), so I personally don’t understand where FANDOM are coming from here. Additionally, while mobile phone users may make up a significant percentage of the FANDOM network’s newer users, I haven’t seen the FANDOM Staff do much to appeal to tablet or PC/laptop users. Shouldn’t FANDOM be trying to appeal to all of it’s user groups rather than mostly appealing to mobile phone users?

Conclusion
To conclude, while I understand that UCP and the features that come with it can’t be cancelled altogether since the FANDOM Staff have already started implementing them across their network, I personally believe that the FANDOM Staff should try and somewhat integrate aspects of the Forums, Chat and Wiki Activity features into future UCP updates rather than removing them completely and expecting their userbase to just accept said features removal and their replacement by Discord servers, Recent Changes and Discussions. I also believe the FANDOM Staff should try and accommodate tablet and PC users rather than solely accommodating mobile users. If they do not do either of these things, I fear that many dedicated FANDOM network contributors will be put off by the sudden and forced implementation of UCP and the features that come with it, leading them to leave their respective wikis and causing a significant reduction of FANDOM users/contributors overall.

Thank you all for reading this and have a good day.