Wikis work on the principle that most people are good and want to help a project rather than harm it. The success of wikis on Fandom shows this to be true – we could not have Wookieepedia, for example, without most people involved cooperating with each other to build an astounding resource.

However, as with any social system there are those who prefer to try to impede and disrupt the community rather than be part of it. The Trust and Safety Team exists to help Fandom communities to stay healthy and productive. We do this with direct intervention on-site, by providing training for the Fandom community, and by monitoring high risk activities.

This report provides an overview of the Trust and Safety team and our initiatives to improve the Fandom environment.

Fandom Company Values

Our Trust and Safety initiatives are rooted in our Fandom company values:

• We serve a global community.
  We work directly with our fans and creators to encourage a safe and inclusive environment. We provide our partners with a clean environment to showcase their brands.
• We build experiences.
  We build pathways to help our fans to develop into creators, and for those creators to become skilled and experienced in using Fandom.
• We bring joy.
  We provide moderation and mitigation for bad actors, increasing the site’s safety and enjoyment for all.

Brand Safety

JavaScript review

Fandom allows a large degree of customization of wikis via JavaScript. In the past, this opened up security and functionality risks from bad actors and those with poor knowledge of the tools.

We now review all JavaScript added to the site, with the goal of allowing our users to use their creativity and skills while ensuring the safety of the code used, and to provide reasonable limitations that ensure the best user experience on Fandom. Happily our JavaScript-writing users are generally skilled and well intentioned. As the graph below shows, very few edits are rejected.

Fandom brands moderation

While mostly focused on wikis, the Trust and Safety team are also involved in the user-generated content of the other Fandom brands. This includes forums, editable user pages, lists, wikis, and walkthroughs, on GameFAQs, GameSpot, Giant Bomb, and Comic Vine.

Since Fandom’s acquisition of these sites. We have updated their terms of use, updated moderation guidelines, closed toxic threads, held monthly moderator meetings, integrated their support system, and brought onboard new moderators. Trust and Safety remains intimately involved in Fandom Brands, including in monitoring and mentoring the user moderators.

Global blocks

Global blocks are performed using a tool we call Phalanx. Phalanx is an extension created by Fandom to help staff effectively fight spam, vandalism, and malicious users. We can set the duration and block users, email addresses, page content, wiki name, and more. The most common use is to block spammers from all wikis on Fandom.

Image review

We utilize automatic and manual checks of all images uploaded to Fandom, to keep Fandom safe from bad actors. On average, we review 2.1M images a month. Every upload to Fandom goes through an automated review system that helps classify the content of images in order to identify areas of concern. The vast majority of images uploaded to Fandom (98.9%) are ultimately approved. Our aim is to quickly remove images that might cause distress to our users, and to provide a brand-safe environment for our partners.

User Education

We encourage users to participate in voluntary educational programs by offering various initiatives to help deepen their platform experience. Through a range of resources available on our Community Programs Hub, we present two distinct programs: Admin+ and Fandom Compass. Admin+ is tailored to equip administrators with essential skills for community growth and facilitation, while Fandom Compass hones in on fostering community expansion and understanding of SEO principles.

Interventions

Users at risk

In most cases, we attempt to contact users expressing suicidality (via the contact information they have provided to us or on-site) or we pass details of such incidents to relevant authorities. We also report users expressing violent intentions – although this is very rare on Fandom. Our goal is to provide information and, where appropriate, intervention by the appropriate authorities for distressed users, and to support the community who may also be distressed by witnessing suicidal ideation.

Toxic communities

Larger and very active wikis are largely self regulating and, in the case of our priority wikis, are assisted by the Wiki Representative program. However, some wikis and their Discussions can become problematic because of the development of a toxic culture. In some cases this spills over into other communities, or becomes so toxic that intervention is needed.

An example of this was a wiki about the online characters of Polandball, a form of satirical art . Unfortunately, the wiki became highly toxic with the various “Countryballs” often being offensive stereotypes of various groups and nationalities. We ultimately decided not to continue to host this community.

Closing wikis

The majority of wikis closed are automatically removed because of almost total lack of content and activity. The Trust and Safety Team also close wikis for a variety of reasons including:

• a choice of topic that violates our Community Creation Policy;
• communities using the Discussions feature for chat or role-play rather than using the related wiki;
• violations of our “living people” rules (writing about their friends or other non-famous individuals);
• wikis created to attack another person.

We also manage a process to remove wikis that are created as spam, and those that are duplicates of existing wikis. By closing these we pick out the most disruptive communities and push people towards more successful and stable spaces.

Fandom Resources

All the actions we take and interventions we make, are in line with our core commitments and the documentation. For example:

• Fandom’s Terms of Use
  This contains the major part of our conduct expectation for users, as well as other legal requirements.
• The Community Creation Policy
  This outlines what wikis we will and won’t allow. It also contains the important “living people” policy, which states that wikis should not be about non-famous individuals (for example students at a school).
• The Privacy Policy
  The Privacy Policy gives information on Fandom’s obligations around personal information. It also gives advice on how to opt out of much of the data collections we do.
• Fandom Community Guidelines
  A reader-friendly version of Fandom’s conduct rules.
• The Customization Policy
  An explanation of the limits to customization, including JavaScript rules.
  
• Gender Identity Guidelines
  An extensive expansion of the anti-discriminatory policy with regards to transgender and nonbinary peoples.
  
• Wiki Rules and Blocking Policy
  Guidelines on fair and ethical blocking for our wiki users.

Questions about any of our resources, policies, and guidelines can be directed to Fandom Support or directly to community@fandom.com.