Why Not Miraheze?

On September 12, 2026, the official Tower Defense Simulator Wiki was moved from Fandom to its own independent self-hosted wiki. It was a great decision, and the wiki has benefited tremendously from the freedom we gained from this.

Now, before the move, though, it may sound autodestructive, but our wiki community has always been pro-Fandom, and has always been leaning negative towards moving out of the ecosystem and people who keep trying to push it. Miraheze is one of the most popular alternatives for Roblox wikis that we have been bombarded with.

Why Were We Against Moving Out of Fandom?

There were many that we've discussed over the years, such as uptime, support, exclusive extensions, compatibility, and whatnot. But most of them are largely debatable and weren't that much of a deciding factor.

SEO

The most common reason that we dished out was SEO, aka where we are placed in the search engine results. If we were to fork out, we would have to compete with a site that is quite literally in the top 50 most visited websites on the internet.

Not to mention the age and presence of the old wiki and Fandom itself, the duplicated content that cannot be taken down, with said content being extremely comprehensive and thorough (you could say we're suffering from success, haha).

Of course, it's definitely possible to beat it eventually and gain back presence, but the time it takes to do so is very long, and the majority of our users argue that it's not worth it, especially with the neglect the developers of the game were giving us at the time. There's just not enough confidence in gaining back exposure and traffic.

The True Reason

Now, let's talk about what we were actually concerned about. The alternatives simply do not offer what Fandom does.

You can say what you want about Fandom, but I truly believe that their accessibility, intuitiveness, consistency, and social features are unparalleled.

For example, their FandomDesktop skin is specifically made to be as inviting as possible; it puts things right where you expect them to be, thus making everything extremely easy to scan through.

You need to edit? The button is big and in the main content; one simply cannot miss it. There's no second-guessing either; you may think it's great to let users have options such as 'Edit' and 'Edit source,' but really, it makes it confusing and even discouraging for the average reader.

Another prevalent one is the button itself displaying 'View source' instead of something much more welcoming like 'Log in to edit.' You are quite literally missing the free opportunity to tell the users that they can edit!

The Fandom ecosystem lays out the best practices while also nudging you to follow them implicitly; you need not be an expert to benefit from its design optimizations.

All the skins used above are great, and I love what they've done to make their community stand out. But really, it's extremely unintuitive for someone new to the platform to navigate:

What does that button do?

Where can I access the recent changes?

How do I get a permanent link to an article?

Why can't I exit the VisualEditor!?

Do the features I expect even exist?

Every wiki you visit is a learning curve that takes time to get used to; you can't really bring what you've already known to the new platform. Some of them try to stay as close as possible to the skin's original interface and layout, but given the freedom and flexibility that a platform like Miraheze provides, it's hard to resist the temptation for the staff of these wikis.

This is why Fandom (perhaps wiki.gg and Weird Gloop too?) does not allow drastic changes to the interface and layout. Allowing that makes the platform less accessible for both new and existing users, lowering the barrier to entry for editing, and making it harder for new users to get started. Their customization policy puts it clearly:

As people move from one community to another, evolving from reader to editors to founders, it's important that they are able to take what they learn from one wiki and build on that.

And it's true too! Our wiki has harbored so many dedicated contributors and casual editors alike that we likely wouldn't have gotten there otherwise, especially considering the modest player size that our wiki's game has compared to something like Minecraft. It's not rare to see someone with over 1,000 edits!

Social Features

And what probably is Fandom's biggest selling point... their integrated social features. Traditionally, we have had talk pages and DPLforum, which are outdated, and the younger generations of people are not fond of them. Honestly, I wouldn't use them unless I have to, as well.

There have been many attempts to get independent wikis to be on par with Fandom's social aspects, such as one of my favorites, UserProfilesV2. Unfortunately, they all haven't been able to get anywhere near what Fandom provides.

Of course! I get why that is, though. For most wikis, the social features are utterly out of place. I mean, you're a wiki, right? Your goal is to provide information and knowledge to your readers, not to be a plaza where people rant about how their opinions are correct and you are wrong.

But this simply isn't the case for Roblox wikis such as ours. Teenagers and young adults nowadays love to spend their time with their friends online; interests and hobbies are now shared and discussed much more than they used to be. Hence, where better than the knowledge base of a wiki like ours? Where everyone is dedicated enough to contribute and share their expertise with the world.

Alongside our own comment and blog system on articles, we also have Town Square, our replacement for Fandom's Discussion.

Even on a small wiki like ours, we have a vibrant community of users who are passionate about the game we play and enjoy discussing it with each other. Every day, every hour, there is something new to talk about, and reception has been excellent.

Do Not Fragment Your Community

So, that leads us back to why we moved to a self-hosted solution instead of Miraheze, the de facto spot for Roblox wikis to fork to. There isn't enough freedom.

Miraheze is like a middle ground; it offers freedom, but not to the point where you can just do anything. At the same time, it tries to keep things structured and consistent (I especially love ManageWiki), so communities don't have to reinvent everything from scratch.

The problem is that this middle ground ends up feeling like a compromise on both sides, not as locked down and beginner-friendly as Fandom, and not as free as just running your own wiki.

We wouldn't be able to leverage Fandom's massive skin dominance to our advantage and make a skin that looks and functions similarly to FandomDesktop and FandomMobile, while making it look 'us.'

The wiki can capitalize on what Fandom does well and build upon it to be even better. Because guess what? Even if Fandom finds the most intuitive and user-friendly interface, they still have to cram in a lot of advertisements and content that do not belong to our community to max out profits. We simply do not have that problem.

If we put these all together, it's very clear that if we didn't go the self-hosted route, we would lose a lot of users who simply aren't fond of the new interface, the lack of features, etc.

A good example of this is the Forsaken Wiki on Miraheze and its counterpart on Fandom. Despite having the same goal of building a wiki for the Forsaken community, they are divided because one doesn't offer the same social features as the Fandom version, which their user base really likes. This led to the result of the Fandom one being much more active and up to date. What a shame, unfortunately.

Communities should work together, be united, not split in half because people have different preferences. Our wiki values the quiet readers who seldom edit, the people who keep the place alive by talking and hanging out, and of course the editors themselves. You need all of them.

Closing Thoughts

Looking back, staying on Fandom for as long as we did made sense at the time. Our community couldn't have gotten as close-knit and strong as it is today without Fandom, and we are genuinely grateful for it.

But eventually the trade-offs stopped being worth it. Fandom started running experiments that one couldn't opt out of, which wrecked our designs. Then came the AI-generated iframes slammed into the right rail in the name of 'engagement,' the so-called 'utilities' that provided absolutely zero utility, and kept making us spend time fixing things we never should have had to fix. All to get something that is ultimately worse than what we had before.

Self-hosting gave us the freedom to keep what Fandom was right about while removing everything that did not. We get to decide how the wiki looks, what features matter, and how the community interacts with the site; all without someone else's rules limiting what we can achieve.

Miraheze is a perfectly fine option for a lot of communities, and I personally would encourage using it if you just want a small and focused wiki. This post isn't to smear the good name of Miraheze (it's a great platform!), but rather to explain why we didn't pick Miraheze, and perhaps, why screaming and urging every single wiki on Fandom to 'Migrate the wiki to Miraheze!' is very dumb and immature.

The platform merely wasn't the right one for us. We wanted more than a middle ground, and so far, going all the way has been very much worth it!