FANDOM Staff Blog

Hello all! We have launched a new experiment for the Mobile Drawer! This time we are testing a new functionality - the mobile drawer will remember if a user expands or collapses for the remainder of the session. Details below! (Not sure what the mobile drawer is? Check out previous experiment blogs here: Experiment Announcement: Mobile Drawer and Experiment Announcement: Mobile Drawer Variations

Experiment Name: Mobile Drawer: Persistent User Setting

Test Launch: Monday, August 5

Test Closes: 1 week

Will Be Tested On: 9% of logged out users (each variant will be shown to 3%)

Hypothesis: We believe that by enhancing the feature, we will see an increase in engagement as users will be able to choose whether the drawer stays expanded or collapsed a…

Hello everyone!

It's been almost two months since the last time I updated all of you about what we're doing this year to improve the experience with Interactive Maps. Today, I'm glad to announce a wide implementation that should make everyone happy! Starting today, the progress tracking feature is now available for all wikis!

This feature has been tested on all our gaming wikis using Interactive Maps for the last 5 months, but after the experimentation period, now we're ready to extend it to the rest of wikis... with extra additions!

This feature was mainly designed to help gamers save and organize their real progress in a video game based on the info and assets they can see on a Fandom wiki map. For instance, for a map on a Fandom wiki displa…

Hey folks - July has been Disability Pride Month (DPM), and I'm coming in for a second DPM blog! If you don't know what Disability Pride is (I didn’t know what it was until last year, so don’t feel ashamed!), it’s all explained in last year's DPM blog. This is about disabled people not letting their disabilities limit what they can accomplish, and for society to recognise the importance of accessibility, dignity, and recognition of the disabled community.

One area that's coming more into the public eye recently is gaming and how it can be made accessible to everyone. Gaming is a huge industry, with many documented benefits to mental health and wellbeing. Did you know there are over 3 billion gamers worldwide, with around 20% of these being disab…

Hello!

We are currently launching an experiment with moving wiki and survey notifications for logged out users on mobile. Details below!

Experiment Name: Notifications Move

Test Launch: Monday, July 29

Test Closes: 1 week

Will Be Tested On: 3% of logged out users

Hypothesis: We believe that unifying notifications in one central location will bring a less disruptive mobile experience.

Other Notes: The experiment is testing the idea of putting all notifications under the bell, rather than separate them out. The screenshots show notifications lit up in the bell, the bell that appears when the bell is clicked on, then the notification that appears on the wiki when it is clicked on in the bell panel.

Designs:

Hey hey, we're halfway through the Summer months already, and the last week of July also brings the second Technical Updates blog of July. With this blog series we aim to inform you about some of the bugs that have been fixed the past 2 weeks, experiments we are running or are about to run, and other general platform changes we may have made. The comment section also gives you another platform to reach out to us with questions or concerns.

• Having tested and retested it, both with and without the help of several helpful communities, the CodeMirror update is being rolled out to all wikis. This extension provides the syntax highlighting in MediaWiki's wikitext editor. Those using the 2010 source editor will notice some changes in the layout as …

Hello everyone!

Fandom’s biggest product commitment this year has been to build a better user experience, and we believe that a better ad experience is central to achieving that. As we talked about with our users throughout Community Connect, we understand that the ad experience for logged-out users has been a sticking point for a number of communities.

We’ve continued to make incremental improvements on the ad experience throughout the year.

• We’ve audited the technical performance of our ads and made performance improvements to improve page loading speeds as well as avoid memory concerns on users’ devices.
• Dramatically lowered situations where an ad loading could unexpectedly shift the position of content on a page.
• We have been strengthening …

Welcome back to our monthly* Community Partnerships blog series! Previously, we shared an introduction to gaming partnerships back in March and followed that up with an introduction to entertainment partnerships in April. *We missed May and June, and we apologize for that, but rest assured our team has been hard at work building relationships with gaming and entertainment partners.

Today, we’re excited to delve into another area of partnerships: how the Community Partnerships team builds collaborations between advertising partners and wiki communities to highlight upcoming releases, obtain cool perks for wiki editors, and more.

• 1 Bringing Advertising Value Directly to Communities
• 2 Assassin’s Creed: Shadows Activation
• 3 Building Stronger Connectio…

Are ya ready kids?

I’ve covered two fandoms in blogs so far - one about space wizards, and another about emotions fighting each other. In the year that is 2024, it makes sense to cover a certain fandom that’s behind my very creative username.

There’s one number that’s funnier than 24… SpongeBob SquarePants is 25 years old today! This is the first day Season 1 premiered on Nickelodeon back in 1999 (yes, that long ago). Now, before you ask, the show did technically premiere on May 1 at the 1999 Kids' Choice Awards (I’m writing this blog before the results come out, but congrats to SpongeBob winning the KCAs again in 2024). Nonetheless, it’s fitting to celebrate the show today as it’s summer and everyone’s happy, and the fandom has been having a…

Hello all!

Last month, we launched a Mobile Drawer experiment for logged out users. (Read more about it here!) Based on data and feedback, we're ready to test new variations on how the Drawer appears.

Experiment Name: Mobile Drawer: Variants

Test Launch: Thursday, July 18

Test Closes: 1 week

Will Be Tested On: 12% of logged out users (each variant will be shown to 3%)

Hypothesis: We believe the Mobile Drawer provides a convenient way for users to engage with Fandom's offerings. By testing variants, we aim to find the most impactful and engaging version.

Variants: We will be running four variants of the Mobile Drawer:

V1: Compact on page load, slides open on scroll.

V2: Compact on page load, remains compact.

V3: Default on page load, compacts on scro…

Eyo, my lovely people. Time keeps flying by. Feels like yesterday that I posted the last tech blog for June, and now we're already 2 weeks further, so I'm here with the first tech blog of July! As you know, we use these technical update posts to keep you all in the loop of what's happening on the platform by providing you with insights on some of the bugs that got fixed, changes we rolled out, and experiments we're running. If there's anything not clear or you have something to report, don't hesitate to reach out in the comments!

• 1 Notable Changes
• 2 Recent Fixes
• 3 Development Updates
  • 3.1 Engagement
  • 3.2 News & Ratings (N&R) team
  • 3.3 User-Generated Content (UGC) team

• Announced in May already but in effect since this week, non-emailconfirmed accounts are n…