One hand washes the other: they buy ads from Google (I think), so Google prefers them in the indexing process, so they get more traffic, so Google prefers them even more.

Fun fact: Fandom was co-founded by Jimmy Wales

"On February 4, 2026, Jay Sullivan was named the new CEO. In a public statement following the arrival of Fandom's new CEO, the company's president, Jimmy Wales, mentioned that they intend to incorporate additional AI tools into Fandom Wikis to adapt to internet searches". No comment.

It was certainly an interesting way to squander much of the good will generated by being a wikipedia founder. On the other hand, fandom made him rich, so it's all swings and roundabouts

Things change. I'd been involved with some game wikis long enough ago that moving there was a good idea (if you had no one who wanted to do server admin and no hw/vps sponsors)

Well at least Wikipedia doesn't pester you with tons of ads that sometimes make it hard to even find the content (except for the occasional donation banner, but that's a minor annoyance compared to what Fandom does).

There were memes ridiculing Wales and all that annual effort regarding supporting Wikipedia - probably that did the job

Um, have you seen the current Wikipedia donation drive? It's almost as bad as Fandom, and I'm refusing to donate because WP:CANCER.

> except for the occasional donation banner, but that's a minor annoyance compared to what Fandom does

Well, I guess that's true.

It's worth noting, though, that wikipedia's donation demands cover more than the entire screen on a phone.

It's also worth noting that both Wikipedia and Fandom were co-founded by Jimmy Wales.

Well... why? Is he involved with either of them now? Is there a shared persisting influence of some kind?

Fandom used to be Wikia and it was just a thing that hosted wikis. Its story is a bit like Sourceforge's.

Ok, but... what is it that we're taking note of?

> Memory Alpha seems to be better run.

Some few months ago I couldn't find actors credits for particular roles they had in Star Trek franchise. For whatever reasons these bits were removed but still were present within Wayback Machine.

Then again, in the past I've seen hostile take-overs of fan made wikis into wikia/fandom "infrastructure". In one case wiki was copied, in time articles were slightly edited and new content was added containing... unsolicited fan theories.

The other case: wiki was copied 1:1 due to some inside disagreements, then incorporated into fandom and in approx. 2 years abandoned. The original died as well but someone managed to restore it from Wayback - this time in read-only mode

I have no idea what happened behind the scenes, but Memory Alpha used to have its own hosting and was migrated to the hosted wikia, I think between 2010 and 2015. The old domain still redirects: https://memory-alpha.org/

> It is certainly heading down the same route as Wikipedia with all the problems that entails.

Can you elaborate on what that means? i.e. what aspect of Wikipedia, and in what way Fandom is heading there?