Moving from FANDOM

Why leave FANDOM?

The Pizza Tower Wiki was created in 2018 on the FANDOM wiki hosting (formerly known as Wikia). As the game finally came out in 2023 and unexpectedly entered the mainstream, the wiki has received an increased influx of visitors. But it also resulted in unprecedented amount of vandalism – intentionally malicious editing of wiki such as blanking of pages, replacement of text and files with nonsense, spam or obscene content, misinformation, etc. A notorious example and the prime vandalism target is Pizzahead article: you can see that in its page history, or you can check this video, created by JustDenys1, one of wiki's prominent admins, not long before migration.

FANDOM's means of preventing vandalism turned out to be too limited, and essentially useless.

• Admins can only disallow anonymous (non-registered) users to edit the wiki. However, this doesn't stop vandals from creating accounts, and in case of especially stubborn individuals creating several accounts or even using VPN/proxy to bypass IP bans.
• Pages which get vandalized constantly can be protected, but FANDOM staff members tend to come and remove protections later, thus making it only a temporary measure.
• All the admins are left to do is endlessly undoing edits after the damage is already done, and ban the vandals. Reaching out to FANDOM staff doesn't bring a real change either, as they will perform the same rollback/ban routine, without preventing vandalism in the first place.

According to hosting's rationale, measures which should help project's quality and protect it from vandalism, will damage platform's openness and ranking in search engines.

Other issues with this hosting include already infamous infestation of pages by ads, irrelevant videos and promotion of different, unrelated wikis and unnecessary or doubtful features such as quizzes and AI generated quick answers. While an ad block browser add-on or FANDOM account will spare you from the first thing, the rest can't be avoided. All this affects wiki's performance and impression.

Another concerning thing is the fact that the FANDOM wiki is more actively used as a public chat venue. This platform's popularity and direction (and branding of the word "fandom", of all things) made some people think that wikis are casual fan sites with social media features, rather than projects run to provide accurate information.

And last but not least: FANDOM as a corporation profits off fans' unconditional work and interest, done for free for other fans, while putting them into this hostile environment.

What is Miraheze?

Miraheze is another free MediaWiki hosting platform which was founded in 2015. As for 2023, it's the biggest and oldest, still running free alternative to FANDOM, which also manages to work under completely different conditions and rationales – it's a non-commercial project run by a team of volunteers and donations.

What advantages Miraheze has offered to Pizza Tower Wiki?

• Better tools to prevent and fight vandalism – not only we aren't restricted in page protection, we also have an automated abuse filter. And following Wikipedia's example, Miraheze prohibits account registration from VPN/proxy IP's.*
• No ads! At all, and never will be! Miraheze is notoriously devoted to non-commercial, community centered and autonomous approach in hosting their wikis.
• No unnecessary marketing driven bloatware – the wiki uses only features it really needs.
• And at the same time – more actually helpful features and tools to improve wiki's quality, and more control for admins over wiki's technical aspects.
• Skins – no more ugly FANDOM design with annoying colors. Plus we aren't restricted in customization, so we managed to make this place to feel as fun as the game itself! Here we offer 3 variants, which ensure that no space is wasted on your screen to use. They can be set in your user preferences:*
  • Vector, a skin with traditional wiki layout and Pizza Tower Wiki's default skin
  • Cosmos, which is reminiscent of how Wikia/FANDOM looked like between 2010 and 2021, but better
  • Modern, a "clean" option, which is closer to Vector and lacks most of customization

The wiki needs your help!

Any move comes with challenges, but for former FANDOM wikis, the biggest challenge is to be seen. This company is notorious for keeping first places in Google's and other search engines' results with iron claws, thanks to ads, private data tracking and changes to wiki environment in favor of indexing algorithms. Another thing is that new wiki cannot be promoted on old one per FANDOM's "forking policy". For a short time there were announcement on main page and site wide notice, but eventually they were taken down by FANDOM staff, and active admins, who initiated migration, were demoted and thus don't control it anymore. MaxiBash, another main Pizza Tower Wiki admin, had provided this video.

It is possible to win this game, but we need help from you, dear fans, visitors and editors.

• Just use this wiki, yup, https://pizzatower.miraheze.org/
• Ignore the old wiki. Don't visit it, don't edit it, don't vandalize it, don't post in comments or discussions – don't contribute to its activity in any way.
• Use special browser add-ons:
  • Indie Wiki Buddy helps users of independent and Miraheze hosted wikis to avoid FANDOM – on one hand it filters search engines' results, and on other it redirects any FANDOM link to corresponding page on proper wiki. Available for Chrome, Firefox and Firefox on Android.
  • Redirector is a simpler extension which requires manually set script, and link redirect is its only function. Install it on Chrome or Firefox, along with ready to use Pizza Tower Wiki script.
• With or without the aid of Indie Wiki Buddy, click on Miraheze wiki links instead of FANDOM in Google and other search engines. As we still build up SEO (search engine optimization), some articles might take several pages of results to be found, but every click is helpful.
• Spread the word and post links to the new wiki around, be it social media, Steam, YouTube comments, etc. Any publicly posted link boosts our visibility, even more than search results clicks.
• And last but not least – join us and help the wiki to grow with your contributions!

What about discussions?

Discussions and comments features are intentionally not recreated on this wiki. The main reason is that they very often tend to be off-topic and don't help the wiki itself. Instead we ask you to join our Discord server, an actual social venue where you can talk about our beloved game, share your creations or data mining finds, and just go off-topic as well.

You might also notice "Discussion" tabs on pages – those are talk pages, default MediaWiki feature. They must be used for discussions about corresponding pages, for example if you want to specify something or discuss a possible error in some article with other editors. User pages have them too, and thus they can be used as message walls.

Notes

• In case if VPN, proxy or Tor are necessary for you, you can contact Miraheze volunteers in respective Discord server or via email (stewards@miraheze.org) for account creation. Restriction is applied only on registration; when you have an account you can use these services while editing wiki without restrictions.
• To change preferred skin, go to user Preferences, then Appearance tab. Right in the beginning there's Skins section, which also lets you preview them. Make sure to save changes.