Wikia
Encyclopedia
Wikia is a free web hosting service
for wiki
s (or wiki farm). It is normally free of charge for readers and editors, deriving most of its income from advertising, and publishes all 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 by Jimmy Wales
and Angela Beesley
— respectively Chairman Emeritus and Advisory Board member of the Wikimedia Foundation
— and headed by Craig Palmer as CEO.
), but changed its name to "Wikia" on March 27, 2006, saying that "the name Wikicities has often caused confusion, with many people believing it was a site for city guides rather than wikis about any topic." In the month before the move, Wikia announced a US$
4 million venture capital
investment from Bessemer Venture Partners
and First Round Capital
. Nine months later, Amazon.com
invested US$10 million in Series B funding, with senior VP of business development
Jeff Blackburn joining the company board.
In November 2006, Wikia claimed to have spent only $5.74 on marketing, while generating 40 to 50 million page view
s. The company later spent $2 million to purchase ArmchairGM, a sports forum and wiki, previously an independently hosted site.
Wikia announced the creation of its hundredth wiki on February 3, 2005. As of July 2007, it had over 3,000 wikis in over 50 languages. Wikia's growth stems not only from wikis founded on Wikia, but also from incorporating formerly independent wikis that joined Wikia over time, such as LyricWiki
, The Vault
, Uncyclopedia
and WoWWiki
.
On April 7, 2010, Wikia announced the creation of its 100,000th wiki. In May 2010, the company offered the removal of external ads (though not internal promotions) for a fee, but only for wikis with fewer than 20,000 page-views per month.
is allowed, as long as it does not duplicate Wikimedia Foundation projects. Many hosted wikis follow the style of Wikipedia
, but offer detail beyond what is considered appropriate for a general encyclopedia. For example, a minor character in a Star Wars
film may have its own article on Wookieepedia
. Another example is that content that is generally considered beyond the scope of information of Wikipedia articles on video games and related video game topics, such as detailed instructions, gameplay details, plot details, and so forth, are offered on video game related wikis hosted by Wikia. Gameplay concepts can also have their own articles. Wikia also allows wikis to have a point of view, rather than the neutral POV on Wikipedia. However, many wikis choose to follow a neutral point of view policy regardless.
Wikia requires all user text content to be published under a free license; 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
.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.
and similar ventures. In January 2009, the company relaunched this effort, which used the name "Wikianswers", which drew criticism from Answers.com
, which had a preexisting site called WikiAnswers
. Answers.com CEO Bob Rosenschein
stated, "Wikia is creating market confusion by associating its Q&A category with our market-leading WikiAnswers domain and site."
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.
's MediaWiki
software created by ArmchairGM, but was intended to branch out to other open source packages.
According to Wikia co-founder and chairman Jimmy Wales
, the OpenServing site received several thousand applications in January 2007. However, after a year, no sites had been launched under the OpenServing banner. Angela Beesley, a co-founder and vice president of Community at Wikia described OpenServing as "never very popular or successful", and said Wikia's efforts had been refocused on wikia.com, to which openserving.com redirects.
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).
In late 2006, the site was bought by Wikia for $2 million. After the purchase was made, the former owners applied ArmchairGM's architecture to other Wikia sites.
For Super Bowl XLI
, the site made charity donations for every comment posted. The main hub of this commenting was in a live blog. An ArmchairGM contributor operating under the pseudonym Manny Stiles auctioned his blogging services on eBay
in early 2007. Tampa Bay Devil Rays President Matt Silverman bought the 33-year-old blogger's work for $535, before adding another $1000. The money went to AIDS
awareness.
On March 20, 2008, Sports Illustrated
added a section to their website called the SI Vault Wiki, pointing to the ArmchairGM encyclopedia.
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.
On August 1, 2011, ArmchairGM's codebase was open-sourced.
on Linux
(Red Hat
, Debian
and Ubuntu
) servers. The Wikia file store as of June 2011 includes over 8 million files stored on SSD
.
search engine
; the software (but not the site) was named "Wikiasari" by a November 2004 naming contest.The name was derived from the Hawaiian word for "quick" and asari, Japanese for "rummaging search". The proposal became inactive in 2005.
The project was ended in March 2009.
, US
The company was originally incorporated
in Florida
in December 2004 and re-incorporated in Delaware
as Wikia, Inc. on January 10, 2006.
Angela Beesley has served since the beginning as Wikia's Vice-President
of Community Relations. Gil Penchina
, a previous angel investor
and former vice president and general manager
at eBay
, was hired as CEO
on June 5, 2006. Michael E. Davis, a former business partner
of Wales who served for years as a founding member of the Wikimedia Foundation
board and was that organization's Treasurer
, was named Treasurer and Secretary
of Wikia in January 2006.
In October 2011, Wikia announced that Craig Palmer, the former CEO of Gracenote
, would replace Penchina as CEO, and that Jennifer Betka would commence in the new position of senior vice president of marketing.
Wikia has technical staff in the USA, but also has an office in Poznań
, Poland
, in 2006. Explaining his choice of location, Wales commented "It's about reasonable salaries and high quality. You can find cheaper programmers in other parts of the world, but the quality's not there!"
Wikia derives income from advertising. The company initially used Google AdSense, but moved on to Federated Media before bringing ad management in-house.
.org from Jonathan Huang in July 2006 and gamewikis.org from Phil Nelson in October 2007 the content was under a non-commercial license, raising the question of whether the wikis could legitimately be sold to Wikia for commercial use. In 2009, Wikia added an extension where users could create magazines of content pages, through partner MagCloud
; however, this was not disabled on wikis with a "Noncommercial" clause on their license, which would break the license.
Once on Wikia, wiki communities have complained of inappropriate advertisements, or advertising in the body text area. 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.
. Although Wikia has been referred to in the media as "the commercial counterpart to the non-profit Wikipedia", Wikimedia and Wikia staff 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. As of June 2007, two members of the Foundation's Board of Directors
also served as employees, officers, or directors of Wikia. In January 2009, Wikia subleased two conference rooms to the Wikimedia Foundation for the Wikipedia Usability Initiative. According to a 2009 email by Erik Möller, deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation, bid averaging was used "as a way to arrive at a fair market rate".
, to subdomain
s of wikia.com against contributors' wishes, citing a need to boost its attractiveness to advertisers. The company intended to merge Memory Alpha, WoWWiki, and Zelda Wiki in a similar fashion; the proposal was successfully opposed by users of all three sites. Zelda Wiki is still an independent wiki, while WoWWiki
and Memory Alpha were merged but allowed to keep their domain names.
In June 2008, Wikia adopted a new skin, Monaco, intending to implement it as the default on almost all hosted wikis. The skin had an uneven reception, with issues over the prominent branding, in-content format-altering ads, and the mandatory nature of the change. 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 Wikia moved content to their own server, citing the format-altering ads and mandatory changes as reasons for their departure. WikiFur moved likewise in August 2009.
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.
In August 2010, Wikia announced a new mandatory skin change, this time to a new look nicknamed "Oasis". The new skin omitted several features, such as the popular shoutbox. On September 23, 2010, Wikia introduced the new skin in public beta with the option to be the default skin for certain wikis, like Muppet Wiki. Wikia also revealed the official name of the new skin, Wikia. The Wikia skin became the default skin on Wikia on November 3, 2010. Wikia also changed the Terms of Use
, prohibiting any modification that changes the default layout of the skin. As a result of the skin change, some users have proposed to move their wikis to another wiki farm
and have created an "Anti-Wikia Alliance" with comments against the new skin, links to wiki farms and a database to keep all the moving wikis. Some wikis, like Guildwiki, have moved from Wikia to Curse.com, but decided to leave a presence on Wikia, but with a different purpose from their main site on a new host. Some large wikis like Halopedia, Club Penguin Wiki, WikiSimpsons and Grand Theft Wiki have already moved, while others such as MicroWiki, SmashWiki, WoWWiki
, The Vault
, and Touhou Wiki have all moved from Wikia also. The new look has been described by Wikia as "sleek" and is supposed to be helpful to new users, but many of the changes have drawn criticism from older users. One such criticism is the greatly reduced width of page content, causing infoboxes and other templates to break the page if they go beyond the fixed margin. Because of this, subdomains such as Marvel Database and DozerfleetWiki have put notices on their front pages strongly encouraging users to switch their personal preferences to Monobook to make the sites easier to use.
Free web hosting service
A free web hosting service is a web hosting service that is free, usually advertisement-supported.Free web hosts will usually provide a subdomain or a directory . In contrast, paid web hosts will usually provide a second-level domain along with the hosting...
for wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
s (or wiki farm). It is normally free of charge for readers and editors, deriving most of its income from advertising, and publishes all user-provided text under copyleft
Copyleft
Copyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work...
licenses. Wikia hosts several hundred thousand wikis using the open-source wiki software
Wiki software
Wiki software is collaborative software that runs a wiki, i.e., a website that allows users to create and collaboratively edit web pages via a web browser. A wiki system is usually a web application that runs on one or more web servers...
MediaWiki
MediaWiki
MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...
. Its operator, Wikia, Inc., is a for-profit Delaware company
Delaware corporation
The Delaware General Corporation Law is the statute governing corporate law in the state of Delaware. Delaware is well known as a corporate haven. Over 50% of U.S...
founded in late 2004 by Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales is an American Internet entrepreneur best known as a co-founder and promoter of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Wikia company....
and Angela Beesley
Angela Beesley Starling
Angela Beesley Starling is a co-founder of Wikia, and its vice president for community relations. Involved in Wikipedia since 2003, Beesley was elected to the Board of Trustees of the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation in 2004, and re-elected in 2005...
— respectively Chairman Emeritus and Advisory Board member of the Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an American non-profit charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States, and organized under the laws of the state of Florida, where it was initially based...
— and headed by Craig Palmer as CEO.
History
Wikia spent over a year going by the name "Wikicities "(inviting comparisons to GeoCitiesGeoCities
Yahoo! GeoCities is a web hosting service, currently available only in Japan.GeoCities was originally founded by David Bohnett and John Rezner in late 1994 as Beverly Hills Internet . In its original form, site users selected a "city" in which to place their web pages...
), but changed its name to "Wikia" on March 27, 2006, saying that "the name Wikicities has often caused confusion, with many people believing it was a site for city guides rather than wikis about any topic." In the month before the move, Wikia announced a US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
4 million venture capital
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
investment from Bessemer Venture Partners
Bessemer Venture Partners
Bessemer Venture Partners is a private venture capital firm with offices in Silicon Valley, New York, Massachusetts, Israel, China, and India.Bessemer Venture Partners is the longest-standing venture capital practice in the United States...
and First Round Capital
First Round Capital
First Round Capital is a venture capital firm that specializes in providing seed-stage funding to technology companies. Managed by Josh Kopelman, Chris Fralic, Rob Hayes and Howard L. Morgan, the Philadelphia-based company typically provides seed-stage investment that ranges from $250,000 to $500,000...
. Nine months later, Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
invested US$10 million in Series B funding, with senior VP of business development
Business development
A subset of the field of commerce, business development comprises a number of techniques and responsibilities which aim at:1. Researching new types of business/products/services with an emphasis on identifying gaps in the mitigation of needs of potential clients .2. Attracting new customers3...
Jeff Blackburn joining the company board.
In November 2006, Wikia claimed to have spent only $5.74 on marketing, while generating 40 to 50 million page view
Page view
A page view or page impression is a request to load a single HTML file of an Internet site. On the World Wide Web a 'page' request would result from a web surfer clicking on a link on another 'page' pointing to the 'page' in question. This should be contrasted with a hit, which refers to a...
s. The company later spent $2 million to purchase ArmchairGM, a sports forum and wiki, previously an independently hosted site.
Wikia announced the creation of its hundredth wiki on February 3, 2005. As of July 2007, it had over 3,000 wikis in over 50 languages. Wikia's growth stems not only from wikis founded on Wikia, but also from incorporating formerly independent wikis that joined Wikia over time, such as LyricWiki
LyricWiki
LyricWiki is a lyrical database-oriented website. As of August 2011, it is the fourth largest MediaWiki installation with over 1,600,000 pages. Users on the site can view, edit, and discuss the lyrics of songs, which are also available for purchase from links on the site. The site is powered by...
, The Vault
The Vault (wiki)
-External links:* *...
, Uncyclopedia
Uncyclopedia
Uncyclopedia is a satirical website that parodies Wikipedia. Founded in 2005 as an originally English-language wiki, the project currently spans over 75 languages...
and WoWWiki
WoWWiki
- External links :*...
.
On April 7, 2010, Wikia announced the creation of its 100,000th wiki. In May 2010, the company offered the removal of external ads (though not internal promotions) for a fee, but only for wikis with fewer than 20,000 page-views per month.
Topics and wikis
Wikia covers a broad range of topics; almost any project not founded on hate, libel, pornography or copyright infringementCopyright infringement
Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.- "Piracy" :...
is allowed, as long as it does not duplicate Wikimedia Foundation projects. Many hosted wikis follow the style of Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
, but offer detail beyond what is considered appropriate for a general encyclopedia. For example, a minor character in a Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
film may have its own article on Wookieepedia
Wookieepedia
Wookieepedia, the Star Wars Wiki is an online encyclopedia for information on the Star Wars fictional universe—including information on all six films, as well as The Clone Wars and the Expanded Universe...
. Another example is that content that is generally considered beyond the scope of information of Wikipedia articles on video games and related video game topics, such as detailed instructions, gameplay details, plot details, and so forth, are offered on video game related wikis hosted by Wikia. Gameplay concepts can also have their own articles. Wikia also allows wikis to have a point of view, rather than the neutral POV on Wikipedia. However, many wikis choose to follow a neutral point of view policy regardless.
Wikia requires all user text content to be published under a free license; most use the Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons...
Attribution-ShareAlike license, although Memory Alpha
Memory Alpha
Memory Alpha is a wiki that is an encyclopedic reference for topics related to the Star Trek fictional universe. Conceived by Harry Doddema and Dan Carlson in September 2003 and officially launched on December 5 of that year, it uses the wiki model and is hosted by Wikia, Inc. on the MediaWiki...
and Uncyclopedia
Uncyclopedia
Uncyclopedia is a satirical website that parodies Wikipedia. Founded in 2005 as an originally English-language wiki, the project currently spans over 75 languages...
use a noncommercial variant and some use the GNU Free Documentation License
GNU Free Documentation License
The GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and...
.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.
Questions and answers site
Wikia has struggled several times to open a question-and-answer site akin to Google AnswersGoogle Answers
Google Answers was an online knowledge market offered by Google that allowed users to post bounties for well researched answers to their queries. Asker-accepted answers cost $2 to $200. Google retained 25% of the researcher's reward and a 50 cent fee per question. In addition to the researcher's...
and similar ventures. In January 2009, the company relaunched this effort, which used the name "Wikianswers", which drew criticism from Answers.com
Answers.com
Answers.com is an Internet-based knowledge exchange, which includes WikiAnswers, ReferenceAnswers, VideoAnswers, and five international language Q&A communities. The Answers.com domain name was purchased by Bill Gross and Henrik Jones at idealab in 1996. The domain name was acquired by NetShepard...
, which had a preexisting site called WikiAnswers
WikiAnswers
WikiAnswers is an ad-supported wiki-based website where users can submit and answer questions.This site allows users to post and edit questions and answers. WikiAnswers.com uses wiki technology and fundamentals, allowing communal ownership and editing of content. Each question has a "living"...
. Answers.com CEO Bob Rosenschein
Bob Rosenschein
Bob Rosenschein is the founder and was CEO and chairman of Answers.com, formerly GuruNet, until May 2011, when it was bought by Summit Partner's AFCV Holdings for $127 MM ....
stated, "Wikia is creating market confusion by associating its Q&A category with our market-leading WikiAnswers domain and site."
In March 2010, Wikia re-launched "Answers from Wikia", where users could create topic-specialized knowledge market
Knowledge market
A knowledge market is a mechanism for distributing knowledge resources. There are two views on knowledge and how knowledge markets can function. One view uses a legal construct of intellectual property to make knowledge a typical scarce resource, so the traditional commodity market mechanism can be...
wikis based upon Wikia's own Wikianswers subdomain.
OpenServing
OpenServing was a short-lived Web publishing project owned by Wikia, founded on December 12, 2006, and abandoned, unannounced, in January 2008. 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. OpenServing used a modified version of the Wikimedia FoundationWikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an American non-profit charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States, and organized under the laws of the state of Florida, where it was initially based...
's MediaWiki
MediaWiki
MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...
software created by ArmchairGM, but was intended to branch out to other open source packages.
According to Wikia co-founder and chairman Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales is an American Internet entrepreneur best known as a co-founder and promoter of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Wikia company....
, the OpenServing site received several thousand applications in January 2007. However, after a year, no sites had been launched under the OpenServing banner. Angela Beesley, a co-founder and vice president of Community at Wikia described OpenServing as "never very popular or successful", and said Wikia's efforts had been refocused on wikia.com, to which openserving.com redirects.
ArmchairGM
ArmchairGM was a sports forum and wikiWiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...
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
Digg
Digg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...
-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).
In late 2006, the site was bought by Wikia for $2 million. After the purchase was made, the former owners applied ArmchairGM's architecture to other Wikia sites.
For Super Bowl XLI
Super Bowl XLI
Super Bowl XLI was an American football game that featured the American Football Conference champion Indianapolis Colts and the National Football Conference champion Chicago Bears to decide the National Football League champion for the 2006 season...
, the site made charity donations for every comment posted. The main hub of this commenting was in a live blog. An ArmchairGM contributor operating under the pseudonym Manny Stiles auctioned his blogging services on eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
in early 2007. Tampa Bay Devil Rays President Matt Silverman bought the 33-year-old blogger's work for $535, before adding another $1000. The money went to AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
awareness.
On March 20, 2008, Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...
added a section to their website called the SI Vault Wiki, pointing to the ArmchairGM encyclopedia.
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.
On August 1, 2011, ArmchairGM's codebase was open-sourced.
Software and hardware
Wikia runs a modified version of MediaWikiMediaWiki
MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...
on Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
(Red Hat
Red Hat
Red Hat, Inc. is an S&P 500 company in the free and open source software sector, and a major Linux distribution vendor. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina with satellite offices worldwide....
, Debian
Debian
Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...
and Ubuntu
Ubuntu (operating system)
Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...
) servers. The Wikia file store as of June 2011 includes over 8 million files stored on SSD
Solid-state drive
A solid-state drive , sometimes called a solid-state disk or electronic disk, is a data storage device that uses solid-state memory to store persistent data with the intention of providing access in the same manner of a traditional block i/o hard disk drive...
.
Wikiasari
Wikia Inc. initially proposed creating a copyleftCopyleft
Copyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to offer the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work...
search engine
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...
; the software (but not the site) was named "Wikiasari" by a November 2004 naming contest.The name was derived from the Hawaiian word for "quick" and asari, Japanese for "rummaging search". The proposal became inactive in 2005.
Search Wikia
The "public alpha" of Wikia Search web search engine was launched on January 7, 2008, from the USSHC underground data center. This roll-out version of the search interface was roundly panned by reviewers in technology media.The project was ended in March 2009.
Current search engine
Late in 2009, a new search engine was established to index and display results from all sites hosted on Wikia.Company
Wikia, Inc. is based in San Francisco (500 Third Street, SoMa district), CaliforniaCalifornia
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, US
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
The company was originally incorporated
Incorporation (business)
Incorporation is the forming of a new corporation . The corporation may be a business, a non-profit organisation, sports club, or a government of a new city or town...
in Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
in December 2004 and re-incorporated in Delaware
Delaware
Delaware is a U.S. state located on the Atlantic Coast in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It is bordered to the south and west by Maryland, and to the north by Pennsylvania...
as Wikia, Inc. on January 10, 2006.
Angela Beesley has served since the beginning as Wikia's Vice-President
Vice president
A vice president is an officer in government or business who is below a president in rank. The name comes from the Latin vice meaning 'in place of'. In some countries, the vice president is called the deputy president...
of Community Relations. Gil Penchina
Gil Penchina
Gil Penchina is an American business manager. He was formerly the CEO of Wikia Inc., and the vice president and general manager, international at eBay.He attended the Kellogg School of Management and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.- External links :...
, a previous angel investor
Angel investor
An angel investor or angel is an affluent individual who provides capital for a business start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity...
and former vice president and general manager
General manager
General manager is a descriptive term for certain executives in a business operation. It is also a formal title held by some business executives, most commonly in the hospitality industry.-Generic usage:...
at eBay
EBay
eBay Inc. is an American internet consumer-to-consumer corporation that manages eBay.com, an online auction and shopping website in which people and businesses buy and sell a broad variety of goods and services worldwide...
, was hired as CEO
Chief executive officer
A chief executive officer , managing director , Executive Director for non-profit organizations, or chief executive is the highest-ranking corporate officer or administrator in charge of total management of an organization...
on June 5, 2006. Michael E. Davis, a former business partner
Business partner
Business partner is a term used to denote a commercial entity with which another commercial entity has some form of alliance. This relationship may be a highly contractual, exclusive bond in which both entities commit not to ally with third parties...
of Wales who served for years as a founding member of the Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an American non-profit charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States, and organized under the laws of the state of Florida, where it was initially based...
board and was that organization's Treasurer
Treasurer
A treasurer is the person responsible for running the treasury of an organization. The adjective for a treasurer is normally "tresorial". The adjective "treasurial" normally means pertaining to a treasury, rather than the treasurer.-Government:...
, was named Treasurer and Secretary
Secretary
A secretary, or administrative assistant, is a person whose work consists of supporting management, including executives, using a variety of project management, communication & organizational skills. These functions may be entirely carried out to assist one other employee or may be for the benefit...
of Wikia in January 2006.
In October 2011, Wikia announced that Craig Palmer, the former CEO of Gracenote
Gracenote
Gracenote, Inc., formerly called CDDB , is a company that maintains and licenses an Internet-accessible database containing information about the contents of audio compact discs and vinyl records. It provides software and metadata to businesses that enable their customers to manage and search...
, would replace Penchina as CEO, and that Jennifer Betka would commence in the new position of senior vice president of marketing.
Wikia has technical staff in the USA, but also has an office in Poznań
Poznan
Poznań is a city on the Warta river in west-central Poland, with a population of 556,022 in June 2009. It is among the oldest cities in Poland, and was one of the most important centres in the early Polish state, whose first rulers were buried at Poznań's cathedral. It is sometimes claimed to be...
, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, in 2006. Explaining his choice of location, Wales commented "It's about reasonable salaries and high quality. You can find cheaper programmers in other parts of the world, but the quality's not there!"
Wikia derives income from advertising. The company initially used Google AdSense, but moved on to Federated Media before bringing ad management in-house.
Advertising and use of free content
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. 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 at least two casesThe acquisition of uncyclopediaUncyclopedia
Uncyclopedia is a satirical website that parodies Wikipedia. Founded in 2005 as an originally English-language wiki, the project currently spans over 75 languages...
.org from Jonathan Huang in July 2006 and gamewikis.org from Phil Nelson in October 2007 the content was under a non-commercial license, raising the question of whether the wikis could legitimately be sold to Wikia for commercial use. In 2009, Wikia added an extension where users could create magazines of content pages, through partner MagCloud
MagCloud
MagCloud is a vanity press service of Hewlett-Packard which offers on demand sale of digital editions and single issue printing of magazines on demand for customers. Magazines are printed in full color via HP's indigo printers on high quality standard sized 8.5 x 11 inch paper at a cost of US...
; however, this was not disabled on wikis with a "Noncommercial" clause on their license, which would break the license.
Once on Wikia, wiki communities have complained of inappropriate advertisements, or advertising in the body text area. 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
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...
rankings, for advertising revenue.
Wikia and the Wikimedia Foundation
Wikia has been accused of unduly profiting from a perceived association with WikipediaWikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
. Although Wikia has been referred to in the media as "the commercial counterpart to the non-profit Wikipedia", Wikimedia and Wikia staff call this description inaccurate.
In 2006, the Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an American non-profit charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States, and organized under the laws of the state of Florida, where it was initially based...
shared hosting and bandwidth
Colocation centre
A colocation centre or colocation center , is a type of data centre where equipment space and bandwidth are available for rental to retail customers...
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$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
6,000. As of June 2007, two members of the Foundation's Board of Directors
Board of directors
A board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. Other names include board of governors, board of managers, board of regents, board of trustees, and board of visitors...
also served as employees, officers, or directors of Wikia. In January 2009, Wikia subleased two conference rooms to the Wikimedia Foundation for the Wikipedia Usability Initiative. According to a 2009 email by Erik Möller, deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation, bid averaging was used "as a way to arrive at a fair market rate".
Domain and skin assimilation
Wikia has merged separately founded wikis, such as UncyclopediaUncyclopedia
Uncyclopedia is a satirical website that parodies Wikipedia. Founded in 2005 as an originally English-language wiki, the project currently spans over 75 languages...
, to subdomain
Subdomain
In the Domain Name System hierarchy, a subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger domain.- Overview :The Domain Name System has a tree structure or hierarchy, with each node on the tree being a domain name. A subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger domain, the only domain that is not...
s of wikia.com against contributors' wishes, citing a need to boost its attractiveness to advertisers. The company intended to merge Memory Alpha, WoWWiki, and Zelda Wiki in a similar fashion; the proposal was successfully opposed by users of all three sites. Zelda Wiki is still an independent wiki, while WoWWiki
WoWWiki
- External links :*...
and Memory Alpha were merged but allowed to keep their domain names.
In June 2008, Wikia adopted a new skin, Monaco, intending to implement it as the default on almost all hosted wikis. The skin had an uneven reception, with issues over the prominent branding, in-content format-altering ads, and the mandatory nature of the change. 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 Wikia moved content to their own server, citing the format-altering ads and mandatory changes as reasons for their departure. WikiFur moved likewise in August 2009.
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.
In August 2010, Wikia announced a new mandatory skin change, this time to a new look nicknamed "Oasis". The new skin omitted several features, such as the popular shoutbox. On September 23, 2010, Wikia introduced the new skin in public beta with the option to be the default skin for certain wikis, like Muppet Wiki. Wikia also revealed the official name of the new skin, Wikia. The Wikia skin became the default skin on Wikia on November 3, 2010. Wikia also changed the Terms of Use
Terms of service
Terms of service are rules which one must agree to abide by in order to use a service. Unless in violation of consumer protection laws, such terms are usually legally binding...
, prohibiting any modification that changes the default layout of the skin. As a result of the skin change, some users have proposed to move their wikis to another wiki farm
Wiki farm
A wiki hosting service or wiki farm is a server or an array of servers that offer users tools to simplify the creation and development of individual, independent wikis...
and have created an "Anti-Wikia Alliance" with comments against the new skin, links to wiki farms and a database to keep all the moving wikis. Some wikis, like Guildwiki, have moved from Wikia to Curse.com, but decided to leave a presence on Wikia, but with a different purpose from their main site on a new host. Some large wikis like Halopedia, Club Penguin Wiki, WikiSimpsons and Grand Theft Wiki have already moved, while others such as MicroWiki, SmashWiki, WoWWiki
WoWWiki
- External links :*...
, The Vault
The Vault (wiki)
-External links:* *...
, and Touhou Wiki have all moved from Wikia also. The new look has been described by Wikia as "sleek" and is supposed to be helpful to new users, but many of the changes have drawn criticism from older users. One such criticism is the greatly reduced width of page content, causing infoboxes and other templates to break the page if they go beyond the fixed margin. Because of this, subdomains such as Marvel Database and DozerfleetWiki have put notices on their front pages strongly encouraging users to switch their personal preferences to Monobook to make the sites easier to use.
External links
- Wikia home page
- Video of and notes from Wales Talk on Free Culture, Transparency, and Search (over half the talk is on Wikia) at New York UniversityNew York UniversityNew York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
(January 31, 2007) - Global Villages Convene in wiki town halls – St. Petersburg TimesSt. Petersburg TimesThe St. Petersburg Times is a United States newspaper. It is one of two major publications serving the Tampa Bay Area, the other being The Tampa Tribune, which the Times tops in both circulation and readership. Based in St...
(April 4, 2005) - From Wikipedia's Creator, A New Site for Anyone, Anything – Wall Street Journal (March 28, 2005)