GTA Wiki goes indie as it slams 'terrible' Fandom ad plague: 'Intrusive, unavoidable for most viewers, and huge'

The GTA Wiki—a spot you've almost certainly ended up at if you've ever Googled anything Grand Theft Auto—has moved homes. It's no longer one of the Fandom cabal of wikis. It's now independent and has, as it boasts on its new homepage, "officially migrated from Fandom. Freedom!"

Why? Per an exhaustive discussion on the GTA Wiki itself, editors write that "It is no secret that Fandom is generally disliked by readers and editors alike." The appointment of a "reportedly pro-AI CEO" last month stuck in their craw, sure, but the big, longstanding issue users and editors have with Fandom is "its increasingly aggressive use of ads.

"Given that 60%+ of our viewers (and a similar stat on many other Fandom wikis) are logged-out mobile visitors, the concern for advertising being aggressive and intrusive is not one we should take with a grain of salt," say GTA Wiki's editors. "It is terrible. Just open the Fandom wiki's home page in an incognito tab and without adblock on, and you'll see just how bad it is."

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On Fandom's long ledger of sins are: ads above the main page header, pop-ups, and humungous videos: "When they are relevant, they are misleading, misguided or just plain wrong, and certainly not representative of the content on the page. They are intrusive, unavoidable for most viewers, and huge. Seriously, they take up like, half of the display on both desktop and mobile devices."

There are issues surrounding content, too. The GTA Wiki eds say that Fandom's policies have "become increasingly tightened, particularly regarding offensive language and graphic media, with enforcement often so overzealous that it even affects images of in-game adverts and audio clips of character quotes." Which, yeah, I could understand how that would be an issue for a Grand Theft Auto wiki.

So off GTA Wiki goes to Weird Gloop, a network of community-driven wikis that also hosts the Minecraft Wiki, myriad RuneScape wikis, the League of Legends Wiki, and others. I gotta say: a cursory glance suggests all these wikis are quite a bit nicer than your average Fandom experience.

It's a positive change and, hopefully, a broader one. You ask me, non-Fandom wikis almost always seem to be better-maintained and nicer to browse than their Fandom counterparts. Resources like the UESP, Indie Fallout Wiki, or Tolkien Gateway are all lovely experiences driven by passionate fans. Hell, I've even installed a browser extension to direct me to indie alternatives whenever I land on a Fandom site. It really is just better 99% of the time.