In retrospect how fucking weird is it that despite wikipedia being the obvious model for all of them, all these other similar places are on this one weird website that has shitty functionality and tries to show you 10 ads a page
making a wikipedia-like site involves setting up MediaWiki, which isn't super difficult but does take some knowledge and time investment (and probably paying for a server). Fandom's main draw is convenience and SEO, so you can create a wiki for free in a few clicks and, if it has the canonical subdomain, it shows up at the top whenever someone searches for "X wiki"
The Minecraft Wiki, Zelda Wiki, etc. were on Gamepedia, which did use MediaWiki and were really fantastic in that way, but as this post mentions, Gamepedia was bought by Fandom and Fandom foisted their awful layout on it.
In retrospect how fucking weird is it that despite wikipedia being the obvious model for all of them, all these other similar places are on this one weird website that has shitty functionality and tries to show you 10 ads a page
its not weird at all, it's capitalism babyyyyyyyyyy
making a wikipedia-like site involves setting up MediaWiki, which isn't super difficult but does take some knowledge and time investment (and probably paying for a server). Fandom's main draw is convenience and SEO, so you can create a wiki for free in a few clicks and, if it has the canonical subdomain, it shows up at the top whenever someone searches for "X wiki"
If you have a small enough thing, you can use Amazon's free tier server. Main cost is media storage, the actual wiki part is pretty light.
You'd think someone would've undercut them by now. It's not that hard to make people wikis and pocket the ad revenue.
The Minecraft Wiki, Zelda Wiki, etc. were on Gamepedia, which did use MediaWiki and were really fantastic in that way, but as this post mentions, Gamepedia was bought by Fandom and Fandom foisted their awful layout on it.