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When Jimmy Wales launched Fandom, then called Wikia, a shit-ton of (actually encyclopaedic) content about fictional stuff was deleted from Wikipedia to be moved

by whstl 1mo ago

When Jimmy Wales launched Fandom, then called Wikia, a shit-ton of (actually encyclopaedic) content about fictional stuff was deleted from Wikipedia to be moved to Fandom, with the excuse that it was a "sister project", that it was the right place for things to be moved, etc. Fandom was pure corruption even before the tenth round of enshittification.

mitxela 1mo ago
Are you trying to say Jimmy Wales is corrupt because he didn't let you have a separate page for every Lord of the Rings character?
- xp84 1mo ago
  Self-dealing is a bad look no matter how you try to spin it. Being fussy about what is and isn't "encyclopedic" (arguably a self-defining idea anyway though) is fine, until it benefits you to rule a certain way, then people are going to speculate. Also, nobody knows how much money Jimmy Wales took home from selling Fandom to TPG/IMC.
  - mitxela 1mo ago
    So when Stack Overflow operates Stack Overflow, for programming questions, and Super User, for usage questions, and directs a computer usage question to Super User, that's corruption?
    - deleted 1mo ago
      [deleted]
    - xp84 1mo ago
      It'd be suspect, if SO was a nonprofit, and SU was a budding commercial enterprise owned in part by Mr. Overflow personally, and Mr. Overflow had used his influence over SO rules to farm content for SU so that he could sell SU to PE and get rich.
  - jhbadger 1mo ago
    The problem was in the early days when people were still mocking the idea of a crowd-sourced encyclopedia, journalists would snark about how (for example) the article on Captain Kirk was longer than some historical figure. So you can see how fictional content was seen as "embarrassing"
    - mitxela 1mo ago
      No, that isn't it
      - jhbadger 1mo ago
        It really was. Outside the nerdosphere, articles about fictional people or places in TV, movies or games were widely mocked and seen as "unprofessional" -- people were saying if Wikipedia needed to be more like Britannica if it was going to be taken seriously.
- Plont 1mo ago
  I believe they are just saying that fandom.com sucked and made the internet worse even from the start, not necessarily that Jimmy Wales is corrupt. Wikipedia actually does appear to have separate pages for every Lord of the Rings character. Frankly I think it makes sense for this series, since there's a truly unusual and effortful amount of worldbuilding behind its scenes, and since it has been so influential to fiction (even regardless of medium). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings Anyway, Jimmy Wales doesn't unilaterally make article inclusion/exclusion decisions; there's a whole debate and voting process that Wikipedians use to make decisions like that. So if anyone were to be called corrupt for making ill-fated decisions to delete articles, it would be a bunch of pseudonymous Wikipedia users. And I think they likely acted in good faith, trying to improve the encyclopedia, even though it didn't work out well and wasn't what I would have done.

by whstl 1mo ago

mitxela 1mo ago

Are you trying to say Jimmy Wales is corrupt because he didn't let you have a separate page for every Lord of the Rings character?

xp84 1mo ago
Self-dealing is a bad look no matter how you try to spin it. Being fussy about what is and isn't "encyclopedic" (arguably a self-defining idea anyway though) is fine, until it benefits you to rule a certain way, then people are going to speculate. Also, nobody knows how much money Jimmy Wales took home from selling Fandom to TPG/IMC.
- mitxela 1mo ago
  So when Stack Overflow operates Stack Overflow, for programming questions, and Super User, for usage questions, and directs a computer usage question to Super User, that's corruption?
  - deleted 1mo ago
    [deleted]
  - xp84 1mo ago
    It'd be suspect, if SO was a nonprofit, and SU was a budding commercial enterprise owned in part by Mr. Overflow personally, and Mr. Overflow had used his influence over SO rules to farm content for SU so that he could sell SU to PE and get rich.
- jhbadger 1mo ago
  The problem was in the early days when people were still mocking the idea of a crowd-sourced encyclopedia, journalists would snark about how (for example) the article on Captain Kirk was longer than some historical figure. So you can see how fictional content was seen as "embarrassing"
  - mitxela 1mo ago
    No, that isn't it
    - jhbadger 1mo ago
      It really was. Outside the nerdosphere, articles about fictional people or places in TV, movies or games were widely mocked and seen as "unprofessional" -- people were saying if Wikipedia needed to be more like Britannica if it was going to be taken seriously.
Plont 1mo ago
I believe they are just saying that fandom.com sucked and made the internet worse even from the start, not necessarily that Jimmy Wales is corrupt. Wikipedia actually does appear to have separate pages for every Lord of the Rings character. Frankly I think it makes sense for this series, since there's a truly unusual and effortful amount of worldbuilding behind its scenes, and since it has been so influential to fiction (even regardless of medium). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings Anyway, Jimmy Wales doesn't unilaterally make article inclusion/exclusion decisions; there's a whole debate and voting process that Wikipedians use to make decisions like that. So if anyone were to be called corrupt for making ill-fated decisions to delete articles, it would be a bunch of pseudonymous Wikipedia users. And I think they likely acted in good faith, trying to improve the encyclopedia, even though it didn't work out well and wasn't what I would have done.