Forum:Formal request to disable Featured Videos on TSW

I'll try to be as brief as possible, since K6ka has already written an excellent blog about the topic of featured videos on The Sims Wiki. For the sake of clarity, I'll quote bits of his blog to explain what has happened, what I'm proposing, and why.

First off, a description of what "Featured Videos" are: "FANDOM, also known as Wikia, have begun pushing out Featured Videos to numerous wikis around the network, including The Sims Wiki. These are videos created by the company's 'Featured Video' team... These videos will play automatically, follow the user when they scroll, and will appear at the top of the page, being the first thing readers see."

You can see these videos in action on a few of our articles already, such as our article on The Sims 4: Get Famous expansion pack.

As K6ka says in his blog, FANDOM have taken it upon themselves to produce videos and forcibly embed them to the top of multiple articles on The Sims Wiki, without the consent, input, or even the advanced knowledge of any of the editors or administrators on The Sims Wiki. The local community has absolutely zero oversight over these videos; we cannot produce them, alter them in any way, or stop them from displaying.

As K6ka so succinctly said:

"The Sims Wiki has always operated on the principles that 1) anyone can edit; and 2) things are decided by community consensus and not by the whim of one person or a group of people isolated from the community. With these changes, FANDOM Staff have essentially interfered with our community processes by promoting content that they themselves have created and forcing it to appear before our content. This is unacceptable and a complete violation of the principles our wiki operates on."

Judging by the comments on K6ka's blog post, it appears as though many in the The Sims Wiki community share our sentiments regarding this violation. However, comments on a user blog don't necessarily accurately reflect the views of the entire community, and user blog comments don't represent a clear, formal position for or against a given position; that's what this forum thread seeks to do.

I propose the following resolutions:


 * 1. We, as The Sims Wiki community, strongly oppose the forced implementation of Featured Videos on The Sims Wiki;
 * 2. We formally request that the feature be disabled by FANDOM Staff at once;
 * 3. We empower the administrators of The Sims Wiki to act on behalf of the community, to communicate and negotiate with FANDOM Staff in pursuit of points 1 and 2.

Please weigh in down below with your thoughts as to the wording and content of this resolution, and whether you support or oppose said resolution. --  LostInRiverview talk · blog  ·  contribs 02:12, October 26, 2018 (UTC)

Discussion
Strong support I shall save my breath, as I've already explained a lot in my blog post, but I am very strongly opposed to the notion of FANDOM Staff having editorial control over our content and our articles. They are more than welcome to be volunteer contributors like all of us here have been for years. I'm happy to hear a response from Staff that isn't a cookie-cutter argument that serves only as a complete non-answer to our concerns. — k6ka  🍁 ( Talk ·  Contributions ) 02:31, October 26, 2018 (UTC)

Strong support: As I noted in the comments to K6ka's blog post, the playlisting "feature" means that, in effect, they forcibly embed videos into an article that are not only irrelevant to the article, but to the wiki as a whole. Dharden (talk) 03:47, October 26, 2018 (UTC)

Strong support I very much agree with everything said so far. That we don't have any control over the contents of such a video and can't even remove it from a page is unacceptable. - KailynnKat  (talk  /fanon)  09:37, October 26, 2018 (UTC)

Strong support They're highly unnecessary since the trailers are already featured in the articles. Ѧüя◎ґ (talk) 09:57, October 26, 2018 (UTC)

Strong support for the all the reasons above. - SimDestroyer (talk) 13:17, October 26, 2018 (UTC)

Strong support for the reasons above, too. There isn't much I can add other than my support. - ✨AireDaleDogz✨  ( talk ) 19:56, October 26, 2018 (UTC)

Strong supportfor all the reasons above. —  THE TIM TAM  IS MY   SPIRIT ANIMAL  (TSW • AH • MGW • Contribs ) 14:27, November 4, 2018 (UTC)

Strong support - Although I do have my doubts about Staff taking our wishes about this into account, I strongly support this request for the reasons stated above. ― C.Syde  ( talk  |  contribs ) 02:21, November 6, 2018 (UTC)

Strong support If not for disabling, give customizations to the community's staff of the wiki. To their liking; like maybe picking a video. Somewhere I gave my opinion on how the feature could be improved without being intrusive If not removed. If anyone could find my rant, post a link and I'll post my message here of how I thought it could be ''improved. ''DrakonoSkerdikas (talk) 18:04, December 6, 2018 (UTC)

Opinion It won't matter how much support this gets, staff won't remove their money-making videos because you have nothing formidable to convince them otherwise. They'll keep the videos, and you can complain, but they know you'll inevitably (albeit reluctantly) accept it just like their other implementations in the past. Staff knows that "fandom" communities in general are too timid to actually quit editing a wiki, or fork, over their changes. At best, they'll let you help "guide" the videos, but good luck trying to frequently update those videos to make sure they stay up-to-date. --UltimateKuriboh (talk • contribs) 20:00, December 12, 2018 (UTC)

Strong Support The featured videos have got to go. They are very annoying and there is no puropse to them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by The Genegolst (talk • contribs) 14:01, February 20, 2019‎ (UTC) - Please sign your comments with ~

Template solution
While I doubt Wikia will actually listen to us and remove the crappy, unwanted feature from our wiki, in the meantime I've created Featured video notice, which can be placed at the top of any article with the annoying feature. The template won't remove the video (as that would be a violation of the ToU), but it will display a stern notice just underneath it telling viewers that the unwanted feature was not added by us. A lot of other wikis, like the Animal Crossing and League of Legends Wiki, have also made similar templates. — k6ka  🍁 ( Talk ·  Contributions ) 15:32, February 1, 2019 (UTC)

Closing
This thread reached a satisfactory conclusion a long time ago; it's pretty clear that the community (at least a year ago) is (or was) firmly resolved against forced implementation of Featured Videos. Since this discussion was held, some things have happened on this front, and it seems that FANDOM is re-evaluating the whole thing. Still, this thread served an important purpose in formalizing community opposition to the feature. Thank you to all who participated. --  LostInRiverview talk · blog  ·  contribs 17:33, February 2, 2020 (UTC)