FANDOM Staff Blog

If this is the first you're hearing about the Unified Community Platform project, read this to learn more about the entire scope of the project before commenting.

Hey gang!

We are happy to announce that the Unified Community Platform is entering the second stage of the rollout - moving wikis without complex extensions or feature sets over to the new platform!

What does that mean? It means that the Unified Community Platform has reached the point where a number of existing wikis on the legacy Fandom platform can now move over to take advantage of new and improved tools like mobile editing and the 2017 Editor from the Wikimedia Foundation, just like the one used on Wikipedia.

You’re probably wondering how wikis will be selected. That’s covered l…

If this is the first you're hearing about the Unified Community Platform project, read this to learn more about the entire scope of the project before commenting.

As Fandom continues to roll out our United Community Platform this year, one reason you have seen us cite for creating this new platform is that it'll allow our entire wiki network to exist together on the same version of MediaWiki. This means, for communities already on the Fandom platform in particular, upgrading to MediaWiki 1.33.

That explanation might make a lot of sense for our oldest, most experienced users, but for many of our users, the term 'MediaWiki' is a mystery. What is MediaWiki and why does Fandom care about it? Doesn’t Fandom have its own unique code? Why does upgr…

As everyone knows, we are in the midst of a worldwide health crisis that’s affecting millions of people every day. My heart goes out to the families and individuals who are suffering, directly or indirectly, from the impact of COVID-19. 

Meanwhile, there are millions of people turning to Fandom for knowledge and fun. Indeed, we’ve seen a meaningful uptick in wiki traffic over the last several weeks and I am enormously grateful that we have platforms and communities who can serve these fans. Thank you for helping Fandom be a service to people in this difficult time.

Unfortunately, the disease has created a real economic burden, especially for companies dependent on advertising revenue—like Fandom. We have taken every step we can to cut operat…

Fandom is the most comprehensive source of information for fans of all varieties of what we love. Contributors from the most comprehensive chroniclers to devoted enthusiasts share every aspect of their fandom topics on wikis. This leads to a lot of material for readers to explore, and getting these readers to what they seek is the purpose of nearly every wiki.

Sometimes, though, such information is not as easily found because it is buried or scarce. Many wikis use tabs and tab panels (called "tabbers") to arrange their content. In this post, we're going to talk about how to organize some article content to make it more accessible to seekers.

Wikipedia links and rationale regarding these topics : Article size

There's a big difference between b…

Something that sets wikis apart from other knowledge bases is that a broad number of contributors can take part in building and maintaining it.  

We all think of blood as being an essential component to the human body, but in reality it only makes up a small percentage of the overall whole. In the same way, contributing editors only make up 0.05% of our wiki ecosystem and are just as vital. We depend on wiki contributors for new content, improving and curating text and images, and keeping communities flowing socially.

A common struggle for many wikis is bringing talented new editors in. Research from Wikipedia shows that communities require a steady flow of new editors and contributors to keep wikis vibrant even after what they are documenti…

Hey gang!

If you do not have a Gamepedia account, you can stop reading and watch this video of a dog dancing to “Africa” by the band Toto. People who do have a Gamepedia account in addition to their Fandom account, keep reading and THEN watch the dog video.

As mentioned last year, one of the big things we’ve been working on within the Unified Community Platform project has been the unification of the Fandom and Gamepedia user tables.

What does that mean? It means that, when we’re done, you will have one account for both types of wikis.

If you already have an account for both platforms AND the username is the same on both, you have a username conflict that needs to be resolved and it’s super easy to do so! Please follow the following instruction…

If this is the first you're hearing about the Unified Community Platform project, read this to learn more about the entire scope of the project before commenting.

Hey gang!

We have seen some requests from users who want to know how they can volunteer a wiki they admin on for earlier migration to the Unified Community Platform. As we head towards the start of the Simple Wiki Migration stage of Phase 1, we wanted to lay out how you can make your wiki a candidate for early migration, if it doesn’t already fit staff criteria. We’ll have more on migration criteria as we get closer to Simple Wiki Migration start.

This is key. Have a public-facing discussion (Forum, Discussions, or Blog) about the intent to migrate early. Offer the opportunity for y…

Hey gang!

March has been a whirlwind of a month for most of the world. We’re privileged to have things running smoothly here at Fandom, continuing to serve our communities and working hard on delivering Unified Community Platform updates.

This month saw the first few releases for the Unified Community Platform, which is still only for new wikis on Fandom. We love how much feedback we’ve received from our adventurous editors. Be sure to keep an eye on the Technical Updates board for our release highlights.

As we get closer to the Simple Wiki Migration stage, we’ll have more blogs detailing big feature deployments.

Can't believe I forgot this when I published...

In the wake of so many gaming conventions getting cancelled and postponed due to COVI…

Infoboxes are a traditional part of wiki pages, usually providing a summary of basic facts about a page's topic. They're meant to inform and inspire readers to read the associated page. They can also overload a reader and drive them to frustration.

Wikipedia links and rationale regarding these topics

Infoboxes, from the Manual of Style · Law of infobox inclusion

This seems like a simple question for many wiki readers and editors, but many wikis consider the answer differently. An infobox is an element on a wiki page that provides short data, information, and navigation about the main topic of the page. Whether on desktop or mobile devices, the first and most common component on a page is the primary infobox. Readers expect it to contain a bri…

If this is the first you're hearing about the Unified Community Platform project, read this to learn more about the entire scope of the project before commenting.

Hey gang!

We’re very excited to announce that, as of yesterday, all NEW Fandom wikis created by you, our awesome editors, are on the Unified Community Platform!

This is the first release of many as we work on bringing features over from the legacy platforms to account for existing use cases. At this time, we view the current state as ostensibly an “open beta” release. Having the platform available to you in such an early form is incredibly important for understanding how it performs under normal user load.

As a reminder, your existing wikis will remain on the legacy Fandom and Gamepe…