Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-2038026-20201025014449

Well, here's a new one for you:

1. Graffiti troll edits a Wikia page with intentionally spamming information

2. One first edit is submitted, Graffiti trolls quickly opens up a second edit, makes a minor change, and submits to make you have to go back TWO revisions to undo all their damage.

3. Repeat step 2 as much as the graffiti troll can reasonably get away with this.

4. Graffiti troll finally holds off any attempts to undo any of their edits by purposefully opening a new edit page on that same page again......and then they simply don't do the edit, leaving that editing page open. There doesn't seem to be a time-out for edits to take place on Wikia, so they indefinitely hold the page's editing ability open so long as their computer or mobile phone holds that window open. No undos can take place and no new edits can write over their fake information on that page.

The trolls are getting more and more creative when it comes to destroying this place.

I understand the spirit of Wikia's mission of creating open source community involvement in data gathering to share the experience of the fandom love, but the reality is open community editing is a truly bad idea because sometimes, the harassment from trolls just becomes so much and the admins simply give up and just refuse to maintain the fandom pages any longer. This leaves those Wikias open for "abandonment" claims and theft by those same trolls (who then take over as admin of the site and lock you out of the admin chain -- been there, done that....Wikia did nothing to prevent it). The trolls then go on to vandalize the site as they want....which means it's absolutely useless for the fandom to check in for facts. Result: the fandom stops going to those Wikias = less revenue clicks for Wikia.

And let's be real for a minute, shall we? Banning someone does NOTHING (as we've learned on the ACOTAR Wikia), because those same trolls just keep creating new accounts under new email addresses, and their IPs are constantly changing because they're using mobile apps and VPNs. It's a useless endeavor to ban, really. The ACOTAR Wikia has been battling the same idiotic, obsessive, mentally unstable troll for YEARS (we know it's her, because of the similar edits she keeps making). The harassment never stop over there and so far, she's outwitted the banning feature quite easily. That new gimmick I mentioned above? That's her. Wikia simply isn't set up to handle that kind of trolling and it certainly doesn't seem to take it seriously, either (I guess it's going to take a severe loss in ad revenue for them to get the message, huh?).

Well, there you are. You've been warned now about the new game in town by trolls to graffiti Wikias. Hopefully Wikia will someday take this kind of aggravation seriously, because they get pushed out of this market by any of the other sites out there offering an easier client-faced set-up with better admin controls. 