User:Angel Emfrbl/Wikia Vs Fansite

Okay the OPE gets a lot of stick from others outside its wiki communitity, so lets take a general look at various comparisons shall we?

Translations
Wikia and Fansites have one thing in common; their both subject to being victims of bad translations. Okay, if the person knows Japanese then they can get it mostly right but for those with limited or no Japanese language or very little we're stuck relying on the translations of others. And when they get it wrong, so do we. On the one hand, things tend to be updated quicker on wikia since with more editors theres bound to be one who is on the site that corrects the translation on the day.

Why did we have "Oz" on the wikia? Because the translators gave us nothing else but Oz and Odz mostly and we had to select something! Why did we have Satchi instead of "Thatch"? Because thats why the translators gave us. You get the idea, in our case its the Japanese language we're dealing with and thats where things get confusing. That said, as soon as the correct translation came out we altered it everywhere we could find it. Websites, its down to the owners 1) be bothered to change it, 2)Abilitity to track down every incident it occurs to change it (we can do a word search and page link some sites can't and others can but not so well).

Scope of the Fandom
A fansite tends to fall prey to sticking with its own communitity or a select amount of forums. Take in mind that the owners will be a staff of one or two updaters only, whereas with a wikia, there can be dozens. That means theres bound to be many going to various communities the fansites owners may only go to a few, so a wikia has various editors with all sort of communitity interaction going on that few can understand. They may have a facebook, deviantart gallery, twitter account, etc. Thus, within any given wikia communitity, you'll have editors with communications across the net, something very few fan run websites can achieve and still have time to update.

That said, it works also against the wikia. If one of the editors is a pain, the wrong crowd comes to edit the wikia as an act of revenge/vandalism. And you get a lot of idiots... 13 year old brats and younger who edit because THEY CAN. Wikias get a fair amount of eager young editors whereas the majority of site owners will be 16-18 and above, so the communities around them tend to be the older crowd. Although in MOST wikias, the top editors are intend that age mature elder crowd that is shared with the fansites.

Skills
With website owners, they either know how to do it or they don't. If they don't then their site is limited to just their abilities. Wikias are editing by a lot of people, some veterans, some new, some with limited editing skills, some with wiki mastery. Even if there is no one, given time a editor will usually come along with the right skills to do the task at hand. Not only that, but editors can discuss and improve others work. Thus once the editor arrives with those skills, a wikia can suddenly leap forward quickly as the other editors copy and learn how they did it also.

However, if the editor with the skills never comes by, a wikia may never get past the basic set up. A wikia is only as good as its communitity has to offer and if they have nothing. Well a website IS the same, however the average fan site owner will have more coding skills then the average editor of wiki coding, for all they need at the bare rate is knowledge on how to click "Edit" and type on a keyboard.

The other things is, html is set up as the owners want it, wikia coding is standard stuff.

Its the same on wikia as it is on wikipedia almost.

Coding
A website owner has to deal with HTML coding, test things work and this takes time. Already if he or she has the time or has done this before, but sometimes it gets complicate, although some wiki codes are complex, tables especially. Thats not to say the admin of the wikia itself hasn't got html to deal with or the site itself has no html at all, in fact much html will work on a wikia page if you've got the right codes. BUT, nce a wikia is set up your editing the page and not interferring with the pages coding. This can make life simple, however it also makes life limiting.

Can we change the whole wikia layout?

Not like a fansite can!

Reliance
We all know the routine... "Don't trust Wikias as anyone can edit and write what they like". True, but wikias offer at least the bare basics of what your after. They should always be taken as a starting point for further research. Thats why you need to Source Information, adding references everywhere, so readers can check up. Few fansites bother with this, the owners can write what they like and no one can check up on it. Yet fansites are often regarded as more reliable then wikias. And on top of that, we're updated every week; fansites are updated when the owners get the time.

So while, yes, sometimes things get missed and stay on the page when they shouldn't, we're not completely as unreliable as some believe. In fact this seems to be a mentality a lot of people have, who don't even edit wikias. How do they know its unreliable? It was when they read the page! And did they edit to correct it or point it out to the editors who do? We're as reliable as we make ourselves to be but we're dependant on others' and ourselves spotting mistakes, some are so quick to point out the problem and not give offer the solution its almost sickening.

Rules
We all know forums have rules... And so does any good wikia. Actaully the OPE's pretty good as we've covered pretty much a scope of issues from Vandalism to Image Uploading (which most wikias don't bother with). And if someone points out we've stepped over the copyright rules, we can get it resolved within a day. What about fansites? I remember the days of MSN websites when I was editing for that Beyblade website. Those MSN sites just took whatever they want from every other website out there. Towards the end of the Beyblade era, typing in "Beyblade Webites" left the top twenty links, or most of them, linking you to MSN sites. Which brings us to the biggest problem with fansites; they don't draw the lines sometimes. Unless they've gathered the info themselves, they'll copy anyone around and often claim it as their own.

Thats not to say there aren't good honest sites out there. In fact theres plenty. And unfortantely the wikia here gets uploaded stolen content from other sites. While we resolve this problem when we find it, it requires the editors knowing where the content comes from. And while that previously mentioned coummunitity influence and coverage can come in handy fighting it, it can backfire if just one editor knows the URL of a site no one else knows and steals the stuff without anyone knowing.

And lets not forget the most important thing about rules; who and how often they are inforced. And a baised admin on any fansite, forum or wikia is a problem undoubtly. But you must remember; we're all human so its bound to happen even if only a minor scale.

Rules standardize the wikias and give it quality margains and help weigh things up. But it varies across all wikias. Wikipedia fr example is just a bastardization of rules enforcing, half the editors don't understand the rules of wikipedia and the other half haven't even a clue on the subject their editing. So they make strong judgements on something they have no clue on; even if the page ends up being below quality standards. But this is an issue for another time, wikipedia in itself is one of the biggest wiki pains on the net.

And the Outsiders
The people who don't have anything to do with the running of the site. These are the enemies of wiki-editing, the people who will sit there and make a fuss of wiki editing and do nothing to improve things. Fansites, you e-mail them, they get updated when they get updated and 9 times out of ten, no one bothers. And for some reason, this is considered better then wikia editing overall just because that "reliance" issue. Well whatever the case maybe, outsiders who have nothing to do with the fansites and those who have nothing to do with wikia editing seem to fall under two different views. Whereas even the BAD fansites can get a certain amount of love, wikias get none, just because of their nature. On top of this, most of the time the wikia haters are just those not prepared to actaully come here and SEE what wikia editing is like.

Theres a difference in opinions both good and bad on wiki editing from a veteran editor with several wiki editing years behind them and someone who has never touched the system. No veteran goes on a wiki site without doubting that an idiots been on it at some point in the last 24 hours and done dumb edits. Yet this same thing which those vets put up with and the 'not editors' acknowledge end up coming out a different shade of light. Whereas one says "Oh great I've got to undo that edit" the other goes "Look another example of how wikis are bad!".

Conclusion
Take 'em as they are, wikias are in the long run no better then fansites overall, both have their ups and downs, disadvantages and advantages. Though is amazing that the first ones to criticise are the last ones willing to do anything to about things.

Of course...