How Fans Saved Sexypedia From Being Erased From the Internet

Neither would beryllium simple. The Sexypedia had withstood different attempts to region the site, including 1 by its archetypal proprietor aft they left. Fandom received aggregate takedown requests, but assemblage members pointed the digit astatine a YouTube video created by Trig Jegman, a unpaid unit subordinate of aggregate different Fandom wikis.

The video, which has received astir 3,000 views, recommended Sexypedia beryllium deleted for “outright intersexual successful contented coverage.” The video besides claimed hundreds of different databases violated Fandom’s policies. “The determination to adhd Sexypedia [to the list] was not done retired of idiosyncratic hatred oregon deliberate targeting,” Jegman says.

The reports led to an interior treatment for Fandom, which indispensable person decided Sexypedia was excessively inherently intersexual to beryllium allowed. Once the determination was made, the tract was taken down with nary consultation oregon informing fixed to the site’s staff, who had thought they were successful compliance.

“Our wiki contained nary explicit contented and was strictly PG-13,” says Lee, who had owned and maintained Sexypedia since 2021. (Lee declined to springiness their past name, citing privateness concerns.) “[Fandom’s] crushed doesn't marque sense, unless they conscionable saw the connection ‘sex’ successful the title.”

Unlike the Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts Wikipedia, Fandom is simply a for-profit company, owned since 2018 by task capitalist Jonathan Miller’s Integrated Media Company. Recently, a fig of instrumentality wikis person elected to make caller databases unaffiliated with Fandom alternatively than woody with the company’s shifting practices and policies. Last year, users and unit of the tremendous Minecraft Wiki voted to permission Fandom, saying the institution had been “prioritizing its ain interests and engagement implicit those of wiki communities.” (Fandom declined to supply remark connected the grounds for this story.)

The Sexypedia squad didn’t person those concerns. “We ran good with nary contented for years, adjacent having Fandom unit assistance america with things,” says Lee. However, connected October 30, erstwhile mods asked wherefore the wiki had disappeared, Fandom responded to their enactment petition by saying it violated the company’s Terms of Use and Community Creation policies, efficaciously denying their entreaty to reopen the site. As per policy, though, Fandom permitted the unit to archive the wiki’s data, truthful it could beryllium restored elsewhere.

The time Fandom denied their appeal, Lee officially requested abstraction from Miraheze, a non-profit hosting service, arsenic a caller home. The assemblage lent their afloat enactment to the decision, and for the adjacent 2 weeks the Discord was a hive of activity, preparing the legions of skinny achromatic men earlier the caller site was approved connected November 11. It’s presently nether construction, but it appears arsenic though the one-of-a-kind catalog of instrumentality emotion has been saved.

To inaugurate the caller site, the assemblage adjacent held a ballot connected which quality would get the grant of the archetypal leafage connected the site. The Once-ler won handily, continuing a contented that adjacent those who proceed it don’t wholly understand. It’ll beryllium a small easier, though, present that the Sexypedia is backmost online.