At Fandom, ensuring that our platform is safe for all audiences is a vital part of building and maintaining a platform where the community can express themselves freely while fostering a space that's respectful, inclusive, and secure. Over the last several months, we’ve been giving a lot of thought to ways we can strengthen platform safety, including reducing the negative impacts of vandalism, in the least intrusive ways possible.
To that end, starting tomorrow, logged in editors will be required to confirm their email addresses before they can edit or comment on wikis where anonymous editing is disabled. Later this week, we will also be disabling anonymous editing on wikis that have had inactive admins or moderators for at least 7 days (while retaining the option for admins to turn anon editing back on when they return from inactivity). This complements a change made last week, where anon editing is no longer available on new wikis until those new wikis pass a platform safety check conducted by Fandom Staff.
In this Staff Blog, you can read more about the reasons behind the change as well as more details about the changes themselves.
The importance of platform safety[]
Platform safety is a core responsibility for Fandom as a company and as a platform. Part of that responsibility is to balance community independence with the steps needed to uphold platform integrity, user privacy and safety, and advertiser and consumer confidence. It's a big job! We take it very seriously, because it's key to sustaining a platform where editors can securely write about their favorite topics without worrying about their own online safety, fans can safely get the information they are looking for, and advertisers can reach an audience with confidence that the content their ads are displayed on is appropriate.
Regularly reviewing and updating platform safety standards and processes is essential on a large platform like Fandom. As the digital landscape evolves, new information, user behaviors, and societal expectations emerge and evolve as well, all of which shape how communities interact online and how brands engage with audiences. It's crucial that we adapt our practices to these changes to ensure that Fandom remains a safe, trusted, and inclusive environment for both users and advertisers on the platform.
To that end, let’s discuss the aforementioned changes we’ve made.
Anonymous editing changes[]
Anonymous ("anon") editing – editing wikis without an account – has long been viewed as an “on-ramp” for potential editors, allowing them to try editing before committing to creating an account. Anon editors contribute in valuable ways and are crucial to many communities.
However, anon editing also brings a higher risk of vandalism. A recent Fandom analysis comparing anon edits to those by brand new accounts found that anons are slightly more prone to vandalism, including inappropriate content, than their new editor counterparts. There are also significantly more anon edits than those from new editors, so while the rates of vandalism may not be dramatically different, the volume is in fact very different.
So while anon editing will continue to be an important source of contributions, we’ve implemented the following measures to reduce vandalism from anon edits:
- Anon editing is disabled on brand new wikis. As of last week, anonymous editing is disabled by default on new wikis. The option to enable anon editing is also unavailable in the Admin Dashboard until a new wiki passes a platform safety review (previously referenced in our September 6th Technical Update, where ads are also off by default until staff review).
- Anon editing is disabled on wikis with inactive admins/mods. This week, we are disabling anon editing on wikis that have gone without an active admin or moderator for at least 7 days, limiting higher-risk edits to moderated wikis. The option to re-enable anon editing will remain in the Admin Dashboard, allowing returning admins to turn it back on. We will also conduct regular inactivity checks and disable anon editing on wikis with inactive admins, as needed.
We expect these changes to meaningfully reduce vandalism without impacting anon editing on wikis with active moderation. We will monitor the health of impacted wikis to assess what these changes means for editing patterns, and we also welcome your feedback on the changes.
Email confirmation requirements[]
Over the summer, we began requiring editors to confirm their email addresses before they could edit or comment on wikis about topics aimed at children – where anonymous editing is already disabled to comply with laws protecting child safety online.
Starting tomorrow, that change is being extended to all wikis where anon editing is disabled, so logged-in users must confirm their email before editing or commenting on those wikis. Previously, on non-kid wikis, users could register and contribute without email confirmation, which made it easier for vandals to create new accounts.
While this change won’t completely stop vandalism from logged in accounts, the previous kid wiki change proved effective at reducing vandalism, so this change adds an extra barrier that should help reduce vandalism on even more wikis.
If you haven’t already confirmed your email address, we recommend that you do so. Simply visit Special:ConfirmEmail, and click the button that says "Mail a confirmation code." This will send you an email with a link you can click to confirm your email address. If you’re having issues confirming your email address, please contact our Fandom Support team.
Edit Reviewer user group[]
This week, we've introduced a new user group called Edit Reviewer focused on reviewing newer edits made across the entire Fandom wiki platform. The group will proactively review daily edits from anon editors and new accounts to better catch vandalism. This complements, rather than replaces, the work of SOAP members, who respond to detected vandalism from all types of editors, while this group actively seeks it out from specific types of editors (anon editors and new editors).
Other recent platform safety changes[]
Other recent updates have aimed to reduce the negative impact of vandalism, including:
- Ads are removed from non-existing pages. Ads no longer appear on placeholder pages or URLs showing deletion notices, which means ads won’t appear on pages previously created for vandalism and non-existing pages with inappropriate URLs.
- Ads are disabled on new wikis until reviewed. As previously mentioned, ads are now disabled on newly created wikis until they pass a review for compliance with our Terms of Use and ad policies. Review process details will be shared later.
- Ads are removed from diffs in Page History. Ads previously appeared in diff pages, which often contain vandalism. Because that vandalism is still visible in the diff, removing them helps ensure ads only run on safe content.
- Ads are removed from non-content namespaces. Ads no longer appear on namespaces like talk pages, walls, comments, and forums, which are more for editors to manage their wikis and can sometimes contain more sensitive text.
- Offensive Terms Policy. We recently published a new Offensive Terms Policy that clarifies the platform-wide rules regarding the use of certain words and phrases that are generally regarded as slurs, even in cases where they are used in the source material (such as games, shows, etc) that the wiki is covering.
Not only do these changes help strengthen platform safety, but they are also part of Fandom’s commitment to improve the ad experience on the wiki platform – and they recognize that not every corner of the platform needs to be monetized.
Get in touch with Fandom Staff[]
The work of platform safety is never finished, so you'll be hearing more from us about additional platform safety improvements in the months to come. In the meantime, we are happy to answer any questions you may have about these changs. Feel free to leave a comment, or contact us!
I worked at Fandom from 2010 to 2025.
I'm a huge fan of Star Wars, Star Trek, and Marvel.
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