RayWiki plagiarism

[Steo]

Hmm ok that's surprising to see, I would have thought that with all the DMCA stuff in the past that they would have moved on from stealing content from RayWiki.

I can fully understand not wanting to support them, when time and time again, their users have just taken content directly from RayWiki and pasted it there, but to go as far as even taking the logo is pushing it to the extreme...

[Flat Earth Society]

Anyone with limited technical knowledge can set up a Wikia effortlessly is the issue, and the admins or users can then steal content from other Wikis. This kind of behaviour doesn't even seem to be monitored by the platform itself, and I'm almost sure the RayWiki isn't the only victim of this content theft issue too.

I hope Humch can issue a DMCA soon for this bad copy of the RayWiki to be taken down.

[Steo]

They're also filled with advertisements, so as far as I'm aware, they even make some money from the stolen content...

I hope that this can be resolved also, it's not fair to all the people who worked hard on RayWiki to just have their work stolen and posted elsewhere.

[Hunchman801]

This should be fixed now; Wikia/Fandom are rather diligent when it comes to removing stolen content, but they do absolutely nothing to prevent such situations from happening in the first place.

[Elite Piranha]

Good to see that the problem was solved, thanks to Hunch for taking care of it.

[#Rubber mark#]

There is another wiki on Fandom that appears to be almost exclusively comprised of content stolen from RayWiki.

Can something be done about this? There are even people (like this Baffou guy here) who congratulate themselves on creating a "nice" wiki.

[Hunchman801]

Thanks Rubber! The wiki has been closed by Fandom.

[Greengoop]

Not sure if this is the best way to notify everyone, but it appears another rayman wiki called the “official rayman wiki” has been put on fandom, using word-for-word copies of RayWiki pages.

https://officialrayman.fandom.com/wiki/ ... ayman_Wiki

[EdgyRabbid]

Wouldnt this go in the main wiki fourm section?

Though thats still... yikes.

[Greengoop]

Whoops, forgot about subforums

[The Jonster]

I have merged this topic with Greengoop’s and modified the initial post in this one to reflect the new purpose.

……

This should be fixed now; Wikia/Fandom are rather diligent when it comes to removing stolen content, but they do absolutely nothing to prevent such situations from happening in the first place.

Does this diligence come after they get a complaint from someone or do they actually check these articles? This is like the third case of plagiarism, although there’s probably more instances of this than I’ve seen.

Anyone with limited technical knowledge can set up a Wikia effortlessly is the issue, and the admins or users can then steal content from other Wikis. This kind of behaviour doesn't even seem to be monitored by the platform itself, and I'm almost sure the RayWiki isn't the only victim of this content theft issue too.

It is rather unfortunate, that anyone can just set up a wikia and then be too lazy to put in actual effort for info gathering to make it more legit. I do think it’s nice to have more info sources, but not when one of these sources is practically stealing content without giving any credit towards the initial source.

[Master]

I'd say it's particularly heinous in this instance since this Wiki claims it's "Official," so not only is it using our work and plagiarising, it's also misleading and implies itself to be more authoritative. Though truth be told I'd still be miffed if even an actually honest-to-god official Wiki started plagiarising RayWiki.

[Steo]

The neck of them to even use "official" in their name in the first place, let alone steal all the content from RayWiki in the same breath. One of the worst I've seen yet.

EDIT: Who the crap is TailsGaming556 and what do they think they're playing at?

[Hunchman801]

Thanks for the report, we'll take it to Fandom... again.

Does this diligence come after they get a complaint from someone or do they actually check these articles? This is like the third case of plagiarism, although there’s probably more instances of this than I’ve seen.

They take no preemptive measures whatsoever to detect such plagiarism and always wait until someone reports it to delete it. And in the meantime, they financially benefit from the many, many ads they show next to this illegally copied content.

Just to give you an idea, over the years we've reported... 2518 cases of copyright infringement to them! Yes, that's thousands of copied articles and images across dozens and dozens of various wikis. You can imagine how much time has been spent compiling and reporting all those cases...

[The Jonster]

Ok….wow. I knew there were more cases; I was not expecting it to be that high though.

[EdgyRabbid]

I have some exprience with the fandom wiki and... its actually such a shitty site.

Not only with plagiarism, but the site is plauged with Ads and ADs. I would reccomend using an ad blocker when on the site.

I know some wikis that are hosted on Fandom, that are legit and orignal but they are vandalized a lot. Fandom doesnt seem to care if someone vandlize a wiki (i mean why would they)

And one last thing: Most of the Wikis are just teens making a wiki for fanon. Ive come across several where its just crossovers with other properties.

But yeah this is terrible. the site is gen ass just for the amount of ads alone.

[Greengoop]

Fandom is utter arse, but unfortunately it’s one of the only options for people will no experience of coding to document what they’re passionate about. Very sad it’s so easy to take advantage of.

Speaking of vandalism, I still remember the mass vandalism epidemic after the Minecraft wiki moved from fandom to mediawiki in 2023

[Master]

Tbf, other Wiki's can provide the same editor, the extension is called VisualEditor, and I believe it's usable on Wikipedia as well. I believe there's issues with tidiness of code and editability that I think means many wikis prefer not to use it, but it's definitely not something that's exclusive to Fandom.

I think the main benefit of Fandom, is the fact that it provides the ability to host wikis and deals with back-end stuff, but I know more friendlier and agreeable Wiki farm services have started to pop-up as folks are getting more and more annoyed with Fandom. Examples such as ShoutWiki come to mind.

And funny you should bring up the Minecraft Wiki, they ended up partnering with the folks who manage and host the RuneScape Wikis after they jumped ship from Fandom back in 2018.

EDIT: So I decided to look at how things have gone since Minecraft Wiki migrated. It sounds like things are going pretty well for them, Fandom on the other hand lost the League of Legends and Warframe Wikis...who also went to the RuneScape Wiki people. What a funny turn of events that turned out to be. Also interesting is that the Undertale and Deltarune Wikis have also migrated away (not to the same folks, but still, another big notable fandom ditching FANDOM )

[Hunchman801]

I think the fact that Fandom allows people with no technical skills to host a wiki is what Goop was referring to, but like you pointed out, there are much better alternatives to it that are not rendered unusable with an insane amount of ads and other irrelevant, extraneous content, and that also allow wikis to move elsewhere should be become unsatisfied with the service they provide.

[The Jonster]

I have some exprience with the fandom wiki and... its actually such a shitty site.

Not only with plagiarism, but the site is plauged with Ads and ADs. I would reccomend using an ad blocker when on the site.

I know some wikis that are hosted on Fandom, that are legit and orignal but they are vandalized a lot. Fandom doesnt seem to care if someone vandlize a wiki (i mean why would they)

And one last thing: Most of the Wikis are just teens making a wiki for fanon. Ive come across several where its just crossovers with other properties.

But yeah this is terrible. the site is gen ass just for the amount of ads alone.

Oh yeah, I've had multiple experiences with this. Some topics sadly only have a fandom wiki so I have to use them at times but if there's an alternative you can be sure i'll use that alt.