Given how infamously hostile Fandom wikis are to users, most people who have visited any Fandom hosted wiki in the past will understand this. The top position, which I do want to point out does change, doesn’t always mean people will immediately click on it. This automatic behavior of indiscriminately clicking the top result is being disrupted in part due to how many ads google is stuffing on the top now that look like real results, compounded with the fact of how truly awful google search has become. People are beginning to be much more choosy with what site they click through to.
The thing that bothers me is how much weight you are ascribing to organic search given each of the communities’ niche. Being in “the know” here usually comes with the knowledge of where to find the wiki and other resources. If they have to stumble around to find it the first time, maybe they see the old (or replacement) Fandom site and instantly realize what a horrible mistake they made by clicking thru to the trash heap it is.
> People are beginning to be much more choosy with what site they click through to.
I would love to believe you (especially as someone who exclusively uses Kagi now); but do you have statistical data on this, as it pertains to the median usage of Google results?
Nope that remains unstudied. Trust me, I’ve looked. A lot of my assertions are based on how I’ve seen other people behave - which I fully acknowledge is subject to stuff like confirmation bias.
For context, I volunteer at a community center and library helping people use computers (usually focused on kids going into stem field, but the general public uses it too). It’s not a diverse sample as this serves only a only a specific middle and working class neighborhood, and I have not been rigorous in data collection (or have literally any strategy to do so).
The Path of Exile wiki moved off fandom to https://www.poewiki.net and has been very successful. If I google "path of exile wiki" it's the top result for me (in an anonymous window). The creators of PoE even agreed to host the new wiki. The move to the new wiki was heavily supported by the subreddit for PoE, often pointing people that posted links to the fandom version to the new version. I remember there being guides to on how to block fandom with ublock, how to add the new wiki as a search provider in Firefox, etc.
Yugioh wiki also moved to Yugipedia a long time ago. It was a contentious decision at the time but absolutely the right one in hindsight. The obnoxious autoplay videos ads, horrible mobile layout, forced adoption of styles and features all contributed to the decision.
Yume 2kki, [doom wiki] and zelda wiki are all at 2nd in the google results. Strangely they don't seem to mention them moving on the front page. I think I heard fandom tries to stop people from moving and takes down messages like that, so that might be why they're still on top.
While you have a point, this move is still in the right direction. This move gives people to power to choose. At least I don't have to use BreezeWiki for minecraft again.
I use adblock rules and the site looks perfectly fine. Every few months I have to add something new, but all in all, I don't have a problem with viewing wikis hosted by Fandom.
OTOH, I refuse to edit wikis in Fandom, because it feels like I'm not doing it for the community but for the Fandom company, which I don't care for.
Adblock is and always has been a band-aid, and pulling a “see no evil” doesn’t mean the ads no longer exist, as such it is reasonable to expect that any random user will be subjected to it unless otherwise stated.
My problem with the ad soup that is Fandom is that the community that is providing the content and inhabiting the space is not the one benefiting from the placement of the ads. This creates a perverse incentive for Fandom to maximize ad revenue at all costs. A publisher who is also the steward of the community will typically be more selective with what ads and where to put them.
I find it tragic that after the heyday of self hosted software like forums, we entered what I fully believe will become a dark age for the internet where content is walled away by the larger providers who have every incentive to extract value from users and hoard their data, both given and created, to maximize their own interests.
This is part of the problem. The community "moves" but the old wiki isn't down, and it picks up contributors from sheer SEO rank.
UESP predates Fandom and was extremely fleshed out, and is frankly superior to the Fandom version at every point in history. But even with the "head start," UESP has really suffered due to the existence of Fandom, for no reason other than artificial SEO dominance.
It's kind of like forking a software project, just the wiki contributions are distributed more broadly compared to software where one or two people do most of the work.
The people contributing matter, but it doesn't matter how many people use the other wiki.
In my experience the Fandom wiki will stay always above the new wiki in google, making this move pointless.