User blog:Swordsofwrathadmin/Why you should oppose URL changes.

You probably help add to a Wiki. Every website on Wikia is a wiki and so you would have thought that FANDOM would pick a name to reflect that not go with FANDOM. And much as FANDOM may proclaim that they are the number 1 fan site (rather than twitch, Reddit or youtube (I know these cater to different things but YouTube is significantly more widely recognised and known than FANDOM)), I would maintain that most Wikia contributors count themselves as wiki users rather than fans. Further, I would say that this change has a number of disadvantages.

The first is SEO (or Search Engine Optimisation). This question is addressed in the staff blog post but commentators (including me) suspect that the effect is understated. I would like to tell you something about SEO here: it's mainly guesswork. Every major search engine is very protective of how they rank stuff partly to prevent other search engines copying them but mainly to spammers from filling the first page.

However, it is commonly conceded that this will have negative effects on wikis place in search results as, from Google's point of view, your wiki will disappear and another one will appear with a different URL (Note: this does not mean that your wiki will disappear from the web it means that from a search engines point of view community.wikia.com is a different website to community.wikia.com). Although FANDOM is doing its best it will be imperative for wikis to attractmore traffic after the change.

Problem two, they won't. In fact, I reckon that wikis will lose traffic after this change. The reason is this: I believe most people who search for content want hard and fast information on their subject. Most people will know what a wiki (and therefore a Wikia) is or will associate it with Wikipedia. A FANDOM will probably bring to mind thoughts of fanon (which often goes far beyond the original series and can't be trusted) and although hardcore fans will probably know the difference, names should reflect the product they are applied to and hopefully, the FANDOM team think that it is wikis they want to be hosting.

Further, Wikia sounds broadly professional (even if the mother of the blog post writer understands that he works in IKEA) while FANDOM sounds like something a 5-year-old child would yell. Many commentators stated that they were more likely to trust a Wikia thana FANDOM.

The final problem is that for there to be a FANDOM their has to be fans which is difficult for many collaborative projects outside of entertainment. Consider for example world war 2 wiki - are its contributors' fans of the suffering and deaths caused by world war two? No, of course not. There are wikis which will be worse affected but generally, this move appears to be ignorant or insensitive to how different Wikias cover a number of topics.

So will FANDOM do this? In spite of what I have said, yes. Why? Well because they said they would and the '''decision making in FANDOM is not in the community. It isn't even directly connected.''' So if FANDOM says they are going to do something they will. Maybe there will be some tweaks but the bulk of the mater will remain.

To make it clear FANDOM is well within their writes to do this as (like most companies) their Terms of Use state that "We may update and change our Service from time to time." However, just because they can does not mean they should.

But why did they say they were going to do this in the first place? The answer to that is speculation but I have done much speculation in my past and have mainly been right. And what I speculate troubles me. I think that FANDOM thinks that there is more money in cheesy clickbait articles like  5 Shocking Moments From Voltron: Legendary Defender’ Season 7  than serious wikis.

People have been predicting the end of the web since it started and reports that it is going to end up that every site is just a fountain of addictive fake news are simply wrong but FANDOM need to ask themselves a question now: is that what Wikia should be because increasingly they are turning down that direction with their ad-like 'trending FANDOM articles' and autoplay videos.

However, let's not make it easy for them. Let's make it clear that you don't want this. I have set up a poll where you can make it clear what you think of this URL change - click here to vote.

There is also a petition to stop the URL change - click here to sign.