Fandom, the company that now hosts a solid majority of video game and other pop-culture wikis, recently updated its “community creation policy” with a new section stating that it will no longer host pages that contain “fetish” content. Thanks to this policy update, the Monster Girl Encyclopaedia Wiki, a compendium of knowledge regarding monster girl artbooks created by Kenkou Cross, is scheduled for removal on November 24. The Monster Girl Quest and Agent Aika wikis are also soon to be booted.
When you visit the MGE Wiki, a pop-up in the lower-left of the screen now reads:
Fandom is removing wikis on topics that contain large amounts of sex, nudity and/or fetish material. Even if the wiki itself is kept “clean,” we are still unable to host it. The two week’s pause is so you can look for a new host and copy your content there.
A Fandom spokesperson told Kotaku that “safety” is the company’s priority, and the decision to remove the MGE Wiki came about due to it violating its community creation policy.
Safety is first priority at Fandom and we ensure that our communities are welcoming to every fan who comes to our platform. This past August, Fandom announced a new Community Creation Policy that went into effect in October 2021. Within that announcement, this policy is noted: “Wikis about sex, fetishes, and other pornographic subjects are not permitted even if described in a non-explicit way.” After careful review, Monster Girl Encyclopaedia [Wiki] violated this policy and will be shut down on November 24, 2021.
The MGE Wiki faithful weren’t going out without a fight. Some started a petition demanding Fandom continue hosting MGE and the other wikis, likening the purge to censorship. Numerous contributors also requested that concerned fans reach out to Fandom on social media, asking the company to continue hosting MGE Wiki.
Ochiverde, a top contributor to the wiki, told Kotaku that MGE Wiki staff didn’t receive any advance notice of the policy changes being made by Fandom, and were only made aware of the new rules by the appearance of the pop-up warning.
While the community is fighting to keep the MGE wiki hosted on Fandom, Ochiverde said the MGE Wiki editors are planning on moving operations to Miraheze, a free, non-profit wiki-hosting service. Ochiverde said that the new incarnation of MGE Wiki on Miraheze will be “more streamlined” due to the loss of certain proprietary Fandom wiki features, like the image galleries, which will instead be externally hosted and linked to.
Fandom’s enforcement of its new policy seems uneven. While wikis like MGE, Agent Aika, and Monster Girl Quest are scheduled for removal, other hosted wikis for properties like Bible Black, Interspecies Reviewers, and Monster Musume, which contain a similar amount of spice — don’t ask me how I know that — have yet to be flagged in the same way. Fans are clearly struggling to understand the pattern.
User Kamen Rider G20, who usually lurks on the MGE Wiki, decided now was the time to make their voice heard. In a community post, they echoed the rallying cry of other contributors to “go out in a blaze of glory so bright the sun will get burnt.”
We must fight for our right to be horny on main and love our monster girls. We must fight for our right to be cultured individuals. Contact Fandom on every platform that you both have, and say that we will not be silenced. Contact them and say that we will not go down without a fight.
ClawfootQueen is an interested observer who commented in one prominent MGE Wiki contributor’s community tab to suggest what the community’s next course of action should be. She’s seen this all happen before, as her own wiki, which listed bathing scenes in anime, manga, and other media for the purpose of dissecting common tropes and cultural norms, was removed by Fandom in November 2018.
“While the [Monster Girl Encyclopaedia] isn’t the most family-friendly concept for a wiki out there,” she told Kotaku, “it was a true wiki that helped archive information about a legitimate franchise of books. Fandom’s statement was labelling it as a fetish wiki, which it is not.”
ClawfootQueen told Kotaku that Fandom staff gave Anime Bath Scene Wiki moderators and contributors time to prepare for that wiki’s removal, which ultimately occurred on November 30, 2018. She said Fandom never pointed out any specific guidelines being violated but told her that numerous images broke its terms of service.
Ultimately, she says that Fandom “[didn’t] believe my claim that the site isn’t a fetish wiki anymore” and, knowing that she had been preparing alternate hosting, suggested she go ahead with the move off of Fandom. “They gave us time to prepare and weren’t mean about it and directly messaged me giving us a warning and even gave us more time than the initial deadline,” she said.
However, ClawfootQueen thinks the MGE Wiki should fight to stay on Fandom, saying she thinks it is extreme for this wiki to be kicked off of the site. She tells Kotaku she understands why her wiki was removed, given that her page became an “unorganized mess” of random users uploading nsfw screencaps that had barely anything to do with the bathing itself.
“All Fandom needs to do is to get rid of any imagery that goes against their ToS and make sure to keep the wiki maintained and professional,” she said. “[Monster Girl Encyclopaedia] is a legitimate series of books [that is] sold, making it a real franchise that should have a wiki.”
Indeed, wikis serve as the backbones of many fandoms, an ideal place to delve deeper into details or refresh oneself on the lore of a favourite series. MGE Wiki moderator and contributor Timjer expressed concerns about potential chilling effects on fan communities.
“Wikis are supposed to be repositories of information first and foremost,” he said. “If Fandom staff starts cherry-picking which information is acceptable and which isn’t, then quite frankly we’re going down a dangerous path.”
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