User blog:Brandon Rhea

Be sure to also read Part 1 of this blog series, "How Fandom is driving engagement to improve the user experience"

One of the biggest topics at last month’s Community Connect was about the ad situation on the Fandom wiki platform, and how one of our primary goals this year is making genuine improvements to the user experience – including improvements to the ad experience. We talked about some of that in the Staff Blog yesterday, “Driving Engagement to Improve the User Experience.” And today we put a finer point on the problem: “it sucks” is an exact quote you’ll see later in this interview.

We want to dive deeper into that topic, particularly the part about ads, because we went into a lot more depth at Connect than we could include in that o…

Once you've read this blog, check out Part 2: "Community Connect Interview: Better Ads for a Better User Experience"

It's hard to believe it's been a month since Community Connect, our annual event where admins and editors from various communities meet up with Fandom Staff to share feedback and hear plans on the latest and upcoming developments for Fandom wikis.

We'll be publishing several recap blogs over the next few weeks that delve deeper into the topics discussed at Community Connect. Today, I want to provide a broad overview of the main theme of our presentations: improving the user experience, including the ad experience, which is a significant pain point for the community. That includes the following:

• Fandom's commitment: We are commi…

Throughout my career at Fandom, I’ve been privileged to work with a lot of passionate Community Managers and other community professionals. These are people who truly care about and want to support the community here at Fandom, a community that’s pretty special. There’s many different kinds of communities online – some are professional networks, some are SaaS (Software as a Service) customer communities, some are brand ecosystems, some are forums or chat rooms, and more. But here at Fandom, we have the awesome opportunity to work directly with people like all of you who are often experts in games, shows, movies, and more, and who in turn are also dedicated to building and nurturing communities based around shared interests.

One of my jobs, …

Last week, we shared the bittersweet news that we are ending the part-time, contract-based Wiki Representative program and shifting to a full-time staffing model for Community team members who directly support our communities.

As promised in last week’s commitments, today’s blog introduces you to the four Wiki Representatives who are officially joining Fandom Staff as Community Managers on April 1st (no joke)! We also have a few updates about former Wiki Representatives who are remaining with Fandom on a contract-basis, but taking on new or different positions now that the Wiki Representative program is coming to an end.

We are really excited to be able to welcome these new Community Managers and, although we know the news about the Wiki Rep…

Update March 25, 2024: Check out our latest Staff Blog post, "Welcoming Fandom's newest Community Managers," for an announcement about the Wiki Reps who have converted to full time Fandom Staff members.

Hi everyone, I have some difficult but important news to share with you today. Over the next several weeks, we will be winding down and ending the Wiki Representative program as we head in a new direction with how we support the Fandom community—which includes bringing on a number of new, full time Community Managers to Fandom staff, sourced directly from the Wiki Rep program.

As of today, a number of Wiki Representatives have been impacted by this change. This blog will be the first in a series of updates over the next several weeks that goes…