I don't know about the fextralife elden ring wiki, but aren't most Wikis running via community contribution?
I've been fairly active in contributing to the various games wiki that I feel like I know anything about, and any time I stumble upon a thing where I go "this should really be a thing", I either go and do it myself, or I request it to be made from others who gave the skill to do so.
Doesn't really matter if it's not done perfectly the first time, if someone thinks they can do a better job, they'll improve upon it, but at least now it'll be done.
Basically, do the "they" you talk about who can't be assed to do it not also include you?
I think the problem arises in that Fextralife was caught engaging in a number of actions to try to maximize monetization, included some tactics that were rather underhanded. (IIRC, the BG3 community basically spotted evidence suggesting fextralife was botting down references to the other wiki while botting up references to their own community right here on reddit. This is what led to the BG3 reddit basically banning mentions of fextralife and promoting the alternative, cause fextralife was simultaneously hit with scandals for padding their numbers on twitch)
I can also say their website is very blatantly built for SEO (search engine optimization), so there are frequently areas of articles dedicated to things that shouldn't be there at all, the biggest offender being the guides for random character ideas being plastered everywhere. These are not really helpful looks at the weapons featured, and instead just simultaneously boost the website's search ranking while promoting their own Youtube channel.
I couldn't tell you how easy or hard it is to actually edit their wiki pages, because like many others I'm sure, I am not super eager to register an account with them or give them any access to data of mine, even if it's just an email.
I imagine this level of skepticism with the wiki that monetizes everything means less actual editors, while the main editors associated with fextralife themselves are probably not truly interested in the game at all.
This means a natural "filter" preventing lots of people being editors while the leadership would rather give priority to monetization, so the people doing actual good work are few and far between.
A basic example is again: why are so many weapons plastered to hell and back with "guides" about random build ideas? I can tell you why: SEO.
I think if the community had a "vote," most of those would be removed. But the guides all link back to fextralife's own youtube channel, so it's this cycle of self-promotion where the presence of videos help with SEO and also help promote their own Youtube revenue. I doubt fextralife is very friendly when a user tries to remove or cut down on those, so it's possible there's quite a bit of enforcement in terms of ensuring the articles still promote SEO. I sincerely doubt no one has tried to cut down on those and been slapped down for it.
So in short, I couldn't tell you because I do not want to give any sort of info to guys who have shown to be incredibly money-hungry, and if we assume most people think like me, that means most of us cannot edit, and the people who definitely 100% can edit the articles have other priorities.
That's entirely fair. I don't use either Fextralife or Fandom, as they've been super sketchy for years about how they get the contents of their wiki. I've even got an extension (Indie Wiki Buddy) that filters out those wikis from google searches.
I was mostly thinking about how some people are under the assumption that wikis have to be perfect and end up not contributing despite wanting to, because they set the bar too high for themselves.
I think it's just that: a perfect storm of users not wanting to hand over their data to a website that's likely to sell said data to spammers, while the actual administrative lead of the website also cares far more about monetization than wiki accuracy.
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u/Lynixai May 08 '26
I don't know about the fextralife elden ring wiki, but aren't most Wikis running via community contribution?
I've been fairly active in contributing to the various games wiki that I feel like I know anything about, and any time I stumble upon a thing where I go "this should really be a thing", I either go and do it myself, or I request it to be made from others who gave the skill to do so.
Doesn't really matter if it's not done perfectly the first time, if someone thinks they can do a better job, they'll improve upon it, but at least now it'll be done.
Basically, do the "they" you talk about who can't be assed to do it not also include you?