User blog:Joey717/Why NOT to use FANDOM

Yes, I can say that I will never host another wiki at FANDOM again.

everythingyouneedtoknowaboutscience.wikia.com and martha-speaks.wikia.com have been respectively moved to thesciencearchives.miraheze.org and marthaspeaks.miraheze.org. I have done so for a number of factors.

The first is the terrible mobile skin. It is littered with photos garbage and trending articles. "Trending" is not the right word to use. This community is meant to be formal. The font is to messy anyways. The uncustomisable mobile skin is so informal and looks nothing like an essay - a teacher's and my worst nightmare. Wikipedia's mobile skin is much better and is more formal and resembles as essay - no wonder I like it better.

The second is the removal of the Monobook skin and the FANDOM advertisements. Monobook is not in violation of GDPR. Wikia has probably been looking for an excuse to get rid of Monobook for ages, and GDPR happened to come around just perfectly. You just want to display as much ads on each page and want everyone to be exposed to the Trending FANDOM articles and Fan Feed. Even if Monobook did violate GDPR, then the ads and FANDOM material is another reason to get rid of Monobook. Admit it! Not even the fact that over 80% of its area is not even useful?

I do not know how I can ever reason with someone who thinks this insanity is anywhere near acceptable. Yes, Live Chat is junk. No one uses that. When I have something to say, I go to the Talk page.

Yes, Trending Articles is junk. Major waste of horizontal space, which some content absolutely needs. I can not stress this enough: that column plus the margins take almost half of the screen's width. Besides, it is a distraction from what I want to read, the content of the page I am on.

Yes, Fan Feed is junk. Three screens worth of visually chaotic crap that I did not want to see in the first place! Again, why do you want me to move away from the information that I actually want? I went to that page because what I want is in that goddamn page, leave me alone!

Yes, Recent Activity is junk. It is only very mildly useful for administrators, and is completely pointless for the vast majority of readers. And again, not worth sacrificing the horizontal space.

The third factor is FANDOM staff - they keep bossing me in my wiki and keep messing up the MediaWiki pages - they only want me to use their scripts from Dev Wiki - I can make my own versions! I have read Wikia's terms of use at www.wikia.com/Terms_of_Use and no where does it say that we need to have FANDOM staff boss us around.

The fourth factor is the lack of good features. You will not give me the abuse filter - if Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Dramatica have it - then also should my wiki! I am happy that Miraheze does provide an abuse filter. I hate the Infobox Builder because I keep encountering a bug through it.

Fifth, I also hate not being able to edit most MediaWiki namespace pages as an administrator - it is not fair. I can do it on Miraheze, admins can do it on WP & ED, then why am I not allowed to do so on FANDOM? You do your best to not let me edit them - you declined my first request for you to edit them with templates. Come on, you can be better than that.

Furthermore, FANDOM's extensions are terrible. Why can't we just have the ones on mediawiki.org instead? Those are much better. Why can't we have AdminLinks rather than Admin Dashboard? We don't need the achievements extension - besides, it promotes vandalism. When I go to Special:Version on my wiki, almost all extensions are by "Wikia". FANDOM staff don't even install the extensions on mediawiki.org that aren't on Help:Extensions under request, which is a reason why I dislike them.

The fact that unregistered users on FANDOM can't have a secure https:// connection until 2019 is highly unacceptable. All these years before, we had an insecure connection, and we risked getting our passwords stolen. Come on FANDOM, what is wrong with you? Are you so focused on writing Trending Articles rather than giving us an https:// connection? Even the outdated looking site of the controversial Chick tracts have a secure connection!

First is the customization policy. There are many sites (Tumblr, Blogspot, Wordpress...) that allow their default themes to be completely customized, often beyond recognition. If someone wants to make their Wikiasite look like Wikihow or TVTropes, then allow them to do so. Don't restrict them to the same handful of options. You are fortunate that I did not change the title of an article to Vector's Linux Libertine; how is that a Terms of Use violation? I told you, I want my wiki to look like an essay or like Wikipedia, which is formal!

(the following is ONLY for User:Rappy 4187) Speaking of the Terms of Use - please DO NOT delete the  template on everythingyouneedtoknowaboutscience.wikia.com, revert the edits back to the old main page, and renaming the wiki back. THAT WIKI HAS BEEN MOVED TO A BETTER PLATFORM, for heaven's sake! How is that template a Terms of Use violation, and why should the old main page be restored? Also, it isn't advertising at all! It is NOT.

Last of all, why is mass protection not allowed? Wikis are meant to be editable - everythingyouneedtoknowaboutscience.wikia.com is NOT a wiki - it is a reliable source for science information. I am not hosting a Wiki on FANDOM. It isn't a community, community lover! It is not a community either. You might think mass protection is bad for a community's development - but I do not care if it is not successful. I only care about it being reliable.

I am so happy that my wiki (along with martha-speaks.wikia.com) are now hosted at Miraheze - I hope more people join it than everythingyouneedtoknowaboutscience.wikia.com at FANDOM. Bye - thank you. Joey P. (Talk) 07:11, July 25, 2018 (UTC)