FANDOM Staff Blog

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…

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!

This is our last detailed feature blog before the first release of the Unified Community Platform, which will be this Wednesday, March 11th — for new wikis only! Existing wikis will continue to be hosted on the legacy Fandom and Gamepedia platforms until we begin the migrations, contingent on the Unified Community Platform having the functionality those wikis require.

This blog focuses on the editor for Fandom, which is getting a MASSIVE upgrade from the current platform. Gamepedia is not impacted by this change for Phase 1, as the platform has MediaWiki 1.33 already.

When t…

Hey gang!

As promised, I’m back with more information on the new Profile and Message Wall replacements for Fandom on the Unified Community Platform.

Both of these features were rebuilt to be compatible with the new architecture of the UCP, but look and feel very similar to their old platform counterparts—with some new, modern touches.

You’ll notice that Profile has been given a bit of a refresh. The design is cleaner, with more focus on you as a user than your stats. We also added the ability to personalize your profile with a banner image, much like many of the popular social media platforms. While these Community Central mockups don’t really draw attention to it, the Profile feature inherits the theme of the wiki it’s on.

We want Profile to …

Hey gang!

As announced in the latest Unified Community Platform blog (a very long, but informative read!), we will be rolling out a new Wiki Creation process for Fandom when the UCP goes live. In this post, I’d like to talk to you about the process, the thinking behind it, address some likely questions, and then take questions I haven’t thought of yet.

Right now, the Wiki Creation process on Fandom is very simple. You give a name, you pick a URL, you answer some questions about your topic, and pick a theme. Your wiki is ready to start editing!

Starting with the launch of the UCP, this process will have a conditional aspect for wiki creations which appear to overlap with existing communities. If our system determines that your topic may be cov…

Hey gang!

The time has come to take a look back at an extra long February, thanks to Leap Day!

Last week, Perkins Miller, CEO of Fandom, stopped by the Official Fandom and Gamepedia Editors Discord server to serve as February’s Ask Me Anything guest. Here is the transcript.

The server is open to registered users of Fandom and Gamepedia who are in good account standing. For more information on joining the server and the verification requirements, visit this page.

For those who don’t know, we hold an Ask Me Anything session with a member of Fandom staff every month. Previous guests have included Adam Bradford from D&D Beyond, Max Spector from Brand Design, and Michael Morgan from User Experience Research. Next month’s Ask Me Anything will be wit…

Hey gang!

This Wednesday, February 26th, we are holding an Ask Me Anything session with our CEO, Perkins Miller, on our official Fandom and Gamepedia Discord server for registered users. That’s right. The guy at the top will be taking questions on anything from editors like you!

At Community Connect, we as a company made a number of commitments to our attendees in the closing segment that Brandon and I presented. While the video of that is not yet available (there is a LOT of footage to parse), the final of those commitments was this AMA session.

Perkins Miller joined Fandom just over a year ago as our CEO. Beyond his Fandom experience, he has had a really interesting career that many of you might want to ask him about, including working for …

Hello everyone!

As promised in my recap of Community Connect 2020, it’s time to talk about the Unified Community Platform (UCP for short) again. For this post I'd like to briefly take a step back to provide more context before diving into the details of the project. After that, we can talk about what Phase 1 and Phase 2 mean, the schedule, and some Phase 1 specifics you need to know about right now. Full disclosure, this is a long post, so buckle up!

At its core, the Unified Community Platform is all about bringing Fandom and Gamepedia wikis together on to the same version of MediaWiki, serving as the foundation upon which we can innovate. Right now, the Fandom platform is a very customized version of MediaWiki 1.19. This was done intentiona…

Love is in the air this Valentine's Day week! In the spirit of October's Halloween-themed Project Monster Mash, the Movies/TV team is excited to kick off Project Yoda One.

Is the name a silly pun? Yes.

Is Valentine's Day a manufactured holiday to help sell greeting cards and chocolates and make single people feel bad? Absolutely.

But no matter your romantic status or level of cultural cynicism, we can all agree to be deeply in love with Baby Yoda. So we're going with it.

How about a good old fashioned editing marathon about romance-themed movies and television series? Because that's what the Movies/TV Vertical (M/TV) have planned and we want you involved!

From Wednesday February 12 to Sunday February 16, The Movies/TV team will be organizing an effor…