To paraphrase the words of Emerlist Davjack (60s prog rock pioneers The Nice) “Wikia is pregnant with promises and anticipation, but is murdered by the hand of the inevitable...â€
In most of his dealings with the press it is difficult to see where Wikipedia (and the Wikimedia Foundation) ends and Wikia begins within the mind of Jimbo Wales.
Utilising the same management team, staff and product in Wikia as he does in Wikipedia it would appear that Jimbo is deliberately blurring the lines between the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikia, piggybacking on the "good will" of the non profit organisation for the financial benefit of the for profit company. Business ethics aside, and as someone who projects himself and his projects as an idealistic do-gooder, it is not this that is the biggest concern to the huddled masses who have donated their time for numerous years in what they considered to be their community projects.
As many of you will know over the last few months with Wikia’s Alexa ranking seemingly in freefall the company has resorted to increasingly aggressive behaviour towards the communities whose sites are hosted with them. In an effort to boost its ranking, and therefore its appeal to potential advertisers, Wikia appropriated the traffic from these community sites.
A number of highly visable communities have since sought to remove themselves from the increasingly oppresive Wikia, the TransformersWiki and Illogicopedia have forked, whilst Uncyclopedia, Wookieepedia (Star Wars), WikiFur, Creatures and GuildWar Wikis are all currently discussing the issue of moving. Discussions between representatives of Wikia and the communities are frequently fruitless, something akin to trying to negotiate with religious fanatics. Their language is condescending at best.
So where are the high ideals which Jimbo Wales proudly announces in every interview? Whilst appreciating that Wikia is a commercial venture and therefore needs to be economically viable the level of conflict it has generated in the dealings with the community can only backfire on Wikia, alienating the very people they hope to make money from, losing contributors and therefore the numbers they need to make up for their advertisers.
Moribund
Full Version: Can you show me on the Edit Log where Wikia touched you?
Great post, Moribund. Welcome to the Review.
There are some blog posts and threads about this very matter all over the site, which I'll dig up and edit to this post for future reference when I have a moment.
**UPDATE**
Here are a few I recall to hand.
Seth can be found on the talk page of the Wikia (T-H-L-K-D) article on Wikipedia. And someone left a great Wikia timeline a few weeks back that Seth noticed as well.
June-July 2008:
* Wikia turns the site into an unusable mess of ads, using a forced reskin of wikis which it calls "New Monaco". People begin to leave. By the time The Guardian picks up the story (July 2008), the damage already has been done.
* Wikia's Alexa rank begins to tank by late-June '08 as disgruntled editors leave the site. That distant hope of becoming or remaining one of the largest 300 websites in the world quickly fades to black.
* The suits begin to realise they have a problem as Alexa traffic to other similar sites (such as non-Wikia wikis) is steady while Wikia is dropping like a rock. It's now not just authors but some entire wikis leaving or talking about leaving.
September 2008:
* Wikia takes its frustrations out on communities like en.uncyclopedia.org, redirecting its domain traffic in an attempt to inflate wikia.com's traffic statistics. Alexa stats show traffic counts for en.uncyclopedia.org drop from that of a top-10000 website to basically zero as Wikia appropriates that traffic for its own main domain in late-October.
* en.Uncyclopedia is pushed almost but not quite to the point of getting a backbone, packing up and leaving. As half of the non-English versions are already on co-located servers or hosted independently, the only thing Uncyclopedia is missing should they move en: is the uncyclopedia.org domain name (which one of the co-founders secretly, stupidly sold to Jimbo in July 2006).
October 2008:
* By late October, Wikia is widely reported to be laying off staff - about 10% (3 of its 43 paid worker bees) get the axe.[5][6][7][8] Wikia claims to still be hiring, primarily in sales and marketing, despite the October 20, 2008 layoff announcements.
* At the end of October 2008, a gossip story circulates[9] about why Jimbo Wales was no longer CEO of Wikia as of mid-2006, [10] although a Wikia venture capitalist investor issues a denial that he had been sacked for cause.[11]
November 2008:
* Illogicopedia.org moves off-Wikia in early November. Wikia operates the old wiki as a direct competitor to the new one over the direct objection of its authors and even tries to get the license for new articles on the new wiki changed to GFDL (every scraper site operator's dream) instead of the non-commercial CC-BY-NC-SA which was adopted for new content after transition. Illogicopedians refuse. Wikia staff begin to remove information from the old wiki about the (now-completed) move [12] and even took the +sysop flag away from one user.
* Various other wikis remain in various states of transition, including WikiFur (where all new languages are non-Wikia), or are acquiring domains and web space for an eventual move.
There's a lot of info out there that isn't in this article... and the omissions are glaring. --66.102.80.212 (talk) 18:30, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
There are some blog posts and threads about this very matter all over the site, which I'll dig up and edit to this post for future reference when I have a moment.
**UPDATE**
Here are a few I recall to hand.
- The tight-knit web of Wikimedia and Wikia
- Time to change public opinion of Wikipedia on the link between Wikia and the WMF.
- 50 Ways that connect Wikia/Wikimedia
- The poor launch of Wikia Search
- Wikia's Spanking fetish site
Seth can be found on the talk page of the Wikia (T-H-L-K-D) article on Wikipedia. And someone left a great Wikia timeline a few weeks back that Seth noticed as well.
QUOTE(Anonymous writer on Wikia talk page)
June-July 2008:
* Wikia turns the site into an unusable mess of ads, using a forced reskin of wikis which it calls "New Monaco". People begin to leave. By the time The Guardian picks up the story (July 2008), the damage already has been done.
* Wikia's Alexa rank begins to tank by late-June '08 as disgruntled editors leave the site. That distant hope of becoming or remaining one of the largest 300 websites in the world quickly fades to black.
* The suits begin to realise they have a problem as Alexa traffic to other similar sites (such as non-Wikia wikis) is steady while Wikia is dropping like a rock. It's now not just authors but some entire wikis leaving or talking about leaving.
September 2008:
* Wikia takes its frustrations out on communities like en.uncyclopedia.org, redirecting its domain traffic in an attempt to inflate wikia.com's traffic statistics. Alexa stats show traffic counts for en.uncyclopedia.org drop from that of a top-10000 website to basically zero as Wikia appropriates that traffic for its own main domain in late-October.
* en.Uncyclopedia is pushed almost but not quite to the point of getting a backbone, packing up and leaving. As half of the non-English versions are already on co-located servers or hosted independently, the only thing Uncyclopedia is missing should they move en: is the uncyclopedia.org domain name (which one of the co-founders secretly, stupidly sold to Jimbo in July 2006).
October 2008:
* By late October, Wikia is widely reported to be laying off staff - about 10% (3 of its 43 paid worker bees) get the axe.[5][6][7][8] Wikia claims to still be hiring, primarily in sales and marketing, despite the October 20, 2008 layoff announcements.
* At the end of October 2008, a gossip story circulates[9] about why Jimbo Wales was no longer CEO of Wikia as of mid-2006, [10] although a Wikia venture capitalist investor issues a denial that he had been sacked for cause.[11]
November 2008:
* Illogicopedia.org moves off-Wikia in early November. Wikia operates the old wiki as a direct competitor to the new one over the direct objection of its authors and even tries to get the license for new articles on the new wiki changed to GFDL (every scraper site operator's dream) instead of the non-commercial CC-BY-NC-SA which was adopted for new content after transition. Illogicopedians refuse. Wikia staff begin to remove information from the old wiki about the (now-completed) move [12] and even took the +sysop flag away from one user.
* Various other wikis remain in various states of transition, including WikiFur (where all new languages are non-Wikia), or are acquiring domains and web space for an eventual move.
There's a lot of info out there that isn't in this article... and the omissions are glaring. --66.102.80.212 (talk) 18:30, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the welcome Kato. I'm already familiar with a lot of the information within the talk page of the Wikia article, but its nice to know its not just me that can see what is going on.
I'm a regular contributor on one of those wikis mentioned (though not under this name) and I must say I'm more than shocked with the bullying nature of these people to get their own way. Screw the communities, man, lets just make our dollar! There is one thing that is currently not mentioned on the talk page which is their latest efforts to wring every cent they can which can be seen on a discussion page on Uncyclopedia. It seems as though they are trying to find a loophole on the advertising issue despite the content being released under BY-NC-SA, a non-commercial license.
I'd be interested in everyone's take on this, and what steps could be taken to stop them.
Moribund
I'm a regular contributor on one of those wikis mentioned (though not under this name) and I must say I'm more than shocked with the bullying nature of these people to get their own way. Screw the communities, man, lets just make our dollar! There is one thing that is currently not mentioned on the talk page which is their latest efforts to wring every cent they can which can be seen on a discussion page on Uncyclopedia. It seems as though they are trying to find a loophole on the advertising issue despite the content being released under BY-NC-SA, a non-commercial license.
I'd be interested in everyone's take on this, and what steps could be taken to stop them.
Moribund
Mustn't forget our thread on the layoffs. The original discussion on Uncyclopedia of the subsumation of their domain name into Wikia is here, and a new "Village Dump" thread has been started here which also has some links at the top to related forum/talk pages...
I myself haven't participated in those discussions, though I've been tempted to join in once or twice. Still, I don't know what I'd say - Chronarion's decision to sell the domain name to Jimbo was probably a good one, based on Jimbo's assurances of the site's continued autonomy. Those assurances turned out to be dubious at best, utterly false at worst, but then again money trumps everything.
But once a web-based community loses your domain name to someone who doesn't really have that community's best interests at heart, decline and dissolution are inevitable.
Some of these Wikia sites, including Uncyclopedia, have one or two "Got-My-Own-Server" (GMOS) users who have made standing offers to take over the sites from Wikia and operate them independently, at their own expense, on behalf of those communities. Illogicopedia was one of the smaller ones, apparently run by Hindleyite, who recently registered here at WR. It's probably small enough to run on cheap hosting, but Uncyclopedia is not, IMO.
On Uncyclopedia, the GMOS user is CarlB, who still seems willing to do it, but he hasn't been all that active there recently - other than to participate in the discussions about getting the site away from Wikia.
Part of the problem with a wiki site is that too much effort is expended trying to respect the opinions of people who don't really know what they're talking about (though this could be said of almost any Web 2.0 site to some degree). The objection to CarlB, for example, is that the community wants a "say" in matters of domain administration, and having CarlB take over would give him ultimate power over the site. But to my knowledge at least, there simply is no domain registrar out there that has solved - or even examined - the issue of domains owned by multiple individuals who do not necessarily trust each other. You can have different people assigned to the five roles on a domain ownership record, but ultimately the main registrant has control, and that registrant is always an individual. Even if the registration is made on behalf of a corporate entity, it's still a single individual listed on that record.
So... to me, the decision for Uncyclopedia is basically to let CarlB take over, or continue to get pissed off as Wikia does whatever they want. (See this section of the discussion, in particular..) And again, I'm not sure what I would do, personally, if the decision were mine to make (which it most certainly is not
). I'm not sure freedom from advertising, and having Alexa rankings shown under the original domain name, constitute a sufficient rationale for a major split - along with the promotional effort. I can at least say that Wikipedia Review would switch our links to the new site, but if they want to get decent rankings under another domain, they're going to need that commitment from LOTS of sites, and that's not going to be easy.
QUOTE(Moribund @ Tue 16th December 2008, 6:11pm) 
Screw the communities, man, lets just make our dollar! There is one thing that is currently not mentioned on the talk page which is their latest efforts to wring every cent they can which can be seen on a discussion page on Uncyclopedia...
I myself haven't participated in those discussions, though I've been tempted to join in once or twice. Still, I don't know what I'd say - Chronarion's decision to sell the domain name to Jimbo was probably a good one, based on Jimbo's assurances of the site's continued autonomy. Those assurances turned out to be dubious at best, utterly false at worst, but then again money trumps everything.
But once a web-based community loses your domain name to someone who doesn't really have that community's best interests at heart, decline and dissolution are inevitable.
Some of these Wikia sites, including Uncyclopedia, have one or two "Got-My-Own-Server" (GMOS) users who have made standing offers to take over the sites from Wikia and operate them independently, at their own expense, on behalf of those communities. Illogicopedia was one of the smaller ones, apparently run by Hindleyite, who recently registered here at WR. It's probably small enough to run on cheap hosting, but Uncyclopedia is not, IMO.
On Uncyclopedia, the GMOS user is CarlB, who still seems willing to do it, but he hasn't been all that active there recently - other than to participate in the discussions about getting the site away from Wikia.
Part of the problem with a wiki site is that too much effort is expended trying to respect the opinions of people who don't really know what they're talking about (though this could be said of almost any Web 2.0 site to some degree). The objection to CarlB, for example, is that the community wants a "say" in matters of domain administration, and having CarlB take over would give him ultimate power over the site. But to my knowledge at least, there simply is no domain registrar out there that has solved - or even examined - the issue of domains owned by multiple individuals who do not necessarily trust each other. You can have different people assigned to the five roles on a domain ownership record, but ultimately the main registrant has control, and that registrant is always an individual. Even if the registration is made on behalf of a corporate entity, it's still a single individual listed on that record.
So... to me, the decision for Uncyclopedia is basically to let CarlB take over, or continue to get pissed off as Wikia does whatever they want. (See this section of the discussion, in particular..) And again, I'm not sure what I would do, personally, if the decision were mine to make (which it most certainly is not
). I'm not sure freedom from advertising, and having Alexa rankings shown under the original domain name, constitute a sufficient rationale for a major split - along with the promotional effort. I can at least say that Wikipedia Review would switch our links to the new site, but if they want to get decent rankings under another domain, they're going to need that commitment from LOTS of sites, and that's not going to be easy.
QUOTE(Moribund @ Wed 17th December 2008, 12:11am)
Thanks for the welcome Kato. I'm already familiar with a lot of the information within the talk page of the Wikia article, but its nice to know its not just me that can see what is going on.
You should make yourself familiar with Complaint Wiki (if you haven't already :) ), which is an excellent compilation of the dissatisfaction of the various Wikia communities.
I think though the Spanking Art section should contain links to the threads on WR discussing the subject. It should also be noted that Complaint Wiki site owner also cloned and briefly hosted the Spanking Art wiki before giving in and redirecting to here.
See also the spanking community's spin on the subject.
QUOTE(tarantino @ Tue 16th December 2008, 9:41pm)
See also the spanking community's spin on the subject.
Most of that is reasonably accurate, really, at least the way I see it. The part about their being a "tempting target" due to their having a 4% share of Wikia's traffic is kind of silly, of course, since that would actually have made them an insignificant and therefore non-tempting target... but you have to expect that.
I mean, let's face it - if you can get past the idea that they're all a bunch of weirdos, it's quite understandable that they'd be upset about what happened. After all, having their stuff on Wikia probably did legitimize them to some extent, at least in their estimation... But of course, if you can get past the idea that they're all a bunch of weirdos, you're probably just as weird as they are, eh?
QUOTE(Somey @ Tue 16th December 2008, 10:05pm)
I mean, let's face it - if you can get past the idea that they're all a bunch of weirdos, it's quite understandable that they'd be upset about what happened. After all, having their stuff on Wikia probably did legitimize them to some extent, at least in their estimation... But of course, if you can get past the idea that they're all a bunch of weirdos, you're probably just as weird as they are, eh?
My question: how many Wikipedia bigwigs are represented on this spanking wiki?
QUOTE(Somey @ Wed 17th December 2008, 3:03am)
So... to me, the decision for Uncyclopedia is basically to let CarlB take over, or continue to get pissed off as Wikia does whatever they want. (See this section of the discussion, in particular...) And again, I'm not sure what I would do, personally, if the decision were mine to make (which it most certainly is not
). I'm not sure freedom from advertising, and having Alexa rankings shown under the original domain name, constitute a sufficient rationale for a major split - along with the promotional effort. I can at least say that Wikipedia Review would switch our links to the new site, but if they want to get decent rankings under another domain, they're going to need that commitment from LOTS of sites, and that's not going to be easy.I'm not sure that allowing CarlB to host would provide the level of stability that many of the users would like to see. I'm sure he does a sterling job with all the sites he hosts, now including ?pedia, but to put the future of the site into the hands of one guy with a box seems to me to be as dangerous as handing control to one commercial company with seemingly little redress when they act against the wishes of the community.
If the community was paying for the service, either through Wikia, or A.N.Other hosting company it would be different, and I believe this is a third option that the good folks at Uncyclopedia are currently considering, with or without the support of our evil overlords.
Moribund
Seth Finkelstein: "WikiFur" Escapes From Wikia, Inc.
A Wikia site leaves Wikia:
A Wikia site leaves Wikia:
QUOTE(WikiFur announcement)
To increase revenue, Wikia applied new adverts which intrude into the content area, pushing aside existing content. We believe this significantly detracts from the design of these pages. To date, WikiFur readers have been spared the worst of these - see Wookieepedia (without an ad-blocker) for an example of what it would be like.
QUOTE(Kato @ Tue 1st September 2009, 3:45am)
Seth Finkelstein: "WikiFur" Escapes From Wikia, Inc.
QUOTE(WikiFur announcement)
To increase revenue, Wikia applied new adverts which intrude into the content area, pushing aside existing content. We believe this significantly detracts from the design of these pages. To date, WikiFur readers have been spared the worst of these - see Wookieepedia (without an ad-blocker) for an example of what it would be like.
I just looked at the Star Wars Wikia (not at wookieepedia.com anymore, now it's at starwars.wikia.com) and after disabling all my ad blockers, it comes up about 30% of the space on the top page given over to banner ads. Mostly from our buddies at Doubleclick. (I have to wonder how much $$$ Google is giving Jimbo, to get such friendly preferential service. Google owns Doubleclick. Brandt has been saying for years that WP and Google are extremely intertwined, and as time goes on, he is proven to be correct, over and over.)
Best part: some of the ads still don't display properly in Firefox, even with all adblocking and script blocking shut off.
I find it amusing that this major example of Wikia's failure to keep its communities happy came about by their rejection by furries--some of the freakiest sexual fetishists around. Proof abounds, ask if you wish to see some.
The Furries had one of their major conventions this year in Pittsburgh at the same time Mensa was having its annual gathering there; some observed that this was one of the few times that Mensans were among the more normal people in the city in which they were gathering.
QUOTE(EricBarbour @ Tue 1st September 2009, 10:26pm)
QUOTE(Kato @ Tue 1st September 2009, 3:45am)
Seth Finkelstein: "WikiFur" Escapes From Wikia, Inc.
QUOTE(WikiFur announcement)
To increase revenue, Wikia applied new adverts which intrude into the content area, pushing aside existing content. We believe this significantly detracts from the design of these pages. To date, WikiFur readers have been spared the worst of these - see Wookieepedia (without an ad-blocker) for an example of what it would be like.
I just looked at the Star Wars Wikia (not at wookieepedia.com anymore, now it's at starwars.wikia.com) and after disabling all my ad blockers, it comes up about 30% of the space on the top page given over to banner ads. Mostly from our buddies at Doubleclick. (I have to wonder how much $$$ Google is giving Jimbo, to get such friendly preferential service. Google owns Doubleclick. Brandt has been saying for years that WP and Google are extremely intertwined, and as time goes on, he is proven to be correct, over and over.)
I suspect Wikia has been using their awful, intrusive ads on most of their sites to subsidize their few somewhat successful properties like Uncyclopedia and (now formerly) WikiFur without driving away those sites' users. While the bulk of their "normal" wikis are full of crap content (especially since opening up wiki creation to anyone/anything), those reams of crap content still ranks highly on search engines, and anyone clicking on a link from Google gets a full dose of their ad impressions, even if they're likely to leave immediately. (Hence why they likely didn't care that some of those ads redirected people off-site altogether.) Essentially, most of Wikia is now just a massive link farm.
QUOTE(Krimpet @ Tue 1st September 2009, 10:50pm)
I suspect Wikia has been using their awful, intrusive ads on most of their sites to subsidize their few somewhat successful properties like Uncyclopedia and (now formerly) WikiFur without driving away those sites' users.
I doubt it costs all that much to run Uncyclopedia. The extra money just goes to the management.
QUOTE(Krimpet @ Tue 1st September 2009, 7:50pm)
I suspect Wikia has been using their awful, intrusive ads on most of their sites to subsidize their few somewhat successful properties like Uncyclopedia and (now formerly) WikiFur without driving away those sites' users.
In which case, I can only say: FAIL.
QUOTE
While the bulk of their "normal" wikis are full of crap content (especially since opening up wiki creation to anyone/anything), those reams of crap content still ranks highly on search engines, and anyone clicking on a link from Google gets a full dose of their ad impressions, even if they're likely to leave immediately. (Hence why they likely didn't care that some of those ads redirected people off-site altogether.) Essentially, most of Wikia is now just a massive link farm.
And that's a new idea--it is essentially a Google-blessed link farm. Long has it been alleged that Google went to extra pains, like other search engines, to avoid or minimize the influence of link farms. Yet here they are, running ads on one. So much for the "don't be evil" crap.
Does this mean WP:LINK is now a lie? All that harrumphing about Wikipedia and Wikia being 100% separate seems to be somewhat inaccurate.
I'm still mad at what Wikia did to me years ago. 
You can read about it here:
http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=21261
You can read about it here:
http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=21261
QUOTE(EricBarbour @ Tue 1st September 2009, 9:26pm)
Proof abounds, ask if you wish to see some.
Don't ask, folks. Take his word on this one.
Actually, Google may be (wisely) ignoring Wikia.
Case in point:
Blitzkrieg Wikia page
Google search for key phrase on that page, yielding no matches
Coincidentally, yesterday evening I pulled out the old Powerpoint presentation that I had drafted in response to Wikia hosting the "Spanking Art" wiki, with advertising support from Pizza Hut, Verizon, Bank of America, and others. I think I really did a bang-up job on that piece. Did anyone here see it? (I only disclosed it to a couple of people, treating it like the loaded weapon that it was.) Maybe enough time has passed, and I ought to upload the deck to a willing website, so that folks can at least see how one might organize a powerful consumer boycott of advertisers in order to get a content-hosting site to change policy.
What do you all think?
Greg
Case in point:
Blitzkrieg Wikia page
Google search for key phrase on that page, yielding no matches
Coincidentally, yesterday evening I pulled out the old Powerpoint presentation that I had drafted in response to Wikia hosting the "Spanking Art" wiki, with advertising support from Pizza Hut, Verizon, Bank of America, and others. I think I really did a bang-up job on that piece. Did anyone here see it? (I only disclosed it to a couple of people, treating it like the loaded weapon that it was.) Maybe enough time has passed, and I ought to upload the deck to a willing website, so that folks can at least see how one might organize a powerful consumer boycott of advertisers in order to get a content-hosting site to change policy.
What do you all think?
Greg
QUOTE(thekohser @ Wed 2nd September 2009, 11:43am)
Coincidentally, yesterday evening I pulled out the old Powerpoint presentation that I had drafted in response to Wikia hosting the "Spanking Art" wiki, with advertising support from Pizza Hut, Verizon, Bank of America, and others. I think I really did a bang-up job on that piece. Did anyone here see it? (I only disclosed it to a couple of people, treating it like the loaded weapon that it was.) Maybe enough time has passed, and I ought to upload the deck to a willing website, so that folks can at least see how one might organize a powerful consumer boycott of advertisers in order to get a content-hosting site to change policy.
What do you all think?
Greg
I would like to see it. I want to see what made Wikia squirm.
This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.