Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General bg3.wiki Proposed Ads

I saw this posted on Reddit's BaldursGate3 sub today:

https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/1e1j55p/important_bg3wiki_announcement/

Apparently the owner of bg3.wiki is thinking about monetizing the wiki. I know hosting and running (moderating, doing contribution, maintaining) the wiki cost money and I feel if he can get some ad revenue to make the work easier without having to solicit donation, it's a good thing. But then he's talking about quitting his job to work on this full time - which leads me to believe this isn't a small monetized budget. It's one of the best gaming wiki and one of the reasons why I bought BG3 (not a D&D player so I was fearing getting lost in the game but wiki helped out lot) and I am kind of concerned about the ads. What does everyone else think?

The issue with ads is generally how many and how they're vetted. It may also impact the writing of the wiki to make you read longer and therefore fit more ads. From a player perspective, I would also be concerned. I don't want a screen full of ads or be one misclick away from being hacked.

However, it's not the only wiki out there - fextralife infamously hosts a very ethically dubious wiki, but the nature of the problem is that you won't really see the ad (it's a livestream). Especially on mobile, it can be downright hidden. It's worse quality for Bg3. But, even if the main wiki becomes near unusable, we would have this and Reddit. If you have any incredibly specific questions, it can be a more helpful resource.

I think I won't see the ads either way with my adblocker. Monetize away good buddy, make your wiki look awful all you want.

i don't use the wiki so go ahead

Can't say I'm a fan of the idea of monetizing a fan wiki, but on the other hand I honestly don't pay enough attention to it to be concerned either way.

On a side note, I have to say that as far as life plans go, "Quitting my job to work full time on a fan-made Wiki for a very specific game" sounds one of the worst I've heard in a while.

I've visited the wiki a few times. It's better than the Fextralife one, then again how can it not be?

Anyway I think traffic to the wiki will die eventually so I'm not sure how feasible it is to dedicate to it full time. Unless he has ones for other games too.

Yikes literally violating the “don’t quit your day job..” maxim.

I’ve used it on occasion.

Ads suck

Nobody likes ads, but I also don't think I can demand someone provides a service out of their own pocket. Reading the announcement, though, the real issue is that the content is licensed CC-BY-NC-SA. He needs to relicense all the previous edits to be able to make a profit.
And yeah, quitting your day job to work on a wiki for a single video game is a bit crazy. But maybe he was thinking of leaving anyway, and has other plans for the future.

I expect that rewriting everything where the contributor does not answer would be a major effort. I don’t know how many people contributed — I did not, so I have no say.

If I had contributed, their idea to ask for "only allow us to make money" is one I would reject right away. The idea to make it cc by-sa wouldn’t hurt me, though: then it would be Wikipedia compatible.

But mixing cc by-nc-sa and cc by-sa in the same article is a complete no-go: they have to get full permissions, at least on the scale of articles. Those two licenses are incompatible with each other.

Just in: a video inherently relevant to this, though the hook is fan content about pokemon:



(that’s moon channel, lawyer by day, video game youtuber by night)