User blog comment:Joey717/Why NOT to use FANDOM/@comment-1038387-20180725090645

It's your wiki, so you can do as you please. I've never heard of your wikis and judging from your wiki names, I have no idea what they're exactly about. I'm not sure how big your communities are.

This is going to cost me way more time than I should spend on this, but wth. Some notes on your criticisms:


 * I don't see the mobile skin as "littered with photos garbage and trending articles"; the former are where users place them (often not with mobile in mind) and the latter are all placed at the bottom.
 * Trending is the right word to use, because, well, they're trending.
 * It's been an oft-heard complaint that with the rebrand and the push for more modern advertisement strategies, wikis about topics where there's no "fandom" draw the short end of the stick. The vast majority of FANDOM wikis are on fiction franchises; serious-serious wikis tend to be hosted independently.
 * Monobook was not "in violation of GDPR": bringing the trackers of FANDOM's heavily forked version up to GDPR-compliance was not cost-effective. This has been mentioned so many times it's a shame people still see it wrong. But yes, they want ads, because money doesn't grow on trees.
 * "80% of the area is not useful" is bunk. Modern views on web design favor a narrower band of text for better readability. That leaves the sides open for navigation and ads. Describing it as "wasting horizontal space" is an antiquated view on web design.
 * Live Chat is useful for community building on many communities. When you have something to say, you go to talk. When others have something to say, they go to chat to chat with their online friends. It puts the unity in community. The comm stands for communication.
 * You need to lay off describing things you don't like as junk. Plenty of people would find those things useful.
 * As an admin, I always make sure to check Recent Activity when I'm browsing. It has helped me stop vandalism sprees multiple times.
 * I don't know about your interaction with staff, but scripts can be a security risk. There's no need to reinvent the wheel just because you can.
 * FANDOM has an abuse filter.
 * If you encounter a bug in Infobox Builder, report it. Though if it's the one where you can't use it once you've edited the infobox in source code, don't bother because that's known and not getting fixed soon.
 * MediaWiki pages are locked since a major security issue a couple of years back. The limited number of whitelisted pages and the pace at which new ones are added is a complaint that comes up every now and then. Not nearly often enough.
 * FANDOM's MediaWiki is forked heavily off 1.19. They can't just transplant current edition MediaWiki ones.
 * Https rollout all across the Internet is finally picking up pace, a bit on the late side. FANDOM's main issue is with fourth level domains. FANDOM is a lot larger than some rando's site. Also, at the risk of sounding pedantic, SSL licenses and articles are handled by different departments.
 * FANDOM wants to increase their brand, and a uniform look is part of that. "You should let people customize it because they should be able to" is not an argument that would convince them.
 * Answering for Rappy: FANDOM can't stop forking, but if you leave it behind, it's their wiki. It always was. They can do with it as they like and do you really think they support vandalism that tells people to visit a competitor?
 * Mass protection goes against the spirit of wikis. everythingyouneedtoknowaboutscience is a wiki, because it's hosted on Wikia and uses MediaWiki software. Like any website, it's not a reliable source for science information. It's edited by a very small group of people, none of whom show any sign of education in a particular field of science - in fact, most aren't even university age - so "reliable source for science information" is so ambitious it borders on the delusional. I don't think it's the first stop for anyone who wants to learn about science.