Why does everybody hate D&D wiki?

[atemu1234]

I personally prefer not to use it, and its SRD tends to be untrustworthy, to say the least, but what is it people hold against the homebrew content, if you check and make sure it isn't broken?

[Silva Stormrage]

It just tends to have more broken homebrew and it doesn't easily distinguish very well what is homebrew and what is not.

On average the homebrew over there is much worse than what is in other places like Giantitp's own homebrew forum

[Pluto!]

It has a much bad homebrew than good homebrew.

That, and people sometimes get mad at it for jumbling homebrew with its OGL content and plagarism.

[Blackhawk748]

Unlike on Giants, their homebrew doesnt get "buried" unlike on here or other sites so its harder to realize its bad.

[Karnith]

The most common complaints tend to be that:
Homebrew content on the wikis tends to be unmarked, or marked in places where no one will see the disclaimers (e.g. in tags at the bottom of the page)
Homebrew content often has the same name as official published content, which ties into...
D&D wiki content generally comes up first in searches when you're looking for anything D&D related
Depending on which wiki you're looking at, the homebrew ranges from pretty okay to mind-numbingly bad (with the latter outnumbering the former)
Tying into the previous points, people who are new to the game tend to think that material on the wikis is official and use it without knowing that it isn't (and as a consequence they don't tell anyone that they're using wiki content)
I have no problem working with my players if something on one of the wikis is usable (or even salvageable), but they have also caused a lot of headaches, particularly with newer players.

[Demorden]

I personally prefer not to use it, and its SRD tends to be untrustworthy, to say the least, but what is it people hold against the homebrew content, if you check and make sure it is broken, and the rules are misinterpreted to better fit the creator's idea?
Fixed that for you.

Seriously, SRD isn't reliable, homebrew is more often broken than not, and 80% of the builds I've seen there are nonsense cheese, in that the rules appeared reinvented to better serve those writing (and no mention of debatable points, of course).

Not enough to HATE someone or something, IMHO, but certainly not a reason to love that site, neither.

At least this is my impression, tell me if I'm wrong...

[Brunks]

Tying into the previous points, people who are new to the game tend to think that material on the wikis is official and use it without knowing that it isn't (and as a consequence thy don't tell anyone that they're using wiki content)

As a DM this has happened to me on at least three diffrent occasions. It is really annoying having to double check absolutly everything. Just by existing the site has drastically increased my workload when dealing with new players.

I like to spend my prep time on the actual campaign, not delving through that site. Luckily I have some experienced players to help me out with this.

I havn't noticed any problems with their SRD accuracy though. Any juicy examples?

[Blackhawk748]

sadly no, but i do remember that they paraphrased an ability in such a way that one of my players thought it did something else, cant remember what it was for the life of me though

[torrasque666]

I havn't noticed any problems with their SRD accuracy though. Any juicy examples?

Same here. I've frequently used anything that has the category of "System Reference Document" at the bottom. Mostly its just fact that I like the layout better than d20SRD. Better color scheme and all in my opinion. Better than Blue/Purple/Black on a mottled background.

[Karnith]

I havn't noticed any problems with their SRD accuracy though. Any juicy examples?
Most of the SRD, at least on dandwiki, got cleaned up years ago (too late to be of any use to my group back when we regularly got new players, but better late than never, I guess). Certainly the SRD pages are now locked to editing, and appear to be accurate on a very superficial examination.

Funnily enough, a lot of terrible content has been wiped from the site after GitP threads showcased the really bad stuff, so at least someone's making an effort.

[A Tad Insane]

Because when you Google just about anything d&d, there's a his chance you'll get some of its homebrew on the first page. This makes it the ultimate beginner trap

[TypoNinja]

Most of the SRD, at least on dandwiki, got cleaned up years ago (too late to be of any use to my group back when we regularly got new players, but better late than never, I guess). Certainly the SRD pages are now locked to editing, and appear to be accurate on a very superficial examination.

Funnily enough, a lot of terrible content has been wiped from the site after GitP threads showcased the really bad stuff, so at least someone's making an effort.

Why the hell would you use dndwiki for SRD content when the actual SRD is far more reliable?

dndwiki has the problem that you need to already have a high level of system mastery to sort out the crap from the official stuff, so as an existing player/dm its far easier for me to tell people to stay the hell out of dndwiki, than it is to attempt to explain everything. I tell them to use d20srd instead.

[Irk]

Fixed that for you.

Seriously, SRD isn't reliable, homebrew is more often broken than not, and 80% of the builds I've seen there are nonsense cheese, in that the rules appeared reinvented to better serve those writing (and no mention of debatable points, of course).

Not enough to HATE someone or something, IMHO, but certainly not a reason to love that site, neither.

At least this is my impression, tell me if I'm wrong...
I totally agree. Hardly any of those builds actually work or do what they say they do in a competent manner.

[Sith_Happens]

dndwiki has the problem that you need to already have a high level of system mastery to sort out the crap from the official stuff, so as an existing player/dm its far easier for me to tell people to stay the hell out of dndwiki, than it is to attempt to explain everything. I tell them to use d20srd instead.

Last I checked all the SRD content is distinguished by prefixing the page title with "SRD:" by I suppose the lack of that on a given page might not be easy for some people to notice.

[Karnith]

Last I checked all the SRD content is distinguished by prefixing the page title with "SRD:" by I suppose the lack of that on a given page might not be easy for some people to notice.
Newer players, or at least the ones I've known, also tend to not know what the SRD is or why it's important, which has caused problems in my group before.

[huttj509]

First off, there's something like 3 different sites with similar urls, all of which are "D&D Wiki."

You have dnd-wiki.org, dandwiki.com, not sure about dungeons.wikia.com, and I think there was another.

They have differing criteria for how they label material, and it's varied (a lot) over the last few years. Some are good, with a nice Homebrew banner, some are not, only set off by the lack of a SRD notice (and expecting new folks to look for something that's not there when new to the site doesn't work).

In fact, from what I remember of the last thread I saw along these lines, part of what caused one of the site forks was specifically labeling/criteria issues, combined with response issues with the site host. It got wonky.

Combine this with (again, to varying degrees over the years), a search for a feat in google might turn up not the SRD page, but a wiki page for someone's hombrew feat of the same name, not clearly labelled as such, leading to issues people had with new players coming in with wonky feats they thought were the actual feat (also wonky classes, races, etc.).

Compound that over the years, and you can see why the mention of any of the wiki sites might draw pained sighs, even if not (or no longer) deserved.

[Werephilosopher]

Why the hell would you use dndwiki for SRD content when the actual SRD is far more reliable?

For me it tends to get top slot on my Google searches for SRD stuff, so for a long time after I started playing I simply didn't know any better.

[Zanos]

There is a large quantity of homebrew on D&D wiki that goes completely unreviewed. I've seen 3.5 classes that don't even have any standard bab/save progression, class features that I couldn't even figure out what the RAI on them was, and there's a player in my caimpaign always requesting unreviewed homebrew from the damn site and then I have to double check everything he sends me because he'll start using something he thinks exists without asking and surprise surprise it's a D&D wiki homebrew item, because nothing is marked well.

Here we have a decent community who peruses the homebrew forums, and will gladly point out ambiguity in it, look for potential exploits, and generally make sure everything is working.

So:
1. No guidelines for homebrew. A lot of it hasn't even been proofread or checked out by the community.
2. Poor tagging of what is and isn't homebrew.

[TypoNinja]

For me it tends to get top slot on my Google searches for SRD stuff, so for a long time after I started playing I simply didn't know any better.

That's cause the wiki has better search engine optimization. When you search say a specific feat, the wiki will have a page named that, while the SRD has a page named "Feats" that contains the text you are searching for.

[dextercorvia]

Why the hell would you use dndwiki for SRD content when the actual SRD is far more reliable?

The actual SRD you refer to is a set of RTF files on Wizard's site. I'm betting you are referring to http://www.d20srd.org/, which states at the bottom that it is independent.

That said, in the past I had much better luck with d20srd than dandwiki, both in being correct to the original source, and in not mixing it with homebrew.

[Prime32]

First off, there's something like 3 different sites with similar urls, all of which are "D&D Wiki."

You have dnd-wiki.org, dandwiki.com, not sure about dungeons.wikia.com, and I think there was another.

They have differing criteria for how they label material, and it's varied (a lot) over the last few years. Some are good, with a nice Homebrew banner, some are not, only set off by the lack of a SRD notice (and expecting new folks to look for something that's not there when new to the site doesn't work).

In fact, from what I remember of the last thread I saw along these lines, part of what caused one of the site forks was specifically labeling/criteria issues, combined with response issues with the site host. It got wonky.dandwiki.com was the first site.
Then there were arguments over the direction of the site, so dungeons.wikia.com was forked off.
Then Wikia changed their structure from "individual wikis for each community, with customisable layouts and features" to "single wiki with different sections for each topic, all with the same layout and basic features only". A lot of communities left when this happened, but Wikia installed new admins for the ones that brought in a lot of traffic.
The most current, well-maintained and clearly-labelled site is dnd-wiki.org

[Talya]

My first encounter with dandwiki was years ago, doing a google search on some feat or class or something on these forums. Google's first link took me to dandwiki, and it was clear the moment I read it that this particular item had nothing to do with what was being discussed here.

Some more detailed research quickly assured me that dandwiki was a poor source for looking up anything.

The problem is, the site does nothing to distinguish homebrew from official content, and the official content it does have is pretty much limited to the SRD. (Ignoring the legalities, we all know several sites that publish everything regardless of SRD status, which make much better indeces for the purpose we need.) This means dandwiki is more of an Internet search pitfall, than it is a resource for anything useful.

[Pan151]

Why the hell would you use dndwiki for SRD content when the actual SRD is far more reliable?

Well

1) Their SRD is fully reliable, in my experience at least (so long as you double, triple and quadruple check that it is actually the SRD, and not part of all the unmarked homebrew that it's mixed with)

2) It has a much better search engine. If, say, I search for the Solar entry, I get links to all creatures with the Outsider type, or Good subtype, or Lawful Subtype, or Angel subtype, or of Large size, and so on and so forth (again, same problems of having to ctrl-F "SRD" at all times apply).

[Karoht]

Because DnDtools.eu is just such a better site.
Search engine actually works, both for quick references and for detailed searches.
Consistent theme and layout makes it easy to find out what source something comes from, even if there are two things from two sources which have the same name (because Wizards was/is too lazy to proof read or even check)
No homebrew, but if it had homebrew it would be cited as such, and would be clearly labelled as homebrew.

Why I dislike DnD wiki?
If I want homebrew, I'm basically asking for someone's fanfic, but of their character. Sometimes there is interesting homebrew, often there just isn't. It also does not help that homebrew on DnD Wiki is poorly written.

"[Name of Feat]
Just like [Name of Similar Feat] but it lets you [include about 5 feats into one feat]"
-No Pre-reqs, available at level 1, (occasionally a class specific mark like Fighter or Monk or Wizard)

I've also seen people cheat using DnD wiki as an excuse.

IE-Pathfinder
In an expressly Pathfinder Only game (no 3.5), our friend showed up with a Gunslinger he made. Now, the blame lays with us and the DM for not fully understanding the Gunslinger class or any of the archetypes. But the class our friend had made was from something he found on DnD wiki, as he had Googled "DnD Gunslinger" and just assumed it was the same thing. At least, we give this person the benefit of the doubt when they say this is what happened, as this player has a long history of cheating.
But it was pretty obvious that something was up when he busted out a 9D8 shot, that he argued he could do on every attack, including Rapid Fire, which the class apparently gave him without needing any of the pre-reqs. At level 3. So we checked the Pathfinder book, sure enough things didn't line up, one hour long argument later, our friend tells us where he got the class info from. We allowed him to remake his character as a Pathfinder Gunslinger (he was incredibly unhappy about this, adding further suspicion that he cheated on purpose), and it was a cautionary lesson regarding DnD Wiki. We pointed everyone at the table at the Pathfinder SRD, stated which books were accepted and which were not, and the problem never came up again.

[LudicSavant]

I personally prefer not to use it, and its SRD tends to be untrustworthy, to say the least, but what is it people hold against the homebrew content, if you check and make sure it isn't broken?

It probably has something to do with the fact that the majority of it that isn't just an inferior version of the d20SRD reads as if it was written with the game design sensibilities of a monkey throwing a bunch of scrabble letters slathered in glue at a wall, then having an average wiki editor give it a once-over for spelling errors before giving it the thumbs up.

But, you know, YMMV.

[137beth]

On the GitP homebrew forums, the good stuff gets the most comments and floats to the top. The really great stuff gets into lots of people's signatures.
The bad stuff either gets buried and "disappears", or the author reads the constructive criticism in the posts and makes changes until it is no longer bad. It's set up so that people see the best stuff more often.
Wikis don't work like that. Constructive criticism gets relegated to talk pages that the author(s) may never see. The pages are indexed in alphabetical order, regardless of quality. The format is not as conducive to promoting good homebrew.

I think another factor is the cyclic nature of reputation. Dandwiki has a reputation for having terrible homebrew and not sorting the good from the bad. As a result, the best homebrew writers don't put their work on dandwiki. They put it here, or on ENWorld, or on dnd-wiki. In turn, that improves the overall quality of homebrew here and on other sites, and reduces the overall quality of dandwiki homebrew...which cements the reputation each site has, completing the cycle.