7 ms·

Wikia is a great example of enshittification - provide great value to users, then take it away from users and hand it to other businesses (eg advertisers), then

Wikia is a great example of enshittification - provide great value to users, then take it away from users and hand it to other businesses (eg advertisers), then take it away from businesses too. Will Weird Gloop inevitably suffer the same fate? I hope not.

diggan 2y ago
> Will Weird Gloop inevitably suffer the same fate? I hope not. Unless explicitly structured to prevent it, my bet is it will. If it's backed by a for-profit entity, it'll eventually need to turn a profit somehow, and users/visitors are the first to lose their experience at that point. However, if Weird Gloop is a properly registered non-profit with shared ownership between multiple individuals, I'll be much more likely to bet it won't suffer the same fate. I skimmed around a bit on the website to try to get an answer to if it is an non-profit, but didn't find anything obvious that says yes/no.
- cookmeplox 2y ago
  We're already turning a profit! And there are no third-party investors (or debt) – it's all controlled by wiki people[1] [1] https://meta.weirdgloop.org/w/Weird_Gloop_Limited https://meta.weirdgloop.org/w/Weird_Gloop_Limited
  - diggan 2y ago
    Aw, I take that as it is in fact a for-profit company already. Regardless, I wish you luck for the future! May you not go down the almost inevitable enshittification hole.
    - cinntaile 2y ago
      If it started that way, I'd say it's less likely to end up "bad". Compared to non-profit websites that get sold to ad businesses.
    - robotnikman 2y ago
      At least it is a private company though, meaning they are are required to make constant year over year gains for shareholders and investors. They have much more control over where the company goes and how it operates.
      - ChadNauseam 2y ago
        publicly traded companies are not "required" to make constant year over year gains for shareholders and investors, that is just what the owners usually decide to tell the company to do. The owners of a privately traded company could decide to, and the owners of a publicly traded company could decide not to. For example, zuckerberg controls 53% of the voting stock of facebook, so whatever zuck says goes and if other shareholders don't like it they can kick rocks. This is pretty much the same situation that people imagine is the case with privately traded companies, even though facebook is obviously publicly traded.
        atomicnumber3 2y ago
        "that is just what the owners usually decide to tell the company to do" Because the entire system encourages it. The market rewards growth FAR more than it rewards a consistent dividend payout. (See: companies growing 40% YoY command a significfantly higher earnings multiple than those growing 10% YOY). So imo this is a like saying "people could decide to just invest money and then not seek the best returns possible." Also remember these shareholder are seldom John Smith principled human retail investor. It's firms whose entire purpose themselves is to seek maximum return. "The owners of a privately traded company could decide to" Meanwhile this DOES actually happen sometimes. See: Valve. We all know there's ways Valve could put up really great growth numbers for about 2-3 years while completely destroying all of the things that make Steam so god damn compelling to users that they can command the same cut as Apple, on an OPEN platform (vs Apple fighting utterly tooth and nail to keep iOS 100% airtight locked down). But they don't. "For example, zuckerberg controls 53% of the voting stock of facebook, so whatever zuck says goes" TBC most founders/CEOs are NOT majority voters in their companies. They answer to the board. Most company founders lose voting control. The fact that Zuck is still in control is incredibly unusual and is a testament to how fast Facebook has grown that he's been able to keep hold of the reins.
    - adw 2y ago
      It’s a company limited by guarantee, which is the structure you use in the UK for non-charity non-profits.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - Imustaskforhelp 2y ago
    How is it making money?
    - cookmeplox 2y ago
      We have services agreements with the League of Legends and RuneScape developers, and we run 1 ad (below-the-fold, not in EU/UK) on the RuneScape wikis. This covers all expenses (including 5 staff) by a pretty healthy margin
    - hiatus 2y ago
      It is described in the linked article. > The company primarily relies on three streams of revenue: user donations, serving ads on select Weird Gloop wikis, and a contract with Jagex that includes a fee to cover hosting and administration costs.
      - dingnuts 2y ago
        I didn't see anything in the article about setting up incentives to keep the same thing from happening to Weird Gloop that happened to Fandom, which means the blog post is just empty marketing. The only difference is that Weird Gloop is the little guy. Competition is good! That might be a good enough reason to choose them if you're in the market for wiki hosting! But the moral posturing won't last if they become dominant, unless they set up incentives fundamentally differently than Fandom did, which doesn't seem to be the case. As long as advertising is one of their revenue sources, the user experience will get crappy as soon as the network effects make it hard to leave. The cycle continues.
        35skill 2y ago
        Did you read the post? There's a whole section talking about how they are entering into binding agreements that let communities leave (and take the domain) if they have a better option
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- madeofpalk 2y ago
  Can we flip it? Some companies are explicitly structured to guarantee enshittification. Venture capital/private equity is what causes this. We've been poisoned to believe that websites should exist purely to achieve hyperscale and extract as much money as possible. When you look at the real physical world there are tons of small "mom and pop" businesses that are content with being self sustainable without some special corporate structure to legally require that. Maybe websites could be the same?
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    There are millions of websites like that. They don't show up on the first page of search results, so nobody finds them.
    - godshatter 2y ago
      Mainly because our biggest search engine is owned by an ad agency.
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    I work for private equity, and while we have a lot of layoffs, we don’t necessarily pursue short term gains (at least, as far as I can determine not as a factor of being PE anyway)
zellyn 2y ago
The article explicitly covers this question. Looks like they're setting up explicit legal(?) agreements. One key point is the domain name: minecraft.wiki, for example, not a subdomain of something owned by Weird Gloop. So the wiki can leave if it wants to.
- mossTechnician 2y ago
  Does that mean that to the users of these wikis, the switching costs[1] of the backend would basically be zero (one day they might just end up on a different server with the same content), while on the administrators' side the switching costs are at a reasonable minimum? [1] a variable in whether something can be enshittified, via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification#History_and_definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification#History_and_d...
  - Nadya 2y ago
    To my understanding wikis can take all their data, host it themselves, point the domain to their new hosting, and the move would be entirely invisible to end users if done properly and the quality of the hosting infrastructure wasn't considerably worse. Observant users might notice the removal of any Weird Gloop branding but otherwise the only way people would know if the wiki itself announces the move or performance of the wiki becomes noticeably worse. And Weird Gloop won't do what Fandom does and keep a zombie copy of your wiki online. So you won't be competing with Weird Gloop wiki traffic to reclaim your traffic. In fact, the obligations they agree to forbid it. Reading the Minecraft.wiki Memorandum: https://meta.minecraft.wiki/w/Memorandum_of_Understanding_with_Weird_Gloop https://meta.minecraft.wiki/w/Memorandum_of_Understanding_wi... Upon termination by either party, Weird Gloop is obligated to: - Cease operating any version of the Minecraft Wiki - Transfer ownership of the minecraft.wiki domain to the community members - Provide dumps of Minecraft Wiki databases and image repositories, and any of Weird Gloop's MediaWiki configuration that is specific to Minecraft Wiki - Assist in transferring to the community members any domain-adjacent assets or accounts that cannot reasonably be acquired without Weird Gloop's cooperation - This does not include any of Weird Gloop's core MediaWiki code, Cloudflare configuration, or accounts/relationships related to advertising or sponsorships This sort of agreement means Weird Gloop is incentivized to not become so shit that wiki would want to leave (and take their ad revenue with them) because they've tried to make leaving Weird Gloop as easy as possible.
treflop 2y ago
I find this tends to happen when something passes on from its creator to someone else. Wikia/Fandom has passed hands a bit. Other people just have very different values and the direction of an organization reflects this.

diggan 2y ago

> Will Weird Gloop inevitably suffer the same fate? I hope not. Unless explicitly structured to prevent it, my bet is it will. If it's backed by a for-profit entity, it'll eventually need to turn a profit somehow, and users/visitors are the first to lose their experience at that point. However, if Weird Gloop is a properly registered non-profit with shared ownership between multiple individuals, I'll be much more likely to bet it won't suffer the same fate. I skimmed around a bit on the website to try to get an answer to if it is an non-profit, but didn't find anything obvious that says yes/no.

cookmeplox 2y ago
We're already turning a profit! And there are no third-party investors (or debt) – it's all controlled by wiki people[1] [1] https://meta.weirdgloop.org/w/Weird_Gloop_Limited https://meta.weirdgloop.org/w/Weird_Gloop_Limited
- diggan 2y ago
  Aw, I take that as it is in fact a for-profit company already. Regardless, I wish you luck for the future! May you not go down the almost inevitable enshittification hole.
  - cinntaile 2y ago
    If it started that way, I'd say it's less likely to end up "bad". Compared to non-profit websites that get sold to ad businesses.
  - robotnikman 2y ago
    At least it is a private company though, meaning they are are required to make constant year over year gains for shareholders and investors. They have much more control over where the company goes and how it operates.
    - ChadNauseam 2y ago
      publicly traded companies are not "required" to make constant year over year gains for shareholders and investors, that is just what the owners usually decide to tell the company to do. The owners of a privately traded company could decide to, and the owners of a publicly traded company could decide not to. For example, zuckerberg controls 53% of the voting stock of facebook, so whatever zuck says goes and if other shareholders don't like it they can kick rocks. This is pretty much the same situation that people imagine is the case with privately traded companies, even though facebook is obviously publicly traded.
      - atomicnumber3 2y ago
        "that is just what the owners usually decide to tell the company to do" Because the entire system encourages it. The market rewards growth FAR more than it rewards a consistent dividend payout. (See: companies growing 40% YoY command a significfantly higher earnings multiple than those growing 10% YOY). So imo this is a like saying "people could decide to just invest money and then not seek the best returns possible." Also remember these shareholder are seldom John Smith principled human retail investor. It's firms whose entire purpose themselves is to seek maximum return. "The owners of a privately traded company could decide to" Meanwhile this DOES actually happen sometimes. See: Valve. We all know there's ways Valve could put up really great growth numbers for about 2-3 years while completely destroying all of the things that make Steam so god damn compelling to users that they can command the same cut as Apple, on an OPEN platform (vs Apple fighting utterly tooth and nail to keep iOS 100% airtight locked down). But they don't. "For example, zuckerberg controls 53% of the voting stock of facebook, so whatever zuck says goes" TBC most founders/CEOs are NOT majority voters in their companies. They answer to the board. Most company founders lose voting control. The fact that Zuck is still in control is incredibly unusual and is a testament to how fast Facebook has grown that he's been able to keep hold of the reins.
  - adw 2y ago
    It’s a company limited by guarantee, which is the structure you use in the UK for non-charity non-profits.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- Imustaskforhelp 2y ago
  How is it making money?
  - cookmeplox 2y ago
    We have services agreements with the League of Legends and RuneScape developers, and we run 1 ad (below-the-fold, not in EU/UK) on the RuneScape wikis. This covers all expenses (including 5 staff) by a pretty healthy margin
  - hiatus 2y ago
    It is described in the linked article. > The company primarily relies on three streams of revenue: user donations, serving ads on select Weird Gloop wikis, and a contract with Jagex that includes a fee to cover hosting and administration costs.
    - dingnuts 2y ago
      I didn't see anything in the article about setting up incentives to keep the same thing from happening to Weird Gloop that happened to Fandom, which means the blog post is just empty marketing. The only difference is that Weird Gloop is the little guy. Competition is good! That might be a good enough reason to choose them if you're in the market for wiki hosting! But the moral posturing won't last if they become dominant, unless they set up incentives fundamentally differently than Fandom did, which doesn't seem to be the case. As long as advertising is one of their revenue sources, the user experience will get crappy as soon as the network effects make it hard to leave. The cycle continues.
      - 35skill 2y ago
        Did you read the post? There's a whole section talking about how they are entering into binding agreements that let communities leave (and take the domain) if they have a better option
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
madeofpalk 2y ago
Can we flip it? Some companies are explicitly structured to guarantee enshittification. Venture capital/private equity is what causes this. We've been poisoned to believe that websites should exist purely to achieve hyperscale and extract as much money as possible. When you look at the real physical world there are tons of small "mom and pop" businesses that are content with being self sustainable without some special corporate structure to legally require that. Maybe websites could be the same?
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  There are millions of websites like that. They don't show up on the first page of search results, so nobody finds them.
  - godshatter 2y ago
    Mainly because our biggest search engine is owned by an ad agency.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  I work for private equity, and while we have a lot of layoffs, we don’t necessarily pursue short term gains (at least, as far as I can determine not as a factor of being PE anyway)

zellyn 2y ago

The article explicitly covers this question. Looks like they're setting up explicit legal(?) agreements. One key point is the domain name: minecraft.wiki, for example, not a subdomain of something owned by Weird Gloop. So the wiki can leave if it wants to.

mossTechnician 2y ago
Does that mean that to the users of these wikis, the switching costs[1] of the backend would basically be zero (one day they might just end up on a different server with the same content), while on the administrators' side the switching costs are at a reasonable minimum? [1] a variable in whether something can be enshittified, via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification#History_and_definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification#History_and_d...
- Nadya 2y ago
  To my understanding wikis can take all their data, host it themselves, point the domain to their new hosting, and the move would be entirely invisible to end users if done properly and the quality of the hosting infrastructure wasn't considerably worse. Observant users might notice the removal of any Weird Gloop branding but otherwise the only way people would know if the wiki itself announces the move or performance of the wiki becomes noticeably worse. And Weird Gloop won't do what Fandom does and keep a zombie copy of your wiki online. So you won't be competing with Weird Gloop wiki traffic to reclaim your traffic. In fact, the obligations they agree to forbid it. Reading the Minecraft.wiki Memorandum: https://meta.minecraft.wiki/w/Memorandum_of_Understanding_with_Weird_Gloop https://meta.minecraft.wiki/w/Memorandum_of_Understanding_wi... Upon termination by either party, Weird Gloop is obligated to: - Cease operating any version of the Minecraft Wiki - Transfer ownership of the minecraft.wiki domain to the community members - Provide dumps of Minecraft Wiki databases and image repositories, and any of Weird Gloop's MediaWiki configuration that is specific to Minecraft Wiki - Assist in transferring to the community members any domain-adjacent assets or accounts that cannot reasonably be acquired without Weird Gloop's cooperation - This does not include any of Weird Gloop's core MediaWiki code, Cloudflare configuration, or accounts/relationships related to advertising or sponsorships This sort of agreement means Weird Gloop is incentivized to not become so shit that wiki would want to leave (and take their ad revenue with them) because they've tried to make leaving Weird Gloop as easy as possible.

treflop 2y ago

I find this tends to happen when something passes on from its creator to someone else. Wikia/Fandom has passed hands a bit. Other people just have very different values and the direction of an organization reflects this.