(Herms has covered so much of the mis/dis-information and citation issues that I don't feel I need to cover it as in-depth as I was planning / would have liked. I'm going to just focus on other areas.)
Perhaps the biggest "problem" with Wikia is that it's Wikia. Let's forget about all the fandom stuff for now and put it out there that Jimmy Wales is the biggest problem. This particular "Wiki" is being run off of a for-profit server farm, and that comes with all of its inherent difficulties. Between NoScript and AdBlocker, I don't personally come across the problems that some users are reporting (spyware, pop-ups, etc.)… but it's clearly an issue. You simply don't have that problem with fan-owned and fan-operated websites (well, the really nice ones, anyway!). It's a poor user experience… but at the same time, it doesn't seem to be too much of a detriment to traffic. Or is it? Can admins of a Wikia even see traffic trends? Organization and design of the wiki is also subject to what Wikia is able to handle, and that includes all of the necessary administration, plug-in, maintenance, etc. features. It's a lowest-common-denominator product. Is that an insult? Not really meant as such. It's merely a description of it.
But Internet-venture soapboxing aside…
I'll be honest when I say that I have very limited familiarity and experience with the DB Wikia. I simply don't need to use it. It serves no purpose for me. I will occasionally (and almost always inadvertently) come across it through following links and general searches, and I'll be blunt when I say that it's a terrible experience each and every time.
Some of these things have already been covered – the abysmal writing (style and grammar), the broken links, etc. This is all ignoring "factual information" relating to the series – we're still talking about basic levels of quality control. OF COURSE you will have issues like this when you scale to a large user base, even when you agree to conform to some type of style guide… but when these issues creep up so often that it's laughably known for it, you have a serious problem. How many people in this thread have brought up the writing style and grammatical atrocities? It's a clear problem. People don't place enough value on intellectual appearance. So as not to go in-depth on Daizenshuu EX and Kanzentai, turn it over to something like
Wired's Game|Life versus something like
Destructoid – one has vetted information, copy-editing, expert background… the list goes on and on. There is a clear winner in terms of who you are going to "trust" over the other. It may devolve into personal taste at some point for general enjoyment, but there is no accounting for or relevance to taste when it comes to accuracy.
When I see words that are spelled wrong, incomplete sentences, and the like, I am immediately turned off, and you have lost me for good.
Raw information accuracy and presentation aside, while I joke that Jimmy is the biggest problem with the DB Wikia (
nay, all Wikia in existence), its true biggest problem is its identity crisis.
I will never understand the "I speak English, so this is based on the English version" mentality. Well, I do understand it… to a degree. It breaks down under further scrutiny, though, and especially with this particular franchise. OK, sure! You want to focus on "the English version". That's cool. I can respect that! It exists. Let's not pretend it doesn't – you're not helping anyone that way.
Where it breaks down, though, is that there's no single "English version". What do you mean by that? FUNimation's English dub? Of what? Z or Kai? The English translations on FUNimation's subtitle track for the original Japanese audio? Viz's English manga translation? Which edit of their translation? The Harmony Gold dub? The Philippines English dub? The simultaneous-to-FUNimation-alternate English dub with Ocean Studios? The "Big Green" dub?
In what I expect are 99% of the cases, what the person is ACTUALLY SAYING is, "I'm a fan of FUNimation's English dub of the DBZ anime, particularly from 1999-2004, and that is the version that I am focusing on and what I want this website to focus on"… usually at the expense of and hostile feeling toward (intimidation of?) everything else.
But that just doesn't work for what DB Wikia is striving to be. You can't use that as the basis and then accurately, completely, and authoritatively cover the entirety of the franchise. You end up with something that is contradictory at best, and hypocritical at worst.
That's where the identity problem is.
We recently covered Freeza's and Coola's transformations
on the podcast, so I pulled up
the Coola(er) page just to spot-check around. For all intents and purposes, it was a "random" page that I looked at. Lo-and-behold, we have incorrect information up the wazoo, primarily related to FUNimation's English dub. A featured quote denotes Coola is in his third transformation. That's false going by the original Japanese script -- here we have an example of blatantly wrong information that is given a huge feature on the page. You could argue that if you are following FUNimation's English dub, THAT is the precedent, and THAT is the "correct" and only in-universe explanation… it simply "is", what I describe as a "state of being".
But you can't go and use that and then go on to explain things based on the original Japanese version. You end up with contradictory information, and no (or little) explanation as to WHY it is contradictory.
It is one "little mistake", sure… but I could go and pull things up at random with each page I visit. Herms has demonstrated this time and time again, with groan-including examples like the "World Trade Organization" – something that I thought was just relegated to side boxes, but upon investigation found was a horrible infestation throughout every little page it could possibly apply to. Generalized and basic facts are perfectly fine ("Goku is a character with X and Y and does Z"), but anything that needs to be researched and analyzed just collapses under the weight of its contradictions and poor care.
If FUNimation's English dub is to be used as the basis for an information guide, you are unable to expand beyond that (which DB Wikia clearly wants to do) and still be authoritative and accurate. You simply can't. You end up having to retract and pointlessly explain change after change after change, even if they are ever-so-minor of changes. It's something like a Butterfly Effect throughout the information. We are not even talking about subjective choices like naming conventions for characters based on puns and preferred romanizations, or even whether to write an attack name romanized or translated – we're simply talking about "X is Y… except for this case when it's Z, and over here when it's G." Don't misunderstand – I'm not saying that the franchise in its original Japanese form does not have contradictions in its own story (filler inconsistencies) and guide books (battle power inconsistencies), but at least those come from PRIMARY SOURCES and can be explained without first FURTHER EXPLAINING the secondary sources… or worse.
You can't have your cake and eat it, too. You can't use the FUNimation dub as your basis and somehow encompass everything that you want to include. How do you reconcile the changes being done with the new dub of Kai? How do you reconcile the changes done with line re-takes and dialogue adjustments between home releases (singles -> orange bricks)? We clearly do not place any stock in dialogue from FUNimation's first go at "seasons" one and two from 1996-1998 (Bardock being a "brilliant scientist", for example), so why should we place any stock in the dialogue from later on that is replaced and changed? Why the double-standard? Just ‘cuz someone likes that particular dub so much?
An information database that uses FUNimation's English dub as its basis would almost by necessity have to exclude other information sources simply to remain self-consistent, English or otherwise.
I don't deny that FUNimation's English dub is "popular" in a few places throughout the world, but to automatically assume that someone who speaks English is by default and exclusively familiar with just that one dub of the franchise shows a clear lack of understanding as to how the world actually works and who your audience truly is.
The other part of its identity crisis has been covered a little bit, but I don't think anyone's summed it up succinctly enough. The DB Wikia seems to want to be both an encyclopedic database with raw facts and information… but also wants to go the general "fansite" route with theories, observations, etc. You can certainly do both, but right now it does a piss-poor job in separating the two types of ideas and writing styles in any given article. We've gone over the rampant fan speculation and literally-fabricated-"facts" well enough already, though.
From what I can gather, all of one person (the one who started this thread) seems to care what "we" (I guess the community that happens to visit this one particular message board) thinks about the DB Wikia. Nearly all of the responses in
the DB Wikia forum page are either apathetic or even hostile toward suggestions put forth… sometimes not even taking the time to accurately read and digest them. If feedback is requested and then not given the time of day, what was the purpose of even asking in the first place?
It's clear that at least someone involved there wants authority figures (those from Daizenshuu EX and Kanzentai, both specifically named) to view them in turn as authoritative. The way the site exists now, that simply cannot happen. It is a mess on various levels. Arrogance about traffic levels and native languages doesn't accomplish anything for the visitors. It all seems to be self-serving for the folks editing the pages, rather than helpful and utopian for the readers.
Every single last person that is a part of this community would LOVE to see the DB Wikia filled with accurate information – I know we can ALL agree on that. We are going to inherently take issue with a variety of things, mostly relating to style guide and informational hierarchy, which will prevent us from giving it our full support in terms of things like adding/editing pages, original research, etc. Those of us with that knowledge/time/experience are already putting it toward
our own ventures, but it's not like we don't wish others success with what they want to do.
