Board Thread:Technical Updates/@comment-24006128-20200423160701/@comment-43720437-20200428230747

Andrewds1021 wrote: reply to #47 I agree that sometimes [...] I’m glad to read that Discussions and Forums will be merged or something. :)

As for tools that are more "in front of your face", I’ll try to be more specific. Have a look at the screenshots below where I’m covering the upper part of an article on Death Stranding Wiki and of another one on the No Man’s Sky Wiki.

I think that Fandom doesn’t put enough emphasis on the "editing" features and the "community" part of a wiki. Fandom and Gamepedia appear to be two very distinct brands, even when having a quick look at the design of an article. Fandom gladly displays its offer: "GAMES/MOVIES/TV/VIDEO/WIKIS"... ... "WIKIS"?! I just noticed that wikis are one of the items. Fandom, like you said, happily presents itself as a platform for entertainment and... well... fandom... I guess. Also, when Fandom hides Mediawiki-oriented features (Talk, History, etc.), it spends a lot of space advertising curated content on the footer and Web-2.0 content (/f) which, for Death Stranding, has more to do with "fandom" than "Developing the Wiki". Fandom's emphasis on fandom seems detrimental to the development of the wiki.

On the other hand, Gamepedia appears to have very little to "sell" other than its community-created content, probably on purpose. The UI is almost screaming "CONTRIBUTE TO THIS WIKI" at the reader. If you have a short attention span like me, Gamepedia does a far better job than Fandom at orienting the reader towards their first edit. On Fandom, it’s easy to be distracted by a discussion thread, an ad, or a curated article. On Gamepedia, the last thing you see at the bottom of your article are pretty much the references and the categories.

While I was doing "life stuffs", I thought about how Fandom doesn’t valorize/empower the editors. At least, that’s how I feel. When I look at a Fandom Main Page or at an article, I wonder whether someone else will ever make the extra step to develop the wiki with me. First, I wonder, "How is anyone supposed to find this? (edit, how-tos, guidelines, etc.)", and "Where can I organize a collective effort on topic X or topic Y?". Then, I wonder, "Is it really worth it?", "Am I the only one here"?. A total noob might even wonder "Am I even allowed to add something here?". Now... Take a step back... If I am thinking all of this myself, how do you expect me to even consider investing time on Fandom?

Finally, I want to say something about social features, which are obviously richer on Fandom than they are on Gamepedia. When I claimed administrative rights for the wiki on Gamepedia, I wanted to use the tools at my disposal to do community outreach with readers and editors, and I already knew that I would need to use the official Discord server and Reddit server. I kinda failed at that, for numerous (some, personal) reasons, but that’s for another story. 😅 With hindsight, I think that the social features of Fandom would have been useful.