User blog:OrchidSomnium/Dear FANDOM Staff: About This Site and UCP


 * Note: I originally posted this on another wiki, though this version has had some adjustments made to it. I know criticism of the UCP update is in no short supply here, however most of them seem like petty "it's bad!!!" blogs with no real insight as to why it is. While mine might not be much more eloquent, I do want to address some specific issues with the update as well as with FANDOM's staff as a whole and how they are handling this update.

As someone who has used FANDOM powered by Wikia - henceforth referred to as Wikia - for over a decade, I have seen Wikia go through a number of changes. When I started editing on this site, Wikia's default skin was Monaco; one that has long since been irrelevant on the internet (but one that still holds a special place in my heart). I have seen the introduction of the NWL "Oasis" skin, the death of Monobook, the addition (and removal) of a multitude of features of varying quality, and met a number of users.

From an objective standpoint, I don't think it's inaccurate to say that the UCP (Unified Community Platform) update may be the worst Wikia has ever done. I am not saying this because it's new or because it's drastically different. Even after only a few weeks of tinkering with it, I'm fairly confident in this assessment.

Now, let me say this first and foremost: I fully understand the reasoning behind the UCP update. Needing to essentially strip back all the features in order to future-proof development is a completely understandable idea. That said, it baffles me that in doing so, they have somehow migrated even further away from the MediaWiki base that all content creators for not only this site but ALL wikipedia platforms has been used to for so long.

The main thing I have to say about many of the changes made during the UCP update can be summed up in a single word: clunky. From the editor to the changes made to the Recent Changes page, and especially with the blog/article comments, everything is clunky. Everything that is, except what's important: the content.

For some reason, Wikia - especially since it rebranded to "FANDOM" - has had a massive identity crisis. This website seemingly wants to be everything. The new comments feel as if they were ripped straight from Reddit - I'm surprised there's no upvote or like feature - and Discussions literally are trying to be a social media site. Yet, if you look at the FANDOM Twitter account, they're always posting news and top tens as if they're a news aggregator like IGN or Gamespot. Both of these ideologies contradict the entire reason why literally anybody visits this site: for the content.

The people who look at wikis - named so for being akin to Wikipedia, an online Encyclopedia - do so for information. The 99% of anonymous users who look at wikis do so looking for information on stuff they care about, and the people who edit these wikis are usually passionate about certain subjects or, in the case of fanfiction wikis (like this one), simply want to share their ideas in an encyclopedic way. Yet for some reason, the UCP update has made finding this information not only more difficult than ever but also harder to make.

While the editor does have a number of good points - I personally am a fan of the built-in replacement function - it's frankly quite ugly and seems far more complicated than it needs to be. Originally Wikia used an editor UI that featured a row of icons at the top that added information with a simple button press. While a second button press isn't much of a difference, the way the entire UCP UI is presented is honestly quite difficult to deal with as it instead substitutes an icon-based design for a text-based one. While handy if you aren't sure what the icons mean, it takes up more space than necessary and isn't as easy to understand at a quick glance. Plus there's a whole new "INSERT" submenu that adds a variety of templates, some of which seem particularly unneeded.

Then there's the comments. One comment in the new UCP layout takes up about as much space as two comments did previously. They're larger than they need to be considering the giant box that now takes up more room than a single line of text does. If you were to remove this huge box though, there's actually nothing wrong with the comments specifically. The way they're handled however, is a different story.

While I understand the fact that they're no longer built within the MediaWiki engine, it seems weird that they don't support wikicode. While it made sense that Wikia finally changed their butchered mess of MediaWiki, it's backwards that they replaced something that worked perfectly within MediaWiki with.... something that doesn't. Though I'm not sure how the technicalities work out, something tells me that it was probably more difficult importing a completely new system for comments that doesn't support wikicode over whatever butchered MediaWiki systems they had in place before (that you can recreate fairly accurately with wikicode). Another issue is that these new systems... don't show up in Recent Changes. Likely because these systems aren't built with MediaWiki, the comments don't show up alongside normal edits which seems incredibly weird. Which, again, makes the Recent Changes clunkier than it need to be.

The sidebar too feels unnecessary now: while the Recent Wiki Activity module is fine in theory, it can be completely filled up by one user editing one page multiple times. Not to mention the Popular Pages module... is honestly kind of useless. It confounds me that anyone would actually explore a wiki through the three seemingly-random articles chosen as the "most popular".

Something else that I've noticed a couple times now, sporadically but still fairly commonly, is that the editor just doesn't load at times. I assume it's a glitch but regardless, it's still a major flaw. Especially when this glitch is lumped together with the UCP update's almost-universally negative reception and the staff's fairly-frequent ignoring of their community's reception of features, it feels almost as if Wikia is purposefully trying to get people to stop supporting them.

And then we come to my biggest, and longest-standing issue with FANDOM powered by Wikia: the content. When my browser is in its full size, there's a solid 10-15% of the screen that is completely empty, with only the image of the background visible. This leaves a large amount of space that could be filled with the page's contents. Even more if the sidebar was removed or condensed somewhat. For some reason, Wikia's desire to be all of a news aggregator, social media site, and online encyclopedia host has pushed the former two into the spotlight and the latter out of it... despite that being the entire reason anyone uses this site. And this has always, always been my main issue with Wikia. The Monobook skin gave the content much more room to spread out over the screen of a computer, and I loved that. Since Monobook has been removed, Wikia as a whole has honestly felt quite claustrophobic. With how clunky everything about the new UCP update feels, this claustrophobic feeling has only grown stronger.

I feel as though I should also mention the removal of Wiki Activity. This is something that I've seen complaints about before but as someone who primarily used the classic Recent Changes to begin with, its removal doesn't bother me. That said, the fact that it has been removed despite offering a much easier to digest way of viewing recent activity on the wiki is a decision that baffles me. My assumption is that it was likely removed due to the changes to the way discussions/comments are handled (as they are now "social" edits) but obviously I can't know the true reasoning behind that. As I said, this isn't much of an issue for me so I'm not entirely sure how to address this issue; I only know that it exists.

I know no one on Wikia's staff will ever see this post - and there's an even smaller chance that anyone who can approve changes will see this - but I have one major suggestion for the FANDOM staff: think about why Wikipedia is so popular. It's not trying to be everything, it's just trying to be an online encyclopedia. And it does that by having a simple UI, a large content room, and very easy and simple features. This is why Wikipedia has gotten so large and popular over the years. It's not hard to use, and it's not hard to look at.

To put it bluntly, it is the complete opposite of what FANDOM powered by Wikia has become over the years. And I hate it. There have been updates over the years that have made me want to leave Wikia temporarily only to give up on the idea after getting used to the features, but this time... I legitimately don't want to keep using this site anymore. More than anything, the UCP update makes me scared for what future updates could hold. I am honestly so worried that this website could become almost completely unusable in a couple more updates' time.

FANDOM staff, if you're reading this, I hope you please reconsider the way you go about adding new features to your site in the future. Instead on focusing entirely on what would make you the most money to the detriment of the people making the content you profit off of, maybe consider trying to appeal more to the people who are responsible for drawing attention to you. I understand that, as a business, you need money to remain active, but prioritizing money above everything else could cause you to self-destruct in the long run.

One other thing I would really highly suggest to FANDOM staff: consider, assuming it's possible, is the ability to, at the very least, collapse or disable the right sidebar and allow us to have content in that space instead. Preferably I'd rather they just bring back the Monobook or Monaco skins (or add in the up-to-date Vector/Hydra(?) skin, since that's what Gamepedia uses), but I doubt that'll happen.

Sorry, I just needed to get my thoughts on this out. If you made it to the end, I must thank you for reading this.