Darkorbit Wiki

[Kum Dana]

Todaywe have a big announcement. After nearly two years of working together to bring Fandom and Gamepedia wikis onto one platform, we will be starting to migrate all Gamepedia wikis to a Fandom.com domain in early 2021. There are a number of reasons for this, but one of the primary ones is to ensure that Gamepedia wikis and the hard work editors put into them continue to rank well in search results.

Part of the reason why Fandom does better with SEO than Gamepedia is the difference in size and the breadth of the platform and brand, AKA brand strength. Fandom encompasses the universe of fan interests, including but not just limited to video games. Even though gaming is nearly half of our traffic, association with non-gaming content of interest to fans is huge for surfacing gaming wikis in search results. Even prior to Fandom and Curse merging, Curse was beginning to explore the possibility of expanding beyond just Gamepedia for wikis, recognizing the potential of a broader approach (think Animepedia or Moviepedia). Additionally, the average fan is 2.5 times more likely to know what Fandom is, compared to Gamepedia, based on market research of comparative brand awareness we performed this spring with surveys to Fandom and Gamepedia readers and editors. We are also working on ways to better recommend wikis based on interests, as announced last year.

For these reasons, we made the decision to move Gamepedia wikis to Fandom URLs. The process will begin with a test batch of wikis migrating later this month, a monitoring period to confirm the SEO impact, as well as improvements to our migration process and then the remainder of the wikis migrating in early 2021. No editor or admin preparation is required for these changes. It is entirely our responsibility.

Looking forward, Gamepedia wikis will be the first to get new designs as part of what you know as UCP Phase 2. A refresh of mobile experiences, designed to be more user-friendly and performant, will arrive as an opt-in test in the next few months before going wide to all users. Mobile changes are coming first because mobile users make up the majority of readers, but a lower percentage of editors. That being the first refresh makes the most sense for both our readers and our editors. I cannot wait to show you what the team has been working on. Prior to the opt-in release, we will be showcasing design mocks that will be open for community feedback so we can hear your good ideas and hear what you think. As promised with the Unified Community Platform project, the unified design work will leverage the best features from both platforms.

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