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Wikia, Inc.
Wikia logo
Screenshot
Screenshot of Wikia's main page
Type of businessPrivate
Type of site
Wiki hosting service
Available inMultilingual
FoundedOctober 18, 2004; 19 years ago (2004-10-18)
Headquarters
San Francisco, California
,
U.S.
Founder(s)Jimmy Wales
Angela Beesley Starling
PresidentJimmy Wales
CEOCraig Palmer
Products
Employees200 (March 2014)[3]
URLwww.wikia.com
AdvertisingDirect and advertising networks
RegistrationOptional
LaunchedOctober 18, 2004; 19 years ago (2004-10-18)
Current statusActive
Written inPHP

Wikia (formerly Wikicities) is a free wiki hosting service. The site is free of charge,[5] deriving its income from advertising, and publishes most user-provided text under copyleft licenses. Wikia hosts several hundred thousand wikis using the open-source wiki software, MediaWiki. Its operator, Wikia, Inc., is a for-profit Delaware company founded in late 2004[6] by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley Starling—respectively Chairman Emeritus and Advisory Board member of the Wikimedia Foundation—and headed by Craig Palmer as CEO.[7]

History

Wikia was launched on October 18, 2004, under the name "Wikicities" (which invited comparisons to GeoCities),[8] but changed its name to "Wikia" on March 27, 2006.[9] In the month before the move, Wikia announced a US$4 million venture capital investment from Bessemer Venture Partners and First Round Capital.[10] Nine months later, Amazon.com invested US$10 million in Series B funding.[citation needed]

By July 2007, it had more than 3,000 wikis in more than 50 languages.[11] Over time Wikia has incorporated formerly independent wikis that joined Wikia, such as LyricWiki, The Vault, Uncyclopedia and WoWWiki.[12] Gil Penchina described Wikia early on as "the rest of the library and magazine rack" to Wikipedia's encyclopaedia.[13] The material has also been described as informal, and often bordering on entertainment, allowing the importing of maps, YouTube videos, and other non-traditional wiki material.[14]

By 2010, Wikias were able to be created in 188 different languages.[5] In October 2011, Wikia announced that Craig Palmer, the former CEO of Gracenote, would replace Penchina as CEO.[7] On February 8, 2012, co-founder Beesley Starling announced she was leaving Wikia to launch a startup called ChalkDrop.com.[15] At the end of November 2012, it was announced that Wikia had raised another US$10.8 million in Series C funding from Institutional Venture Partners and previous investors Bessemer Ventures Partners and Amazon.com.[16] Another $15 million was raised in August 2014 for Series D funding, with investors Digital Garage, Amazon, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Institutional Venture Partners. The total raised at this point was $39.8 million.[17][18] On March 4, 2015, Wikia announced its appointment of Walker Jacobs, who was the former Executive Vice-President of Turner Broadcasting System, to the new position of Chief Operating Officer.[19] In December 2015, Wikia launched the Fan Contributor Program. On January 25, 2016, Wikia launched a new entertainment news site named Fandom.

Services and features

Wikia communities consist of online encyclopedias, each one specialized in a particular subject or theme. Although Wikia allows almost anything to be the main focus of a wiki, the most common interest of Wikia internauts is in popular fiction franchises of books, films, games and other media, due to the considerable limitation of such detailed information by Wikipedia's notability policies.

The main purpose of articles in a Wikia community is to cover information and discussion on a particular topic in a much greater and more comprehensible detail level than can be found on Wikipedia articles.[20] For example, a minor character in Undertale may have its own article on the Undertale wikia, whereas the character may not be considered notable enough for a Wikipedia page. Also, the writing style is mostly directed to those familiar with specific vocabulary and terminology rather than to the lay and general public of Wikipedia.

Other examples of content that is generally considered beyond the scope of information of Wikipedia articles includes Wikia information about video games and related video game topics, detailed instructions, gameplay details, plot details, and so forth. Gameplay concepts can also have their own articles. Wikia also allows wikis to have a point of view, rather than the neutral POV that is required by Wikipedia (although NPOV is a local policy on many Wikia communities).[citation needed]

Wikia requires all user text content to be published under a free license;[21] most use the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, although Memory Alpha and Uncyclopedia use a noncommercial variant and some use the GNU Free Documentation License.[nb 1][22] Wikia's Terms of Use forbid hate speech, libel, pornography or copyright infringement. Material is allowed, as long as the added material does not duplicate Wikimedia Foundation projects.[23]

The Wikia file store as of June 2011 includes over 8 million files stored on SSD.[24]

As of August 2015, Wikia uses a heavily modified version[25] of MediaWiki software, based on the version 1.19[26] of MediaWiki, which was officially marked as obsolete in May 2015.[27] It has more than 250 extensions installed,[26] most of them created by their staff of developers, to add social features like blogs, chat, badges, forums and multimedia,[28] but also remove features like advanced user options[29][30] or skins other than their default custom skin and Monobook (available only for personal use),[31] which are often used by advanced users but that new users may find confusing.

Questions and answers site

In January 2009, the company created a question and answer website named "Wikianswers".[32] In March 2010, Wikia re-launched "Answers from Wikia", where users could create topic-specialized knowledge market wikis based upon Wikia's own Wikianswers subdomain.[33]

OpenServing

OpenServing was a short-lived Web publishing project owned by Wikia, founded on December 12, 2006,[34][35] and abandoned, unannounced, in January 2008.[36] Like Wikia, OpenServing was to offer free wiki hosting, but it would differ in that each wiki's founder would retain any revenue gained from advertising on the site.[34][37][38] OpenServing used a modified version of the Wikimedia Foundation's MediaWiki software created by ArmchairGM, but was intended to branch out to other open source packages.[34][39]

According to Wikia co-founder and chairman Jimmy Wales, the OpenServing site received several thousand applications in January 2007.[40] However, after a year, no sites had been launched under the OpenServing banner.[36]

ArmchairGM

ArmchairGM was a sports forum and wiki site created by Aaron Wright, Dan Lewis, Robert Lefkowitz and developer David Pean. Launched in early 2006, the site was initially US-based, but sought to improve its links to sports associated with Britain over its first year. Its MediaWiki-based software included a Digg-style article-voting mechanism, blog-like comment forms with "thumbs up/down" user feedback, and the ability to write multiple types of posts (news, opinions, or "locker room" discussion entries).[citation needed]

In late 2006, the site was bought by Wikia for $2 million.[41] After the purchase was made, the former owners applied ArmchairGM's architecture to other Wikia sites.[citation needed] From September 2010 to February 2011, Wikia absorbed the site's encyclopedia articles and blanked all of its old blog entries, effectively discontinuing ArmchairGM in its original form.[citation needed]

Search engines

Wikia, Inc. initially proposed creating a copyleft search engine; the software (but not the site) was named "Wikiasari" by a November 2004 naming contest.[nb 2] The proposal became inactive in 2005.[citation needed] The "public alpha" of Wikia Search web search engine was launched on January 7, 2008,[citation needed] from the USSHC underground data center.[42] This roll-out version of the search interface was roundly panned by reviewers in technology media.[43] The project was ended in March 2009.[44] Late in 2009, a new search engine was established to index and display results from all sites hosted on Wikia.[citation needed]

Controversy

Wikia communities have complained of inappropriate advertisements, or advertising in the body text area.[45] There is no easy way for individual communities to switch to conventional paid hosting, as Wikia usually owns the relevant domain names. If a community leaves Wikia for new hosting, the company typically continues to operate the abandoned wiki using its original name and content, adversely affecting the new wiki's search rankings, for advertising revenue.[46]

Domain and skin assimilation

Wikia has sometimes expanded by acquiring an existing wiki's domain name, user lists, and databases, from a founder or co-founder in return for money and stock options.[47] The original wiki is then shut down without consulting its editors or wider community, and the domain redirected to Wikia's version of the project. In the case of the acquisitions of uncyclopedia.org from Jonathan Huang in July 2006,[48] gamewikis.org from Phil Nelson in October 2007, and memory-alpha.org from Harry Doddema and Dan Carlson in January 2008,[49] the content was under a non-commercial license.

In June 2008, Wikia adopted a new skin, Monaco, intending to implement it as the default on almost all hosted wikis.[50] Many wiki users felt the choice of skin default should remain their own. The switch went ahead, but some wikis retained Monobook as their default. In September 2008, the Transformers Wiki moved content to their own server, citing the format-altering ads and mandatory changes as reasons for their departure.[51][52] WikiFur moved likewise in August 2009;[53] the Nethack wiki moved in November 2010,[54] and the Doom wiki in September 2011.[55]

In May 2009, Wikia removed the ability of individual users to choose a skin other than Monaco or Monobook, claiming a testing burden and relative lack of features. Soon after, Wikia removed the option to set the default skin to Monobook, with the exception of certain large wikis, namely, Uncyclopedia.[56]

Relationship with Wikipedia

Wikia has been accused of unduly profiting from a perceived association with Wikipedia.[57][58] Although Wikia has been referred to in the media as "the commercial counterpart to the non-profit Wikipedia",[59][60] Wikimedia[61] and Wikia staff[62] call this description inaccurate.

In 2006, the Wikimedia Foundation shared hosting and bandwidth costs with Wikia, and received some donated office space from Wikia during the fiscal year ending June 30, 2006. At the end of fiscal year 2007, Wikia owed the Foundation US$6,000. In June 2007, two members of the Foundation's Board of Directors also served as employees, officers, or directors of Wikia.[63] In January 2009, Wikia subleased two conference rooms to the Wikimedia Foundation for the Wikipedia Usability Initiative.[64] According to a 2009 email by Erik Möller, deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation:

We obtained about a dozen bids...We used averaging as a way to arrive at a fair market rate to neither advantage nor disadvantage Wikia when suggesting a rate. The averaging also resulted in a rate that was roughly equivalent to the most comparable space in the running.[65]

Wikia, Inc.

Wikia and Wired Building location, partially obstructed by some overhead lines
Wikia and Wired flags

Wikia, Inc. is based in San Francisco, California.[66] The company was incorporated in Florida in December 2004 and re-incorporated in Delaware as Wikia, Inc. on January 10, 2006.[citation needed]

Wikia has technical staff in the US, but also has an office in Poznań, Poland, where the primary engineering functions are performed.[11]

Wikia derives income from advertising. The company initially used Google AdSense,[67] but moved on to Federated Media before bringing ad management in-house.[68] Alongside Wikia's in-house advertising they continue to use Adsense as well as Amazon Ads and several other third party advertising services. Wikia additionally gains income from various partnerships revolved around advertising, and its data collection services, based on its Wikia Fan Studio and its API.

Wikia provides data collection services and feedback based on the content of its wiki's and interaction from the user fanbase, directly from Wikia, from their API and their fanstudio.

Wikia has several other offices,[69] international operations are based in Germany, Asian operations and sales are conducted in Tokyo, other sales offices are located in Chicago, Latin America, Los Angeles (marketing programming), New York and London.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Most content on Wikia was licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License until June 19, 2009, at which point most wikis were relicensed to CC BY-SA.
  2. ^ The name was derived from the Hawaiian word for "quick" and asari, Japanese for "rummaging search".[citation needed]

References

  1. ^ "Media kit". Wikia.
  2. ^ "Wikia API Wiki". api.wikia.com.
  3. ^ Wikia, Inc. "Wikia, Inc". Retrieved March 31, 2014.
  4. ^ "Wikia.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved August 2, 2015.
  5. ^ a b John K Waters and John Lester (2010). The Everything Guide to Social Media: All you need to know about participating in today's most popular online communities. Adams Media. p. 171. Retrieved September 17, 2014.
  6. ^ Pink, Daniel H. (March 13, 2005). "The Book Stops Here". Wired (13.03). Retrieved August 1, 2007.
  7. ^ a b Marlowe, C. (October 13, 2011). "Wikia names ex-Gracenote Craig Palmer as CEO". Digital Media Wire. Retrieved October 16, 2011.
  8. ^ Gussow, Dave (April 4, 2005). "Global villages convene in wiki town halls". St. Petersburg Times.
  9. ^ Pete Cashmore (March 28, 2006). Mashable (ed.). "Wikia - Build Your Own Wiki". Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  10. ^ Hinman, Michael (March 10, 2006). "Venture capitalists invest wiki-millions". Tampa Bay Business Journal. Retrieved March 10, 2006.
  11. ^ a b Shannon, Victoria (September 28, 2006). "Wikipedia Founder Staffs For Profit Wikia Spinoff". International Herald Tribune. Archived from the original on October 21, 2006. Retrieved October 28, 2006. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  12. ^ Warschauer, Mark; Grimes, Douglas (2007). "Audience, Authorship, and Artifact: The emergent semiotics of Web 2.0". Annual Review of Applied Linguistics. 27: 1–23. doi:10.1017/S0267190508070013.
  13. ^ Matthew Barton and Robert Cummings (2009). Wiki Writing: Collaborative Learning in the College Classroom. University of Michigan Press. p. 14. Retrieved September 17, 2014.
  14. ^ The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success. John Wiley & Sons. 2010. p. 491. Retrieved September 18, 2014.
  15. ^ http://community.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Angela/Leaving_Wikia
  16. ^ Friday, November 30th, 2012 (November 30, 2012). "With 1B Pageviews Under Its Belt, UGC Giant Wikia Raises $10.8M From IVP, Bessemer & Amazon". TechCrunch. Retrieved December 10, 2012.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  17. ^ Dan Primack (August 28, 2014). "Term Sheet -- Thursday, August 28". Fortune Magazine. Retrieved September 18, 2014.
  18. ^ Ingrid Lunden (August 27, 2014). "User-Generated Content Portal Wikia Raises Another $15M To Crack Into Asia". TechCrunch. Retrieved September 18, 2014.
  19. ^ PRNewswire (March 4, 2015). "Wikia Appoints Walker Jacobs Chief Operating Officer". PR Newswire. PR Newswire Association LLC. Retrieved August 17, 2015.
  20. ^ McNichol, Tom (March 2007). "With Wikia, a Wikipedia founder looks to strike it rich". Business 2.0 Magazine. Retrieved June 24, 2008.
  21. ^ "Wikia:Licensing". Retrieved February 9, 2010.
  22. ^ Beesley Starling, Angela. "Licensing update June 19, 2009". Retrieved February 9, 2010.
  23. ^ "Wikia:Creation policy". Retrieved February 9, 2010.
  24. ^ Bergman, Artur (June 16, 2011). "Artur Bergman (Wikia) on SSDs". O'Reilly Media. Retrieved June 17, 2011.
  25. ^ Garczewski, Lucas (June 12, 2012). "MediaWiki Upgrade". Community Central Wikia. Retrieved August 4, 2015.
  26. ^ a b "Version information". Community Central Wikia.
  27. ^ "End of life announcement - 1.19.x LTS". mediawiki-announce mailing list archive.
  28. ^ "Tour of Wikia Features". Community Central Wikia. Retrieved August 4, 2015.
  29. ^ "What happened to thumbnail image size in my preferences?". Community Central Wikia. Retrieved August 4, 2015.
  30. ^ "UserPreferencesV2 extension code". GitHub code repository. Retrieved August 4, 2015.
  31. ^ "Wikia's new look - FAQ". Community Central Wikia. September 15, 2010. Retrieved August 4, 2015.
  32. ^ Schonfeld, Erick (January 31, 2009). "Jimmy Wales Quietly Launches Wikianswers". Techcrunch.com. Retrieved July 17, 2009.
  33. ^ "''Free wiki hosting company Wikia to let you create your own question and answer sites''". Digital.venturebeat.com. Retrieved December 3, 2011.
  34. ^ a b c "Wikipedia founder remakes Web-publishing economics". Reuters/USA Today. December 12, 2006. Retrieved October 4, 2007.
  35. ^ "Wikia Announces Free Wiki Hosting". TechCrunch. December 11, 2006.
  36. ^ a b "Wikia's OpenServing Project Dies a Quiet Death". Mars Magazine. October 10, 2007.
  37. ^ "Wikipedia to share collaborative software". Daily Times. December 18, 2006. Retrieved May 28, 2014.
  38. ^ "Wikia Unveils OpenServing - the Mother of All Freebies". Business Wire. December 11, 2006.
  39. ^ "Wikipedia founder to share collaborative software". AFP. December 2006. [dead link]
  40. ^ "Wikis can succeed on newspaper sites, claims Wikipedia founder". Online Journalism News, Journalism.co.uk. January 19, 2007. Retrieved October 4, 2007.
  41. ^ Blitstein, Ryan (December 6, 2006). "Amazon puts faith – and money – in Wikia". MercuryNews.com. Archived from the original on January 5, 2007. Retrieved February 18, 2007.
  42. ^ Rich Miller. "Wikia Search Launches From Iowa Data Bunker". Data Center Knowledge.
  43. ^ Manjoo, Farhad (January 7, 2008). "Wikipedia founder's search engine gets bad reviews". Salon.com. Retrieved January 7, 2008.
  44. ^ Needleman, Rafe (March 31, 2009). "Wales giving up on Wikia Search". Webware. CNet. Retrieved July 17, 2009.
  45. ^ Finkelstein, Seth (September 25, 2008). "Read me first: Wikipedia isn't about human potential, whatever Wales says". The Guardian. London.
  46. ^ Finkelstein, Seth (July 31, 2008). "How will Wikia cope when the workers all quit the plantation?". The Guardian. London.
  47. ^ "GuildWiki: Wikia Move". GuildWiki. Retrieved October 20, 2007.
  48. ^ "Announcement: Wikia & Uncyclopedia". Uncyclopedia. July 10, 2006.
  49. ^ "Wikia now owns memory-alpha.org". Memory Alpha. February 8, 2015.
  50. ^ Wikia, Inc. (June 17, 2008). "Wikia's New Style". Retrieved June 20, 2009.
  51. ^ "How will Wikia cope when the workers all quit the plantation?" @ guardian.co.uk
  52. ^ "Teletraan-1 Wikia moves to TFWiki.net" press release
  53. ^ Laurence Parry (August 17, 2009). "English WikiFur moved to en.wikifur.com". WikiFur News. Retrieved May 11, 2011.
  54. ^ "Template:News". Nethack Wiki. January 16, 2013. Retrieved February 26, 2013.
  55. ^ "Doom Wiki:Departure from Wikia". January 20, 2012. Retrieved February 26, 2013.
  56. ^ "Forum:Changes to skin preferences". May 19, 2009. Retrieved February 9, 2010.
  57. ^ "Wikipedia: Special Treatment for Wikia and some other Wikis". TechCrunch. April 28, 2007.
  58. ^ "Living in the Digital Age - Shift - DW (Arabia) - 25.09.12 - DW.DE". DW.DE.
  59. ^ "Wikipedia founder says to challenge Google, Yahoo". Reuters. March 9, 2007.
  60. ^ "Community websites take wiki path". BBC News. BBC. December 12, 2006.
  61. ^ "Wikia, Inc. is not the commercial counterpart to Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation". Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved February 26, 2008.
  62. ^ "Wikimedia". Wikia, Inc. Retrieved February 9, 2010.
  63. ^ Wikimedia Foundation 2006-2007 Audit page 9 says "The Organization shared hosting and bandwidth costs with Wikia, Inc., a for-profit company founded by the same founder as Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Included in accounts receivable at June 30, 2007, is $6,000 due from Wikia, Inc. for these costs. The Organization received some donated office space from Wikia Inc. during the year ended June 30, 2006, valued at $6,000. No donation of the office space occurred in 2007. Through June 30, 2007, two members of the Organization’s board of directors also serve as employees, officers, or directors of Wikia, Inc."
  64. ^ "A note on the Wikipedia Usability Initiative". Blog.wikimedia.org. January 21, 2009. Retrieved July 17, 2009.
  65. ^ "Foundaion-l: Wikia leasing office space to WMF". Lists.wikimedia.org. January 23, 2009. Retrieved July 17, 2009.
  66. ^ "San Mateo-Based Wikia Lands Investment from Amazon.com". Silicon Valley Wire. December 6, 2006. Retrieved March 8, 2007.; California Business Portal, Agent for service of process address; Go Daddy, Registered domain address.
  67. ^ Lashinksy, Adam; Scott, Jagon (August 30, 2006). "For-profit wiki". Marketplace. Retrieved June 19, 2009.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  68. ^ "Advertising on Wikia". January 8, 2008. Retrieved February 9, 2010.
  69. ^ "About". Wikia. Wikia Incorporated. Retrieved June 15, 2014.

External links

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