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Or KeybladeSpyMaster’s Spectacularly Amazing Introductory Guide to Independent Wikis

By KeybladeSpyMaster • 21:32, 4 February 2022 (MST)

The ideas expressed in this article are the express opinion of the author(s), and do not necessarily express the opinion of the Kingdom Hearts Database, its staff, or its contributors collectively.

It is time for more wikis to weigh the convenience of free hosting with the costs incurred against their readers' experience and their own editorial independence.

Introduction: The state of centralized platforms

Over the last couple of weeks, the social web has been going through some very significant, very public conflicts on the Internet. From Twitter setting rate limits and restricting the API as it faces competition from Meta’s new social platform to Reddit restricting its API and publicly fighting its users, many have suggested these public conflicts may mark the end of the centralized, social era of the internet. In the same way that these well-known platforms are very publicly fighting and alienating their most engaged users, one other platform has been facing the same friction.

While not traditional social platforms, much like Reddit, fan-run wikis are built by a community of users who care deeply about their wiki’s subject matter. And over the last couple of months, the wikis on the largest wiki platform on the internet have been increasingly grappling with their passionately created and voluntarily curated content clashing with the goals of that platform. Wiki politics is not a subject that is exposed to the public very often, but the frustrations of both users and editors on wikis hosted on Fandom are increasingly visible, and perhaps a bit confusing. But as the situation seemingly worsens on Fandom, and occasionally on other wiki platforms, some wikis are turning to independent hosting to resolve the issues that they’re facing. So, to help those wikis considering this major decision, and also hopefully those not involved with wikis with understanding what is happening on their favorite sites, this guide will explain what an independent wiki is, why a wiki might want to become independent, what is required to become independent, and real examples of real independent wikis on the internet.

What are independent wikis?

First, what is an independent wiki? When it comes to wikis, independence refers to having a majority or complete control over the direction a wiki takes, including its coverage and its hosting. All wikis are the product of a passionate community; therefore, the direction of the wiki should be up to the community that builds it. Things like site design, policies, staff, and content should be in the hands of the wiki community, not its host or other third-party group. A wiki that is unable to make decisions in these realms or that finds these items dictated or imposed upon them are not considered independent.

The main indicator of independence is a wiki’s host. All websites must be “hosted”; that is, there must be some kind of service or group that is willing to pay for the infrastructure and services required to make the website publicly accessible. Anybody could theoretically host a website like a wiki, and that host would then have to make technical decisions required to make the wiki work. The closer the host is to the wiki community, the easier it is for that community to have a say the direction of the wiki. Thus, independence is more of a spectrum than an on-off state.

Why should a wiki be independent, or What is the Problem with Fandom?

Independence may sound great, but building a wiki is hard work; building and hosting an independent wiki is even harder work. So, why would a wiki want to become independent? It’s difficult to articulate the reasons for hosting an independent wiki without addressing the elephant in the room, the hundred-pound gorilla in the wiki scene, which is the ever-popular and ever-infamous Fandom. Most of the entertainment wikis visited on the internet are hosted on the Fandom platform, which freely hosts all kinds of wikis in the same way and on the same server, a method of hosting known as a wikifarm. While there are other wikifarm platforms, and they may suffer from similar issues, Fandom is by far the platform leader. That has proven to come with some significant drawbacks for those who contribute and read wikis. A variety of wikis have left Fandom over the years; here’s a collection of their reasoning for doing so:

Believe it or not, it's actually been worse.

• The user experience has degraded over time. In particular, the introduction of an increasing number of ads, which interrupt the reading experience and cannot be blocked on mobile devices, is regularly cited by wikis that have forked, have wished to fork, or by the online communities those wikis cover social media sites like Reddit or Twitter.
• Links to popular or trending, but otherwise irrelevant, content on other wikis.
• The embedding of popular or trending content, especially video content, from other Fandom properties on wiki articles without the input of the editors of those articles.
• Editorial independence, or the lack thereof, resulting in prioritizing content that improves search engine results and therefore profits for Fandom over the user experience or content accuracy. This can be seen in different ways, such as the implementation of out-of-date videos and quizzes, the limitation of access to such content as file description pages, and the sudden implementation of third-party-directed advertising, such as has recently been seen on the McDonald’s Wiki.
• The lack of consistent or stable communication with the paid Fandom staff, particularly as many of the wiki representatives are let go regularly.
• Greater control over the physical appearance and design of the wiki itself over the uniform site design imposed by Fandom.
• The lack of writing quality, often seen by overly detailed, large articles
• The general feeling of corporate exploitation of one’s free, volunteer contributions. While running ads to support a large platform such as Fandom’s makes sense, this doesn’t appear to be the only reason Fandom raises funds for, nor is it the only means by which they do so. In just the last couple of years, Fandom has used the money it raises on volunteer wiki contributions to purchase YouTube channels, competitors, a video game retailer, and entertainment media groups like GameSpot, Metacritic, and TVGuide, and to launch, promote, and expand its own editorial blog, separate and largely disconnected from the work of the wikis that fund it.

For many readers, especially those that don’t edit regularly or at all, these may seem like surmountable differences. To illustrate, therefore, imagine for a moment that you’re allowed to stream on a video platform, like Twitch, for free. But in exchange for the right to stream your favorite games, you have to deal with ads that may not be related to the game you’re playing, there are ads and promotions for other unrelated but popular streamers that cover or move your stream content, you are asked to read sponsor ads you didn’t ask for, your stream layout is only a little different from everyone else’s, and you’re not being paid or recognized for anything. For those editors who are on these wikis regularly, these issues make it difficult to want to continue contributing. It pushes otherwise faithful contributors out, leaving the wikis in an increasingly poorer state of quality. Independence seeks to alleviate these issues.

What is required for a wiki to become independent?

Now that we’ve covered what independence is and why a wiki would want to be independent, what is required to make it happen? There are three major items to consider if a wiki is considering “forking” or splitting with its current host. These apply generally to leaving all hosts but apply especially to those considering forking from Fandom.

Hosting

The first is hosting. As mentioned before, web hosts provide the storage and technology required for any website, including wikis, to be accessible on the internet to the public. Fandom provides hosting for wikis for free, but hosting is provided by a large variety of services and companies, each at different ranges of cost and capabilities. For those who consider going independent, hosting is possibly one of the biggest items to consider; if a wiki leaves Fandom, where will it go? Hosting may also be the most difficult one, since hosting a website is not free, so it can quickly involve money. The easiest solution to hosting is to find someone who already knows how to host a wiki. An existing independent wiki may be able to point you to their host, or to other wiki hosts that may be willing to provide your wiki with a new home. Another possibility is to move to another wiki farm, such as Miraheze. These options are easier and will likely provide far more independence for your wiki but may come with limitations.

The last option is for someone in the community to host the wiki themselves. This provides the greatest freedom, flexibility, and customization, but requires the most technical know-how. It also generally requires paying for the services required to host the wiki, which may depend on how popular and big your wiki is. Paying for the services needed to host a website like a wiki—usually consisting of at least the host provider (whether that’s renting your own server or using a cloud platform like Digital Ocean, Amazon Web Services, or Google Cloud) and the domain (your website URL from a service like GoDaddy or Google Domains)—will cost money. Your wiki community will need to decide how to pay for hosting, whether that’s running ads, taking donations, or someone paying out of pocket and potentially taking a continuing loss on the wiki. That last one doesn’t usually bring good will or long-term stability to a wiki, so be careful.

Community and Editors

The second factor to consider when forking a wiki is your wiki’s community and editors. In order for your independent wiki to succeed or grow, you’ll need a community that will support you. It will not be enough for you to just create your own wiki all by yourself, though that can sometimes work. But your best shot of success will be by including members of your existing wiki, fandom’s community, content creators, and more.

Platforms like Fandom don’t allow you to close or eliminate your wiki, so when you leave, you actually fork, or make a copy of the wiki to host elsewhere. This process can be controversial, and forking could result in fracturing your wiki community. The decision to fork could result in some people following you to the new, independent wiki, while others choose to stay on the original site. This doesn’t mean you can’t create an independent wiki unless you get the entire community to join you; many wikis have successfully forked from Fandom with only part of their community and have succeeded. But if that happens, you’ll find yourself with more work for less people, while your original site will continue to compete with you in search results (more on that below) and word of mouth. Therefore, when you consider forking your wiki, you’ll want to make sure you have as much support from other wiki editors as possible.

SEO and Promotion

Connected to community and editors is the promotion of your new wiki. As mentioned above, forking from Fandom usually means your original site will still be up, available for others to read and edit, even if you and your whole community is no longer running it. This means that, at least for a while, your new wiki will be competing with your old wiki for visibility, credibility, and search results.

SEO stands for search engine optimization, and refers to the work done on websites to ensure they’re seen by people on search engines like Google and Bing. Platforms like Fandom do a lot of work to ensure they’re excelling in SEO, resulting in those sites appearing first on search results. Your wiki will have an uphill battle to get yourself on the first page, let alone first above the old wiki. For this reason, in addition to having your new wiki host help with optimizing your wiki for the search engines, you’ll want to focus on promoting your wiki as much as possible, on social media, through content creators, and more. Engaging the community regularly via social media accounts will get your name and high-quality articles out there. Building genuine relationships with others in the community, particularly other creators, fan websites, and more, will help spread word of your new wiki, and will help significantly with overcoming the disadvantages to SEO you will certainly face. This will all help people not heavily involved in your fandom’s online community to find your site and support it over the old one more easily.

Independent Wikis and Where to Find Them

If this all seems daunting for any wiki, it’s worth considering the number of wikis that have successfully forked from Fandom or launched entirely independently. Reaching out to any of these wikis would be a good way to get more information and have a greater idea of what independence looks like for a wiki.

The Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance is the most well-known collection of independent wikis. Focusing on Nintendo-produced and published franchises, alliance members are not all hosted by the same host, but they all focus on high-quality articles and have each built successful communities. Some of the most successful and well-known members are the Super Mario Wiki, Zelda Wiki, Bulbapedia (Pokémon wiki), Nookipedia (Animal Crossing wiki), SmashWiki (Super Smash Bros. wiki), and the Kingdom Hearts Wiki. The Square Enix Independent Wiki Alliance is an alliance similar to the Nintendo Independent Wiki Alliance. It focuses on Square Enix franchises, and features such wikis as the aforementioned Kingdom Hearts Wiki, the Square Enix Wiki, StrategyWiki, and the Final Fantasy Wiki. The Gaming Wiki Network is relatively newer and has a broader scope of wikis it counts as members, including the Crash Bandicoot Wiki, MediEvil Wiki, the Spyro Wiki, the Independent Fallout Wiki, RayWiki, the Star Trek Online Wiki, and yours truly, the Kingdom Hearts Database. Halopedia, RuneScape Wiki, Sonic Retro, the Sonic Archive, and the PC Gaming Wiki are some more independent video game wikis that exist and are excellent examples of independent wikis.

And while video game wikis make up the bulk of independent wikis created in recent years, there are other kinds of independent wikis, such as the Lost Media Wiki, Brickipedia (a LEGO wiki), the Transformers Wiki, and the Audio Visual Identity Database, to name a few.

Conclusion: The Growing Search for Independence

Independent wikis need to come together to help each other in the fight for their destinies.

A myriad of issues related to ads, editorial Independence, and quality have left many wikis weighing the costs of hosting, search engine results, and community fracturing with the constant and increasing problems that come with being hosted by a giant wiki platform like Fandom. As the web landscape changes, people are finding they are no longer satisfied with many of the tradeoffs of the old, centralized platforms that have made the internet what it is today. Certainly, they’ve each provided, in their own way, a means of forming a community of like interests, and wikis on platforms like Fandom are no exception. But the challenges that wiki editors have faced have left many communities feeling exploited and ignored and is resulting in many wiki communities taking the step of splitting off and taking control of their own future and destiny.

In just the last couple of months, a variety of wiki communities have chosen to split off from Fandom, including the Zelda Wiki, the Independent Fallout Wiki, and the Star Trek Online Wiki. Even right now, the Minecraft Wiki is hosting a public vote to leave Fandom, for much the same reasons outlined above. Now is the time for more wikis to consider doing the same. Rather than leaving their destinies to chance with a platform that is increasingly less interested in their experience, wiki editors and communities, including readers, should have a greater say in the direction their wikis take. The challenge of moving to independence may seem daunting and complex, but it is possible, and increasingly easier with the support of other independent wikis. And as more wikis take the decision to move off platforms like Fandom, the better the overall wiki experience will be for all communities. Wikis have long been the unspoken first home of their subjects' communities, the first gathering of the most passionate fans, and their passion and work deserve a better place than underneath layers of ads, unrelated content, and the commercialized exploitation of their volunteer content.