How's that for a headline? The Hearthstone Wiki on Fandom, also known as the worst-designed and most-ads-infested website on the internet, is no more.

That isn't entirely true, of course, Fandom wouldn't take down one of its larger wikis just because someone asked them to, but it is worth pointing out the staff of the wiki has left and restarted operations at the much cleaner Wiki.gg.

https://hearthstone.wiki.gg/wiki/Hearthstone_Wiki

We bring this news as a public service announcement. The folks at the Hearthstone Wiki do a great job at categorizing information on the game, sometimes in places we don't cover. If you're looking for historical information, odds are good that you'll be able to find what you are looking for as the Hearthstone Wiki has been around since the beginning of Hearthstone. Personally, I spent many hours involved on the Wiki early on, against the wishes of my bosses, to help with the early, not fantastic, theme, and getting content organized, so it was disappointing to see the ultimate fate of the wiki.

Gaming Wikis - Gamepedia, Wikia, & Fandom

Before we go into Wiki.gg, I want to bring up the history of the Hearthstone Wiki. This part is largely unsourced and comes from my personal understanding of how things happened. I worked at Curse Inc., Twitch, and later Fandom.

Hearthstone's Wiki was originally created on Gamepedia, Curse Inc.'s wiki farm. Wiki farms typically have a bad reputation, primarily thanks to Fandom, but Gamepedia was different. Gamepedia had advertisements but it wasn't incredibly intrusive, and more importantly, the wikis each had their own feel which is something quite rare to see on Fandom wikis these days because they all have the same awful skeleton forced onto them which features AI generated content, the wrath of ten million ads, and these ridiculously awful comment systems.

Gamepedia's small team was able to build a better base for wikis to run on, and they managed to convince plenty of gaming wikis to leave what was at the time Wikia, which later became Fandom. The people behind Gamepedia were passionate and had a great product that helped Curse grow further into the gaming content market. That all changed when Curse was purchased.

Curse was sold to Twitch in August 2016. It wasn't long before Twitch was done with Curse's content sites though and it was largely sold off to Fandom in December 2018. Fandom had a great opportunity here, finally being able to get back the wikis that Gamepedia had taken from Wikia. There was a confusing period of time where a lot of wikis were being edited twice, both on the Fandom wiki and then on the Gamepedia wiki. Fandom decided to merge the properties, eventually consolidating everything onto Fandom proper, leaving the Gamepedia branding behind.

Admins on wikis were not impressed by the moves to a theme that overall hurt the discoverability of content, and that brings us closer to the present day. That brings us to Wiki.gg.

Who is Wiki.gg?

Wiki.gg is run by Freedom.gg. They are a game publishing company headed by folks that were previously at Curse/Twitch/Fandom. The co-founders of Freedom Games are Ben Robinson & Donovan Duncan, who were the VP of Gaming and Chief Business Officer at Fandom. Robinson joined Curse in 2012 after founding the DayZ wiki and went on to co-found the Gamepedia platform.

Wiki.gg's mission is to get developers of games and editors of wikis together to create "the best possible experiences for gamers". Here's what they say about themselves on their homepage.

Quote From Wiki.gg

Creators First

Platform operated by creators of gaming experiences. Flexible platform that adjusts to the needs of creators. No in-content ads or “standard” ads for refrigerators, cars, or underwear – Ads will only be for the games of game developers on the platform.

Game Developers

Game Developers on the platform reach more gamers. Earn impressions on your own content and use those impressions to create more awareness for your game.

Wiki Editors

Flexible platform that is tailored to the needs of the editors. Contributors will not be boxed into a unified experience in regards to design, content display, or anything else. A team who cares, listens, plays games, and creates content alongside you.

This sounds great! A new place for gaming wikis but not the cesspool that comes along with Fandom. They are using their wiki platform to promote their own published titles, which means there will be ads but not in the traditional sense. Go and visit any of the 220+ wikis they have under the Wiki.gg banner, and you'll see the experience on them is great.

Is Wiki.gg Going to Ruin Everything Again?

There is always a chance once Wiki.gg gets to a critical mass of gaming wikis they start to change their tune and we could see another ad-infestation which means we're going to see another wiki farm exodus. I'm fairly confident in saying that the team at Freedom Games knows what they are doing though and know very well any major changes to that would be short-term gains at best. Hopefully Fandom doesn't make them an offer that would be impossible to refuse.

Fandom can't see even a week into the future because if they knew they'd be losing some of their bigger wikis, they'd potentially have made some smarter choices.

Minecraft Wiki Leaves Fandom

If you're into Minecraft and rely on the Wiki for information, you'll be happy to know Fandom has lost that team as well. They haven't gone over to Wiki.gg and instead gone to the same folks that host the, incredible, Runescape Wikis (Weird Gloop), moving to the domain minecraft.wiki.

Fandom Sucks

That's the heading. I don't see a need to elaborate any further.

How to Stay Away From Fandom

The most important part of this article is how you can do your part in staying away from Fandom. Fandom has incredible SEO (search engine optimization) which is layman's terms means they show up at the top of Google when you type the buttons in the Google box looking for video game content. This is a problem and it isn't easily solved.

There are a couple of different ways you can help solve this!

  • When searching for content, add "site:wiki.gg" to your search query.
    • This will only display content from the Wiki.gg platform in the results.
    • For other wikis, not on Wiki.gg, you can use their domain (site:minecraft.wiki)
  • When searching, you can also use "-fandom" to your query to remove anything mentioning fandom!
    • This can be quicker to add to your searches which makes it a good alternative to the "site" filter, but it could possibly remove other results you might want.
  • When searching, include the phrase "Wiki" in your search results and make sure you only click on Wiki.gg links.
    • If people stop clicking on Fandom links, Wiki.gg can gain valuable places in search listings.
    • Google prefers to show links people are actually clicking.
  • Install a browser addon to redirect Fandom links to Wiki.gg.
    • There is an open source extension called "Redirect to wiki.gg" that is maintained by alex4401.
    • I will always say that you should check the source yourself and compile the extension yourself to make sure you are running code you expect.
    • Do not blindly trust browser addons, no matter what.

Whatever you do, stop visiting Fandom Wikis. They are a blight on the gaming part of the internet and they need to take a loss after inflicting so much harm over the years.