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2022 Fandom Community Connect

Cephalon Scientia
Cephalon Scientia • 6 June 2022 • User blog:Cephalon Scientia
2022FandomCommunityConnect
"If Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, then Fandom is a library."

Hey everyone, if you don't know me I'm Cephalon Scientia, a volunteer admin and developer on this wiki for less than a year already. This past Memorial Day weekend, I was invited by Fandom to travel to Los Angeles, California to join other Fandom staff, wiki representatives, and wiki admins from all around the world to their Community Connect 2022.[1][2] During Connect, we attended seminars, breakout sessions, and casual conversations about the future of the Fandom platform and branding as well as giving direct feedback on how Fandom can improve their support for wiki communities like this one.

As a disclaimer, I will only talk about what is relevant to this wiki's community and admins. There were a lot of additional fluff and fun events that happened during Connect that I'm sure you guys don't really care about, so let's cut to the chase.

Last updated: Wed, 22 Feb 2023 19:00:02 +0000 (UTC) by User:Cephalon Scientia

TL;DR[]

If you are short on time or can't be bothered to read everything, at the very least glance over these important sections since they are relevant regardless of what type of Fandom user you are:

If you are more involved in this wiki and the wiki's community then these might be of interest to you:

For giving feedback to Fandom see #Community Feedback or make a comment on this blog so I can redirect your concerns.

2022 Focus[]

Fandom's theme for this year is "The Next Frontier". After migrating all of their wikis to the Unified Community Platform (UCP) and Unified Community Experience (UCX) from 2019 to 2021, they are now starting to focus their engineering efforts[3] to create new tools for editors and admins alike to enhance wiki content and improve moderation in user-generated content across all Fandom wikis.[4] This is in addition to strengthening the core suite of editing tools and experiences currently offered by Fandom like their VisualEditor Source Editor.

They are also renewing their focus on the gaming community and gaming wikis after acquiring Gamepedia from Curse LLC in late 2018, eyeing on "Four Facets of Gaming":

It is unknown what exactly Fandom will do in regards to gaming wikis but they recently hired Breanna Freeze (User:Bfreeziepop) as Senior Community Manager for the Gaming vertical[5] and are increasing their involvement on their Twitch channel (https://www.twitch.tv/fandom).

Interactive Maps[]

2022CCWikiaMaps

Old Wikia Maps prior to UCP and rehauling legacy codebase

The first of new tools include the long awaited and highly requested Interactive Maps which was just released last April[8] as a successor to the old Wikia Maps[9]. With Interactive Maps, readers can navigate and interact with markers on a static image, clicking on these markers will open a simple text tooltip on that location.[10] All maps on a particular wiki can be found on their Special:AllMaps page. See Help:Interactive Maps for a guide on how to create and manage these interactive maps.

Plains of Eidolon[]

Here is a sample of an interactive map on the Plains of Eidolon location:


Madurai School[]

AladVPortrait d
“You're not supposed to be in here! You're going to ruin the surprise!”
The following article/section contains spoilers. Minor spoilers if you haven't completed The Second Dream quest

Here is a sample map for the FocusLensMadurai b Madurai Focus school:


Improving Discussions[]

Alright, everybody's favorite thing: Discussions. [crowd groans] ... Discussions was built about 6-7 years ago at this point and I think we as a company had struggled to know exactly what the next step to Discussions is going to be. There's a few reasons for that. One reason I think we should call out is that it's been successful. People really use this tool and many of you who run wikis and moderate it know that there are people there. But then there are some moderation and some maintenance concerns that had prevented us from, as a company, committing to that. It's successful enough to keep but not successful enough to really invest in all the way. And part of also is the intentional design of Discussions years and years ago. Our product team at the time decided that we wanted to make it as frictionless as possible and that has led to some long-term concerns from our moderators about how they can maintain that.

—Tim Quievryn, VP of Community Safety, during "Creator Tools in 2022"

Historically speaking, Fandom Discussions (e.g. https://warframe.fandom.com/f) have not changed much since they replaced Forums in 2016. Fandom is looking to add more moderation tools and features to modernize the module:

Note that these changes will affect a very small minority of users in the Warframe community as only ~1% of daily visitors to this wiki viewed Discussions at least once[12] and an even smaller number of users are active in Discussions or the comment sections.

The good news is that today's product leadership team, community, everyone is aligned that moderation features are key to bake back into Discussions if we ever want to keep moving forward with this tool. And so what you see here is coming up in this roadmap is a commitment to adding basic moderation features not like kind of this glopped on over the years but more like going to the heart of what you do day-to-day as moderators. And trying to create one-to-one similarities to what you do on a wiki to what you would do on Discussions. So we are specifically calling out history for example, I think everyone here wants a history feature for Discussions. We are committing to you all today that will be coming soon. It's absolutely hard to imagine how you can review Discussions without that feature and we know that has been the number one requested thing.

—Tim Quievryn, VP of Community Safety, during "Creator Tools in 2022"

Improving Mobile Experience and Editing On Mobile[]

One of things we hear consistently, every editor satisfaction survey that we run once a quarter, every community roundtable, every touchpoint I can think of, says that mobile editing has complications, has quality-of-life issues, has some bugs in it. And given the level at which we heard about it over the last year or so, we decided that mobile—and there's another aspect of mobile that I'll talk about in a minute—really needed to be a core focus area because even though I personally think and I think most people here would agree that the main use case for wiki editing—at least long-form content—would probably be still on desktop because it is a pain in the ass to type on your phone. But that doesn't mean you can't make little edits here and there. And if the thing is not working the way you wanted to then it's not particularly as useful for you.

—Brandon Rhea, VP of Community, on mobile editing during "Creator Tools in 2022"

Around 40-50% of mobile wiki readers are responsible for this site's traffic.[12] As such, there is a growing need to improve the user experience on mobile and devices with small viewports. Fandom realizes this and promised to make:

  • Quality of life changes to mobile editing using the default MediaWiki mobile editor
    • Making it easier to undo and revert changes on mobile
    • Article preview on mobile
    • Page history on mobile
  • Mobile Theme Designer for admins
    • Customizable mobile skin to fit wiki's theming
    • Support both light and dark themes
    • Streamlining customization process without tinkering with CSS/JS
    • 00:33, 27 October 2022 (UTC) update: feature is now released on all Fandom wikis[13]
  • And hopefully more based on your #Community Feedback!

New and Improved Creator Tools[]

Our product roadmaps are 1-2 quarters out at a time, so for the CATS team (which would build a [family tree] feature like this) the Q3 and likely part of Q4 focus will be on the mobile editing, mobile theme designer, and Discussions moderation initiatives we announced. Since we spent a number of quarters on a new tool (Interactive Maps), we wanted to next take some time to fill in critical gaps on the platform. But after that, we definitely want to get to another new feature. The ones that come up the most are family trees and interactive timelines. So we'd be curious to hear from people when the time comes what the think the most impactful new feature could be
—Brandon Rhea in #general-fandom Fandom's Discord on 2022-07-03 18:07 UTC

After migrating both Fandom and Gamepedia wikis to a unified wiki platform, Fandom is promising to add more wiki-oriented features to improve the editing experience through their Creator, Admin, Tools, and Staff (CATS) engineering team.

Future improvements:

  • Improved moderation tools in Discussions such as having Abuse Filter apply to posts
  • Quality of life changes to mobile editing like being able to preview edits and view history of articles
  • Making it easier to perform moderation actions on mobile like reverting edits or blocking users
  • More customization and moderation tools to Interactive Maps:
    • Custom icons for categories and map markers
    • Image support in marker tooltips
    • Wikitext support in tooltip text
    • Ability to report markers
    • Able to use existing images uploaded to the wiki as maps

Possible new creator tools (may start working on these by end of 2023):

  • Timelines
  • Family trees

Bug fixes already accounted for:

Features with bugs to be fixed:

MediaWiki Extension Requests and Reviews Returns[]

In the future, Fandom will allow all wikis to request new MediaWiki extensions not available in MediaWiki Core to further enhance the individual wiki experience. This was previously only available to Gamepedia wikis before UCP. They will review extension requests on a quarterly basis and will provide an explanation to why an extension is rejected instead of just saying "no".

18:39, 14 December 2022 (UTC) update: Fandom started their Extension Review Nominations (from December 12th to 21st) to request for new MediaWiki extensions that their CATS team can look into implementing in the future. Starting 2023, Fandom will conduct these reviews on a quarterly basis.[14]

The WARFRAME wiki may look into requesting the following extensions (no guarantees):

Data management and visualization
Editing flow
Localization
Site styling
Reader QoL
Miscellaneous
  • Custom MediaWiki extensions for this wiki?
    • Desmos graphs integration for the math-heavy areas of WARFRAME?
    • CSS preprocessor?
  • Category:Extensions by category for current listings of MediaWiki extensions on the MediaWiki wiki

Monetization and Advertisements[]

For those who were at the dinner last night, I may have also mentioned this earlier, Perkins mentions two key areas of investment where we used a lot of this—this ad revenue. You know, I think there might be a perception out there that our ad revenue we bring in goes to these gross amounts of profit and people are just getting rich, but largely it goes into operating expenses and actually running the business. And one of the things Perkins said was two key areas we're investing in: product, which you heard a little bit about today with new creator tools and you'll hear more about the product roadmap tomorrow, and then the other was community. You heard Tim talk a little bit about Community Safety.
—Brandon Rhea, VP of Community, at the end of "Ad Product Updates" session

Auctioning advertising space[15] ("real-estate") on the site is one Fandom's main revenue streams to fund their investments, development, hosting, and etc. to grow as a business.[16] Fandom's Ad Products team utilizes A/B testing to benchmark new "ad units" (i.e. an ad type or format) before formally deploying its use throughout the site. During testing, they collect metrics such as page views, time that a user spent on the site, and bounce/return rate to determine an ad unit's performance in successfully converting a reader into a customer. According to Andy Keum, head of Ad Products, there are 20-30 new ad units in development, some include:

  • Countdown clock
  • Ticker ad that scrolls from right to left at the top of the screen
  • Sponsored content area

We are looking at how do we reduce ad density in a way that doesn't interfere with the overall [product]. And, again, ticker [ads] is an example of a concept that I wanted to share with this group but there is at least a half a dozen other concepts that we're still working through. I will warn you, maybe more disruptive in the near term. For example, there's one concept where this small banner, sort of like a ticker, scrolls along the top and then it unrolls to essentially flash the message and then it disappears. So for how ever long like a second or so the entire content may be covered. I'm not crazy about that concept for example, but then again, once it appears after it unrolls it goes away so is that better or worse?

Apparently, I will warn you, so in the UK apparently it's a widely accepted format and it was brought up by our international team. So that's why we have to go through some concept testing and see what the data tells us. Maybe it should be more market-based if it's something that's common in the UK then maybe that could be something we roll out in the UK market but not in other markets.

—Andy Keum's response to intrusive ads on mobile

Their Ad Products team is continuously iterating and testing to ensure they strike the right balance between ad engagement for their business partners and user experience for Fandom users. They also researching the "best model for showing the right ad to right person, in the right context, at the right time" using data science so "as a user, as a fan, you are not being bombarded with the same ad over and over again or you're being shown ads that are more relevant". As a reader, you can report bad and inappropriate advertisements using this link: Help:Bad advertisements.

What's exciting for me is that there is no correct answer. There's no solution that's out there that we can just apply to our site or our content and then all of a sudden it solves all the problems. You look at—I spent some time at Amazon. Ton of testing and even Amazon doesn't know what the hell is going on with everything on their pages. So which is why they run so many testing and that's the same kind of mindset that we're bringing to our world as well. So test, test, and repeat and then analyze, optimize to do some more testing. Again, it's a cycle that continues and we'll never be done, but we are tracking how we are improving user experience overall.
—Andy Keum on developing advertising

Other notable details:

  • In-content ads perform "decently well" according to Andy
  • Some geographical areas see better ad unit performance compared to others, thus different locations may see different ad types
  • They just recently started looking into video ads through Fandom's video player (like in the past month or so)
  • Privacy is a huge topic of concern for the Ad Products team since Fandom does track user activity and they have to comply with regulations.
  • They are also open to expanding their business into e-commerce but they have no definitive plans on this idea
  • Admins did bring up concerns on ads shifting article content when they load in and taking up content "real-estate":
    • If you are logged in with a Fandom account, you already see fewer ads (since there was historical feedback on ads disrupting the editing experience)
    • Andy prefaced his answers as hypothetical solutions:
      • Fandom may use some metric like page views and user contributions to deliver a "more or less ad-free option". His team doesn't know if this is a viable solution without proper analysis.
      • Different types of engagement on a page may determine the level of ad density since in some contexts it doesn't make sense to have certain types of ads since they may be too disrupting.
  • To fill their ad slots, Fandom utilizes their own ad agency and third-party ones like Google Ad Manager. The split is approximately 60/40 between first-party and third-party ads.[17]
  • There was a question on monetary compensation for labor done by wiki admins/moderators/editors and Fandom's response was that they are looking into meaningful ways to reward community members for their contribution to fandoms and wikis

Discussion on Compensation[]

We approach it with gratitude and support of your work everyday and I think when I talked to Brandon about this we've actually talked about the tension of what compensation should look like and we've gotten very mixed feedback on what people really want. So there's not an opposition to it, there's no any intent to say it is exploitative—that's not the intent by any stretch. It's that we, in talking with the community teams, had said this is the way the teams want to work and maybe there is some people that do want to be compensated and Brandon and I would be happy to hear about that. So there is no distinction there from my point of view.

We've been basically trying to operate the platform and service to communities, some of whom I'd actually spoken to had the opposite point of view which is: "This is a platform that I use, I actually don't even want to talk to you, a corporation. I just want to use the platform to celebrate my fandom so leave me alone." So there is a bit of that tension that we try to find the right line towards, but it's certainly nothing that we're taking some sort of intentional path towards.
—Perkins Miller, CEO, on question of compensation during "In Conversation: Perkins Miller and Jimmy Wales"

I'm here as being old and having been around for a long time, it usually surprises people to find out—when I was first looking to raise money for Fandom because we wanted to grow and we needed to get some investment, I was talking to venture capitalists and more than one venture capitalist said, "This is amazing, people work for free", and I always say, "Nobody works for free", that doesn't make any sense. You do something that's fun and generates value for free, but you're doing it because you want to. But they would say, "Why don't just pay people. Like if you pay people wouldn't content grow faster and the site will grow faster and so on", and what I said was, "You could pay people like you can pay people a good salary like a journalist at a top newspaper and they'll produce great content or you can pay people a very small amount of money which only incentivizes people to come in and generate crap like bad stuff."

And in a lot of our areas it's like there's only a handful of people in the world who know about and passionately care about every single minor character in a particular video game or Game of Thrones or something like that. And they are doing it out of passion and if you could pay them, great, like Perkins said, it's not about that, it's about how do you do it in such a way you don't suddenly incentivize a bunch of people who just churn out bad content which we see all over the Internet. So I'm intrigued and we discussed it many times and I'm always supportive of figuring out how to best reward the best people in the community.

In many cases, I think, what I hope, as we've gotten big enough now to actually have some impact, that we're able to work with the content—TV shows and so on—to actually provide experiences and interesting things that they can help us with or supply like early access to whatever. I would love to see a lot more of that because then I think your reward is really more tied to what it is that you are here for anyways which is the thing you care about.
—Jimmy Wales, Founder, on question of compensation during "In Conversation: Perkins Miller and Jimmy Wales"

New Fandom Engagement Experiments[]

Over the past few months, if you are an anonymous or logged out user, you may have seen new (and likely temporary) navigation features while browsing Fandom wikis such as an "Others like you also viewed" module at the end of articles. These are from Fandom's A/B testing of features meant to increase user engagement and retention on their site. They follow three themes:[18]

Guide Users Through Fandoms
  1. Guide Visitors to Other Fandoms
  2. Go Beyond Reference Content
  3. Leverage Positive Disruption[19]
  4. Expanded Findability
Mobile Opportunities
  1. My Fandoms (referring to Fandom mobile app)
  2. UI Structure Enables Branding
  3. Advertising Impacts Experience
Untapped Potentials
  1. Let Fans Guide Fans
  2. Self-Expression via Fandom
  3. Journey by Vertical[20]
  4. Fan Identification and Personalization

Fandom uses metrics to measure user engagement on their platform like:

  • Average pages viewed per session
  • Desktop and mobile click rate on a particular module
  • Average time spent on site in a single session
  • Completion rate of specific modules (e.g. finishing a poll)

Examples[]

Note that these are only available on wikis that want to have Fandom's interactive features (i.e. these are wiki dependent):

New Fandom Program: "Fandom Stars"[]

In 2021's virtual Community Connect, Fandom announced a new creator recognition program based on the retired Wikia Stars[22] to recognize active and productive community members on the Fandom platform (similar to WARFRAME's Creator Program and the idea of "software/product champions"). See https://www.fandom.com/fandom-stars/ for official details.

In short, it is an application-based and merit-based program reserved for individuals who have demonstrated prolific and positive contributions towards wiki/fandom communities and want to expand their influence to help like-minded individuals. Their responsibilities as community leaders include:

  • Mentor other and newer creators on the platform.
  • Report on bugs and update content you come across.
  • Recommend excellent creators to join Fandom Stars.
  • Participate positively in discussions and events.
  • Contribute on and off-platform and be a Fandom ambassador as opportunities arise.
  • Maintain informative edits and add other useful photos.
—From "Fandom Stars First Class Reveal" by Jennifer Pearson, Sr. Community Manager

All attendees at the 2022 Fandom Community Connect will be the first wave of "Fandom Stars" and more information will be announced in the future. So far, what we know is that the program offers:

  • Rewards for your contributions to the community
  • The chance to engage in experience only Fandom can offer
  • The opportunity for us to amplify our most prolific community members
—From Brandon Rhea's blog post

Fandom vaguely mentions that possible "rewards" and "experiences" include but are not limited to:

  • Exclusive fan events/meetups/parties (e.g. at Comic-Con)
  • Merchandise
  • First/early look at unreleased content and media
  • Meeting with actors of your favorite movies and TV shows

Other notes:

  • Those in the Fandom Stars program do not have to give up their anonymity to benefit from the program. It is optional to give out personal details to Fandom nor is it required to go to IRL events or activities. Fandom is looking into other ways to "reward" users who are unable to do IRL stuff for whatever reason.
    • 00:00, 16 June 2022 (UTC) correction: Looks like you have to provide a first name, last name, and general geolocation (city and country) when applying to the program. These details won't be public and are only shared with Fandom.
      • 20:15, 22 June 2022 (UTC) correction: First and last name are now optional as per Jennifer Pearson on Fandom Stars Discord AMA: "We don't require first and last name. So if you're not comfortable just put N/A. I don't want anyone to feel uncomfortable completing this form. It's simply to send this to Stars should they receive items for giveaways or tickets to events. Information is not shared to the public."
  • Official announcement on 2022-06-15:

New Fandom Program: "Admin+"[]

Fandom will be launching a new certification program called "Admin+" (or "A+") in response to top wiki admins wanting guidance on "how to become a good wiki admin and foster a healthy wiki community" over the years. The online course will contain three asynchronous videos that will cover topics like technical aspects of wikis, article content, SEO, and community building. Admins who complete this course will be awarded with a certification badge from a third-party company called Credly which can be displayed on one's LinkedIn profile page.

Admin+ is planned to be released in Q3 2022 (they specifically said summer in reference to Northern Hemisphere). 16:55, 22 July 2022 (UTC) update: See https://community.fandom.com/wiki/Admin_Plus for official details on this program.

Official announcement on 2022-06-15:

During Connect, Tim Quievryn (User:TimmyQuivy), Director of Community Safety, gave a sample live talk on the community building topic which was basically him providing a voice over a series of presentation slides on how to foster a healthy wiki community. During the presentation, he invited us admins to give suggestions and criticize the course's content. Overall, I would say it covers most things current long-time admins should already know about (by virtue of being on the Internet long enough, being exposed to a diverse group of individuals, and learning from their mistakes/successes along the way). At least for this topic, the course is relevant to modern standards of what a healthy Internet community should behave like:

Whether or not these virtues and guidelines are put into practice by admins is a separate issue.

Other notes:

  • There will be a single keynote speaker for each video.
  • Fandom intends that this program is for some formal recognition on the work wiki admins and editors perform on wikis and the community management skills they learned for the purpose of career advancement.
  • This is not a required program for new admins to participate in nor is it required for editors to be promoted to wiki admins. It is simply a resource to compliment existing admins' knowledge and to educate new admins while providing some badge of approval.
  • User:TimmyQuivy says this is a reboot of a program they had when Fandom was "Wikia". Tim likely refers to the Wikia/Fandom University, a series of short educational video tutorials on building a wiki.[23]
    • They may extend program to those other than wiki admins like community managers outside of the wiki community.
    • Sample videos from the outdated Wikia/Fandom University series:
Wikia University - Customizing Infobox Templates
Fandom University - What is and What Makes Good SEO
Fandom University - Avoiding Nested Tables
Fandom University - What Makes a Good Admin
Fandom University - Working Together
Universidad de Fandom - Promocionando tu Fandom en las redes sociales (Spanish video for "Promoting your Fandom in Social Media")

Planned Fandom Product: "FanHub"[]

Fandom's product team (lead by Quincy Carroll, Jerry Fan, and Brian Johnson who all previously worked for Crunchyroll) is in the works of exploring new products and ideas to increase customer engagement on the Fandom platform as a way to generate more income and to grow their business. A new service called "FanHub" (codename, not working title) was introduced to serve as a centralized, customizable feed for users to explore, engage, and interact with their favorite fandom communities. Fandom's preposition was that people are typically interested or are involved in more than one fandom community, so they want to create a product that can tailor to that specific behavior. They hypothesize that FanHub will create a "flywheel effect" that will bring more users to individual wiki communities through exploratory features like recommendations (e.g. "Since you liked X post, you may be interested in X wiki.") and global discussions that are not limited to one wiki/fandom community.

As of now, FanHub is in MVP phase of development and they envision that it will not be fully released until two years of development (if it is ever released).

05:22, 9 November 2022 (UTC) update: Fandom announced a beta site for what is called "FanCentral" (https://www.fandom.com/fancentral/home) based on what they were talking about during Connect.

What We Know[]

  • FanHub will primarily be a feed of fandom (as in the communities not the company) activities, news, discussions, and updates.
    • It is a separate product from wikis (Fandom wikis will still be wikis), but it will likely integrate wiki content/communities in some way.
    • Feed is planned to include wiki article content, Discussion posts, Fandom-made editorials, etc.
    • Planned to be able to filter content through aggregation or singling out topics.
  • It will be a customizable and personalized experience where users can choose what fandom/wiki communities to follow.
  • Users can make new posts in a global, site-wide FanHub Discussions feed (separate from individual wiki communities and has their own moderation team).
    • User-generated content and posts can be "upvoted" and shared to external platforms.
    • Planning to add more moderation tools like MediaWiki's Abuse Filters to Discussions.
    • Currently unclear whether or not individual wiki Discussions pages will still exist. There was push back from admin attendees and Fandom seems to know that there is a desire to keep individual wiki Discussions as a medium to conduct conversations about fandoms and wikis instead of relying on a third-party app like Discord.
  • Access to FanHub will likely exist as a new button below the search icon in the global navigation bar to the left.
  • Fandom does not have a clear, solid foundation on what FanHub will look/function like. Right now it is a loose idea that they want to pursue. During one of the breakout sessions they invited admins to draw wireframes on how we envision a "FanHub" to be as part of the early design phase.
  • These features are "under consideration" by Fandom before its release:
    • Discovery system for new TV shows, movies, and video games based on user interests
    • Calendar widget to track events
    • Being able "save" content in your feed like Discussion posts, quotes, images, wiki articles, etc to view later.
    • A list of recently visited wiki communities/articles
    • Trending wiki pages from your fandoms
    • Recommended fandoms
    • Wishlist of collectibles
    • Merchandise related to your interests
    • Popular polls and quizzes
    • Videos of walk-throughs and trailers
    • Fan art
  • Fandom claims that FanHub will have these initial benefits to wikis and their communities:
  • A destination where we can expose wiki content that's meaningful and relevant to visitors / users.
  • Multiple touch points on FanHub page to drive vistors to wikis
  • Requested moderation features to improve Creators'[24] quality of life
—From "Product and Engineering Roadmap 2022" talked by Jerry Fan, Sr. Director of Product
  • Fandom claims that FanHub will have these future benefits to wikis and their communities:
  • Decouple discussions and moderation from communities but still allow Creators to ensure quality
  • A unified profile for users so there's a sense of "me"
  • An Fandom achievement system to indicate Creator authority
  • A purer wiki experience
—From "Product and Engineering Roadmap 2022" talked by Jerry Fan, Sr. Director of Product

Summary of Business Goals[]

It's a hub of content recommendations (wiki pages, posts, quizzes, videos, etc). If you’re a logged out fan (i.e. most people), we’ll be able to personalize it for you by giving you recommendations based on communities you’ve visited. If you’re logged in, you’ll be able to follow what topics you want and see updates based on that

Eventually it'll be the new Fandom.com homepage and therefore be more reflective of all the content on the site, in a way that's relevant to you, than what's there now

The overall goal is to increase engagement - the amount of time spent on Fandom and cross-wiki visitation, in particular

And one of the biggest benefits is if it works it’s also a way to lead to ad reductions on wikis - for example, we have to have the video player at the top of the page now because it’s too important of a source of revenue to remove. But we also know on the flip side, no one goes to a wiki page to watch video. But if we can create an intentional video-watching experience on the fan hub, that gives us the opportunity to shift that monetization model away from the wiki page

I don't believe we're monetizing it at launch - we clearly know how to monetize things, so we'd rather start by trying to make a good user experience first - but that's a long term goal
—Brandon Rhea describing FanHub

Planned Feature: Global Achievement System[]

A global achievement system across the Fandom platform was briefly mentioned in the context of FanHub but was introduced as a way to highlight active community members and to encourage the greater audience to contribute to the platform.

Not much info was said about this, but it would probably consolidate Fandom wiki's Achievement system with Gamepedia's Cheevos extension, continuing the theme of unifying the two platforms.

New International Wiki Representatives[]

Until now we tried to piece together support via various methods and I'll be honest we kind of had mixed results. It's one of those cart before the horse things. I would love for us to have 20 support staff in Germany, but in order to have 20 support staff in Germany you have to have a good solid ad program [to] pay for that. And in order to pay for that, you [need] to have lot of content which in turn has to be written by those 20 staff members. So at some point you have to figure out which way you're going to go. So we hope we found a good middle ground option. We have announced last month that we've contracted 10 individuals to provide support in our top non-EN languages for the first time.

—Tim Quievryn, VP of Community Safety, during "Community Safety 2022"

According to Tim, 20% of Fandom's site traffic comes from outside of the United States[25], so they added a new team under the Community Safety division to serve as a direct point of contact between non-English wiki admins/community members and Fandom themselves. Since we have an active WARFRAME French, Russian, and Spanish wiki community, the following wiki representatives may be relevant to their communities should they reach out to them:

Fandom's goal is to build and maintain a healthy wiki community within the targeted languages so they could invest more localized content in that language's countries (e.g. France for French-speaking users) to expand their business. 7 of the top 50 wikis visited on Fandom are in non-English languages.

Fandom Policies Updates[]

Community Feedback[]

Fandom is open to feedback from this and other wiki communities. They can be reached at these points of contact:

  • Tomasz Kasperek - Software Engineer on CATS Team - tkasperek@fandom.com - anything to do with editing and moderation tools
  • Elizabeth (Liz) Shea - UX Researcher - consumerinsights@fandom.com - any feedback regarding mobile experience (reading, editing, moderation, Fandom app, etc.)
  • User:Mr Pie 5 - our current wiki representative to Fandom
  • Help:Bad advertisements - how to report bad and inappropriate advertisements
  • Zendesk support
  • Official Fandom/Gamepedia Discord server can be found here

Special Thanks[]

  • This wiki's admin and moderation team for being the most chill people to collaborate with. I heard a lot of nuisance and controversies that went on in other wiki communities and I'm lucky to be amongst people who are supportive, empathetic, inclusive, and diligent in their efforts on this wiki.
  • This wiki's editors and commenters for (mostly) behaving while engaging in thoughtful discussions and steadfast in their efforts to point out something wrong with the wiki or fixing it themselves.
  • Saunt3D for your approachability and being the first person I met in LA
  • Antonio and Mike for Friday's lunch
  • Marcus, Lucas, and Héctor for engaging in talks on community and fandoms
  • Atvelonis (our previous wiki representative), Bearborg (Horizon and Metroid), HiddenVale, Montonius (Warhammer 40k, Warhammer Fantasy, and Warhammer Age of Sigmar), OishiiOnIno, and Saunt3D for being a fun group to hang around with and listen to thought-provoking conversations on business, moderation, community building, institutional knowledge, and modern society
  • MarkusRost for offering cookies and Hasbro (they were good btw)
  • Sannse for your positivity and friendliness
  • Ludwik Kaźmierczak and Tomasz Kasperek for our conversations on software engineering and development
  • Monica Nazario and Zach Michaels for organizing the event
  • Everyone else I met for being so welcoming and hospitable!

References[]

  1. ↑ Pearson, Jennifer (2022, May 21). Sneak Peek at Community Connect: Special Announcements and Livestream Details. Fandom. Accessed 2022-06-01. Archived from the original on 2022-06-01.
  2. ↑ Rhea, Brandon (2022, April 11). Announcing Fandom's 2022 IRL Community Connect in Los Angeles. Fandom. Accessed 2022-04-12. Archived from the original on 2022-04-12.
  3. ↑ The Creator, Admin, Tools, and Staff (CATS) team
  4. ↑ Kavanagh, Will (2021, May 20). A Deeper Look at Creator Tools and What's Next. Accessed 2021-12-30. Archived from the original on 2021-07-09.
  5. ↑ Freeze, Breanna (2022, June 8). Welcome Breanna, Fandom's new Senior Community Manager, Gaming on the Community Experience team. Fandom. Accessed 2022-06-15. Archived from the original on 2022-06-15.
  6. ↑ Low, Jieyang (2022, September 15). Hi, it's Jieyang here! Fandom's new Senior Community Manager, Gaming on the Community Experience team. Fandom. Accessed 2022-09-16. Archived from the original on 2022-09-15.
  7. ↑ (2022, October 3). Fandom Acquires Leading Entertainment & Gaming Brands Including GameSpot, TV Guide and Metacritic. Fandom. Accessed 2022-10-03. Archived from the original on 2022-10-03.
  8. ↑ Uchisawa, Jenny (2022, April 21). Interactive Maps are here!. Fandom. Accessed 2022-04-22. Archived from the original on 2022-04-22.
  9. ↑ (2014, July 22). Wikia Maps. Fandom. Accessed 2022-06-04. Archived from the original on 2022-06-04.
  10. ↑ Similar to the MediaWiki extension Extension:Maps
  11. ↑ Pearson, Jennifer (2023, February 22). Everything You Need to Know About Post History. Accessed 2023-02-22. Archived from the original on 2023-02-22.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 WARFRAME wiki's analytics from Admin Dashboard
  13. ↑ Pearson, Jennifer (2022, October 26). Everything You Need to Know About Mobile Theming. Fandom. Accessed 2022-10-27. Archived from the original on 2022-10-27.
  14. ↑ Pearson, Jennifer (2022, December 12). Extension Review Nomination. Fandom. Accessed 2022-12-14. Archived from the original on 2022-12-12.
  15. ↑ Via Google Ad Manager
  16. ↑ See this for a list of ad products/units that Fandom offers (sourced from https://about.fandom.com/mediakit)
  17. ↑
    No, I don't think that's what @Nekky-chan 🇩🇪 means. At a guess, fandom.com has a number of ad slots per page, and they act both as their own ad agency and has deals with third-party agencies. Thus, I believe they first fill their available slots with their "own" ads (since they give more revenue) and backfill with ads from third-party agencies.
    —Kjnoren on Fandom's ad spaces in Fandom Discord's #general-fandom on 2022-07-02 17:05 UTC

    Generally correct. Anything we don’t sell directly is filled with programmatic/third party ads, mostly using Google

    It’s about 60% direct, 40% indirect
    —Brandon Rhea replying to above statement
  18. ↑ From "Product and Engineering Roadmap 2022" with Adam Goldband, VP of Engineering
  19. ↑ "Positive Disruption" is business lingo for introducing change to improve upon an existing product by reducing stagnation and apathy
  20. ↑ "Vertical" refers to general content/wiki categorization on Fandom like "games", "anime", "movies", etc.
  21. ↑ Rhea, Brandon (2022, February 22). Fandom is expanding Trivia Quizzes after a year of successful experimentation. Fandom. Accessed 2022-02-28. Archived from the original on 2022-02-28.
  22. ↑ Shannon, Christy (2013, January 10). Introducing Wikia Stars. Fandom. Accessed 2022-06-03. Archived from the original on 2020-11-13.
  23. ↑ (2014, March 5). Introducing Wikia University. Fandom. Accessed 2022-06-04. Archived from the original on 2022-06-04.
  24. ↑ "Creators" refer to wiki editors and commenters who can be considered as "content creators" in the generic media sense
  25. ↑ Quievryn, Timothy (2022, May 6). Introducing Fandom's New International Wiki Representatives. Fandom. Accessed 2022-05-25. Archived from the original on 2022-05-25.
  26. ↑ Uchisawa, Jenny (2022, March 23). Updates to Wiki Rules and Blocking Policy. Fandom. Accessed 2022-03-24. Archived from the original on 2022-03-24.
  27. ↑ Cushway, Sannse (2022, June 3). Update to the community guidelines. Fandom. Accessed 2022-06-03. Archived from the original on 2022-06-03.

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