Talk:Wikia/Archive 1

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Contents

Some appropriate links

I don't think I should make any significant edits to this page myself, but the list of Wikia section is never likely to remain up to date. We're already getting a few new wikis a day. I suggest the following be used instead, which gives just the most visited wikis, rather than all of them.

A list of all existing Wikia can be found at Wikia:List of Wikia.

The five most visited Wikia, as of 13 January, 2005 [1], were:

Angela. 20:41, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC)

Shutdown?

Why was Wikia shut down the day I wrote this message??? --SuperDude 05:24, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It wasn't, as far as I know. It had more hits than normal that day, but I'm not aware of any downtime on April 25th. Angela.
I'm showing downtime right now, as well. Main wikia and subdomains, as far as I can tell. 64.126.24.10 19:43, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Is it down again today? I can't create interwiki links there, nor visit my Recentchanges page. -- nae'blis (talk) 18:02, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Clarification questions

Please answer the following questions to help clarify some aspects of the article:

  • The article currently says that Wikia offers hosting. One key aspect of hosting is that you can switch host. Does Wikia provide for full database dumps of all information needed to move to another host, including their user and password data so the community membership and GFDL history information required for such a move will be available to the owners of the project being hosted by Wikia?
  • The Free content page at Wikia says both that the content must be "available for reuse under a free content licence" and that "all of the content on these sites is licensed under the GFDL". Which is correct? Must it be GFDL or can it be any free content license?
  • Can the owner of a project hosted by Wikia also use a public domain non-license or other licences in addition to the GFDL?
  • If a project chooses to leave Wikia, would Wikia continue to host it, effectively becoming a competitor to the project it formerly hosted?
  • For example to provide context for these questions, consider what would happen if the Wikimedia Foundation, a local linux user group or group of open source software authors had initially hosted at Wikia and then wanted to move to their own server.

The answers should help to clarify what description is appropriate - seems pretty unlikely that hosting, at least without lots of qualifications, is accurate from what I've seen, since the owner lacks much of the control which is generaly associated with a hosting situation. Jamesday 18:11, 12 July 2005 (UTC)


The article currently says that Wikia offers hosting.

Yes, but we host communities, not websites, which does lead to some differences. What Wikia is not states we are not a hosting site.

One key aspect of hosting is that you can switch host.

One key aspect of hosting is that one person owns the site and has responsibility for that hosting agreement. This isn't the case within Wikia.

Does Wikia provide for full database dumps of all information needed to move to another host, including their user and password data so the community membership and GFDL history information required for such a move will be available to the owners of the project being hosted by Wikia?

The content is available for download. User data is not. This would obviously be a huge security risk and privacy violation. I don't believe password information would ever be necessary to comply with the GFDL.

The Free content page at Wikia says both that the content must be "available for reuse under a free content licence" and that "all of the content on these sites is licensed under the GFDL". Which is correct? Must it be GFDL or can it be any free content license?

There are exceptions (see Desencyclopedie:Copyrights), but generally, the text of all Wikia is GFDL. Sister projects of Wikia, such as Memory Alpha and Uncyclopedia are cc-by-nc-sa.

Can the owner of a project hosted by Wikia also use a public domain non-license or other licences in addition to the GFDL?

Owner? A common misconception, but Wikia don't have owners. Any user is free to multi-license. Any community member is free to encourage others to do the same.

If a project chooses to leave Wikia, would Wikia continue to host it, effectively becoming a competitor to the project it formerly hosted?

It depends on what the wiki is, whether the whole community want to leave or only part of them, whether there is any demand to keep it open, the reasons for leaving, whether the community asked for the old one to be closed, and so on. Wikia itself can't be a competitor if there is no community on the wiki. Our aim is to support communities, not to cause ill feelings by competing with them.

For example to provide context for these questions, consider what would happen if the Wikimedia Foundation, a local Linux user group or group of open source software authors had initially hosted at Wikia and then wanted to move to their own server. The answers should help to clarify what description is appropriate - seems pretty unlikely that hosting, at least without lots of qualifications, is accurate from what I've seen, since the owner lacks much of the control which is generally associated with a hosting situation.

They can copy the content. They can't take the user passwords. They can request the old wiki be locked/removed/left open/redirected/whatever and Wikia would consider that request, but not be bound by it. The most important points to note are that there are no owners of individual Wikia, and what Wikia offers is really not a traditional form of hosting, but a means of supporting communities who want to make use of wiki technology. Angela 03:14, July 15, 2005 (UTC)


Need Help to expand

I Have a Wiki called the Ultimate In Living Color Guide wiki. And i'v been looking for a way to make it larger(like the star wars wiki or unencyclopedia)I only have one wiki running(My other wiki the mets one i closed)and i would like to expand it how can i expand it and how can i get it to be recognized. Also I am having trouble putting up my logo for my wiki metlover21 4:55 14, Febuary 2006

This question has been answered at Wikia. Angela. 04:27, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

Uncyclopedia?

This article lists Uncyclopedia as the most visited Wikia, but the Uncyclopedia article says that Uncyclopedia is hosted by Wikia, but not as a Wikia. So is Uncyclopedia a Wikia or not?--Alhutch 02:02, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

No, it isn't a Wikia. It's a sister project of Wikia. We don't currently have accurate public stats on the most visited Wikia, so this section can't be verified anymore. It should probably be removed. Of the wikis we're tracking via Google adsense (which isn't all of them, but probably includes the top 5), the top 5 for February were Star Wars, Dofus, Muppet, Furry, and Doom, but those stats need a password. Angela. 00:56, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
I've removed the list since it was unverifiable (and innaccurate). Angela. 05:48, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Financial conflict of interest?

Could someone please comment on the notion presented in this comment: Wikia income from Wikipedia. Yes, I am the author of that comment. Just want to know what the community actually thinks. Are the numbers right? Is there a conflict of interest, or not? --MyWikiBiz 14:41, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

  • Undoubtably it's all part of Jimbo's sinister plot to earn money from Wikipedia. I, for one, think the accusation is baseless. Just because Wikia is (probably) the largest and most popular wiki hosting in the world and there are a lot of links from Wikipedia to the hosted wikis (like Wookieepedia) doesn't mean it was sanctioned or endorsed by Jimbo in any way. - Sikon 15:27, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm not asking about whether it was sanctioned or endorsed (of course it wasn't a deliberate scheme). Nonetheless, a non-profit entity is inadvertently helping to financially power a for-profit company, both of which have key personal sitting in both places. I'm asking if that constitutes a conflict of interest, or not. I think it does, but I also think that the Wikipedia community's reaction is that Wales "deserves" this kind of financial support, for all he's done to personally create and nurture Wikipedia. It's not a bad argument, in some respects. But, I think that certain claims of "conflict of interest" that are being leveled with such indignity against PR firms (the action against Kellen Communications, for one) and content-for-pay firms like MyWikiBiz.com ought to be examined in light of other inherent conflicts of interest that are apparently allowed to stand (though not officially sanctioned or endorsed). Similarly, is there a conflict of interest when a PR firm like Schwartz Communications does pro bono work for the Wikimedia Foundation (pre-publicity of Wikimania 2006 event), but was allowed to create and edit its own article in Wikipedia, which is strongly discouraged in WP:Autobiography? If pro bono assistance is all that is required to get a "pass", then maybe I need to emphasize my previous voluntary donations to the Wikimedia Foundation's various fund drives. --MyWikiBiz 16:00, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Whether or not this constitutes a conflict of interest (whatever it is), nothing can stop users from posting external links to whatever sites they like, including, but not limited to, Wikia. I think the people running Wikia and Wikimedia can decide what's good and what's bad for them better than us ordinary users. We shouldn't be concerned. - Sikon 16:18, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
I'd say that 1.5% clicking on an ad might be overkill, but I don't know Wikia's ad stats to be sure. But, I have to ask - isn't that true of any site? Questions of verifiable content aside, should we avoid linking to Geocities pages? To official sites for software? Should people avoid linking to Wikipedia because we try to guilt visitors into making donations? Should websites be charging Wikipedia for providing content for them to link to? Bandwidth, servers and staff aren't free, after all. $15,000 probably covers how much time has been spent dealing with vandals that come over from Wikipedia to Wikia. :-)
For what it's worth, at WikiFur, users inbound from Wikipedia are some of our most "interested" visitors as measured by number of pages viewed (~10 vs ~8 for google search results and ~7 for all references combined). I suggest that the vast majority of links to Wikia are valid ones, if following them is more likely to lead to content that you want to look at than a google search.
That tool is a severe underestimate, by the way. I always use interwiki links when linking to Wikia, and it does not appear to count them. GreenReaper 16:55, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the input, GreenReaper. To answer your question, "isn't that true of any site?", I would say it's true of any site where the co-owners of the for-profit site are also board members of the not-for-profit site. It's time that the community either stand up against this kind of conflict of interest, or grow up and admit that conflicts of interest are not necessarily going to cripple the mission of Wikipedia. Many of us can be reasonable and intelligent contributors, even when we have a personal or financial interest in the article mainspace. Obviously, by their existence and the traffic behavior that you speak of, outbound Wikia links are "helpful" to the average Wikipedia user. But, to say they don't carry with them a gross conflict of interest is nothing but naive. --MyWikiBiz 17:19, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
When Jimbo or Angela start using their influence in decisions regarding the suitability of links to Wikia sites, or start treating such links preferentially in comparison to similar sites (that is, other wikis or community sites that have similar free content policies) then it might become an issue. Until then, even if it is a conflict of interest, I don't see an actual problem. It's just something to be aware of.
There are a lot of links from Wikipedia to Wikia because the more-developed Wikia sites are usually great places to find detailed information on the topics that they cover. Often the only reason the content is not in Wikipedia to begin with is that Wikipedians themselves would vote (or have voted) it out for lack of general-purpose notability. It's not as if people don't go the other way, either: every other WikiFur article links to Wikipedia at least once, and often more than once, because Wikipedia is a good source of general-purpose information.
Of course, I have my own conflicts of interest, and I suspect most Wikipedians do, too. I founded WikiFur, co-founded the Creatures Wiki, and I've also contributed significantly to articles such as Stardock and Galactic Civilizations II which relate to my work. That doesn't make them bad articles or bad wikis, though, and likewise I don't think Wikia is a bad thing, even if it is intended to cover its costs through commercial means (I very much doubt that they are actually doing so yet). GreenReaper 18:37, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how it's a conflict of interest considering the only people now involved in Wikimedia and Wikia are Jimmy and Michael and neither of them are adding Wikia links to Wikipedia. Click through rates are not even close to 1.5, so you're overestimating the effect these links have. Many commericial sites are linked to from Wikipedia so it's hardly anything out of the ordinary that Wikia would be linked as well. There are over 19000 links to Amazon.com (and that's not including the indirect links via the ISBN feature), so 2700 to Wikia is actually very small. Angela. 07:01, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Not surprising that the co-owner of Wikia.com wouldn't "see how it's a conflict of interest". So, we are establishing as policy, then, that there is no conflict of interest in having Wikipedia links to your own for-profit site, just as long as the links are placed by people who don't stand to directly benefit from the profits? Got it. Also, it was interesting that Angela would squash the "1.5% ad click" rate, but she doesn't disclose the actual inbound traffic and click-through figures. Lastly, I'm glad to see that 2700 outbound links from Wikipedia is "actually very small", so I can just present that quote when an admin deletes any of the 7 or 8 links that other people may have pointed to my own for-profit site. --72.94.151.46 13:45, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
The conflict of interest question should be addressed by examining Wikipedia's IRS Form 990 return, which is a public record. There's a place there where officers and directors have to report connections with related for-profit organizations. Unfortunately, my GuideStar account isn't working tonight, and I can't retrieve the needed Form 990.--John Nagle 07:00, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Name on Wikia

I want to create a wiki, but someone has taken my name on the wikia site. That user has no contributions. Can I get my wikipedia name on wikia?--God Ω War 04:22, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

The question is, no contributions where? There are 2000 Wikia sites, and each share the same user database. A user may quite legitimately be on a totally different wiki and still be using the same name as yours here. I'm afraid you're probably going to have to choose another nickname. GreenReaper 04:58, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Now we use the Wikipedia article talk space for Wikia's (for-profit) customer support? How long before MySpace starts using its Wikipedia talk space as a customer support forum? It boggles the mind. And MyWikiBiz.com has an unacceptable conflict of interest? Hah. --MyWikiBiz 13:20, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Sheesh - the guy asked a question, and it was answered. That doesn't exactly make this an customer support channel. I don't even work for Wikia, for a start. :-) GreenReaper 19:15, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Okay, you got me -- an admittedly weak argument on my part. Still, it was fun to be indignant about something that amounts to about the same level of "conflict of interest" that MyWikiBiz might have with writing NPOV articles about clients. --MyWikiBiz 21:12, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Jimbo may own Wikia, but the wikis themselves are created and maintained by people like me - often the same people that insert links to them. Indeed, the content is generally only there because Wikipedians themselves have said that they do not want that kind of stuff here.
As to your views - I am personally not opposed to people writing about the companies and suchlike that they are involved in, as long as they take pains to write in a neutral tone in accordance with Wikipedia's policies, and don't expect to be able to keep an article to themselves (or even keep it on Wikipedia at all, if people decide it should be deleted).
When people start getting paid specifically to edit, and especially when they employ others to do so - people who have no particular knowledge of the company's activities other than what they have been told - the intent of the editor becomes a big issue. It is hard to assume good faith when you are being paid by an entity to write an article about them, just as it is hard to assume that a person will write the absolute truth if they write an article about themselves. Everyone has bias, of course, but it's a matter of degree - how many PR firms wouldn't tell a few white lies or avoid looking too closely at their client's business if it meant they could put bread on the table? I suspect only those with the highest established reputation and a long string of quality articles would be accepted.
That sort of thing should be talked about at Wikipedia talk:Conflict of interest, though. This page is for discussion of this article, not the interaction of Wikia with Wikipedia. GreenReaper 23:35, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
umm, all i did was ask a question, no one was being forced to answer it.--God Ω War 23:06, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

merging articles

I see absolutely no reason to have separate articles for the company and its website. Yahoo! doesn't need a "Yahoo! (site)" and "Yahoo! (company)" article, why should wikia? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 00:22, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Wikia, the site, is clearly Wikia, Inc.'s prime focus. GreenReaper
Done. GreenReaper 08:33, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Merge from Campaigns Wikia

Following the result of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Campaigns Wikia, I've proposed a merge of the two articles. Luna Santin 01:47, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I have merged the information to both this page and to Jimmy Wales. Article can now be deleted. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Roninbk (talk • contribs) 01:04, 6 December 2006 (UTC).
Geez, I was gonna go back and fix it, if the bot hadn't caught it first... --RoninBKETC 01:05, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Suggestions

This should probably mention the investment by Amazon.com (press release) as well as Wikia's recent acquisitions of the Marvel Database Project (which was deleted) and ArmchairGM (ref:techcrunch). There are also errors in this which WP:COI probably prevents me fixing: Wikia uses advertising from a number of providers now, not just AdSense, so the first paragraph is wrong. The part about the GFDL is also wrong since we accept a number of GNU and CC licenses, not just the GFDL. The red links in the "Active Wikia sites" section should be removed since it's likely those articles would be deleted if they were created. Angela. 12:28, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Search

“ The name Wikia originally was used for a copyleft search engine Wales launched. When he decided to rename Wikicities as Wikia, the Wikia search engine beta edition was renamed Wikiasari. ”

This isn't true at all. Wikicities didn't become Wikia until after we got the first round of investment in January 2006. "Wikiasari" came from a naming contest in November 2004. Angela. 20:16, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

How's the new revision stack up? -- Zanimum 22:00, 27 December 2006 (UTC)


Wikicities initially proposed

No, Wikicities did not. Wikicities was the name of the wiki hosting project (now called Wikia) which was separate from the search project (then called Wikia)

named "Wikiasari" by a November 2004 naming contest

It was actually just the software that was called Wikiasari. The project was always Wikia.

In fall 2006, Wikia asked viewers of its site to become beta testers of Wikisearch

This seems quite irrelevant to the article. It's just a small thing we're testing. Wikisearch is only a working name for it, not something permanent.

a search engine meant to find pages within Wikia

This is wrong. It only searches Wikipedia and the sites linked from it, not Wikia and not the other Wikimedia projects (except those linked from Wikipedia).

Wales announced a revival of the "Wikiasari" concept

No, he didn't. He made a passing comment that search would be interesting which was blown out of all proportion by the press. Wikiasari has nothing to do with it.

Initial reports, however, relied primarily on many half-truths and complete fabrications.

Well, that part's certainly correct.

or assumed Jeff Bezos' investments in the site

The investment was from Amazon, not from Jeff Bezos personally.
Angela. 22:24, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Regarding the fifth point, I didn't know if the fact Wikia didn't intend to relaunch this site was supposed to be public, or if the company was going to pretend it was their intention all along. -- Zanimum 22:33, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
Okay, did I catch all the errors? -- Zanimum 22:37, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
I don't think you should use this talk page as a source. I was saying things to point out the article was wrong, not suggesting my text should be included. "blown out of proportion by the press" is my personal opinion, not a citable fact. There is nothing from a reliable source that is true on this, so you need to choose bewteen using reliable sources and writing incorrect information, or not including that information. Angela. 22:46, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
"The press intrepeted this statement as an announcement, when it was not." Okay? -- Zanimum 22:57, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
I think it's it original research to say what the press interpreted it as. Angela. 01:11, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
"publishing the statement as an announcement."? It's verifiable the statement was published, and it's verifiable that the word "announcement" was [2] [3] used in article articles like this. -- Zanimum 14:20, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Here's what Jimmy Wales has said in response to the news stories about "a new search engine, funded by Amazon" etc etc.

Goodness, massive buzz in the news and blogosphere this weekend, including some very confused stuff.

Here is where we currently stand... some servers are being ordered, and I am happy to give access to developers who I know personally or who come recommended by someone I know personally. I know a lot of people, so if you know anyone who is anyone in the free software world, that's not a huge limitation. :)

We have an old codebase of mine from when I was working on this kind of concept a couple of years ago, at http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikia/

What parts we might end up using of this old code, I don't yet know. Since I was doing that work, Nutch and Lucene have matured immensely and frankly, there is a lot of stuff that my code did not even contemplate doing which is now possible.

The press coverage has been a comedy of errors. Wikiasari was not and is not the intended name of this project... the London Times picked that off an old wiki page from back in the day when I was working on the old codebase and we had a naming contest for it. Nice name, though, so we might as well use it for the codename of the software. :) -- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.69.29.198 (talk • contribs)

More errors

"On the mailinglist it is discussed to use open search engine Yacy, which is a p2p search engine for websites."

This was on the Wikimedia mailing list and has nothing to do with Wikia. Angela. 13:22, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
Got it. I thought it looked weird. -- Zanimum 14:15, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

$5.74

An error: In the first paragraph, it is said that wikia spent $5.74 on such and such. It should probably be "$5.74 million" or something.<font color="blue" size="4">kilaz_e_mastafu</font> 19:20, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

No, the figure is accurate, albeit somewhat misleading. GreenReaper 19:26, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
How is it misleading? -- Zanimum 18:45, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
In that they sure spent more of their time putting the word out than would be accounted for by $5.74 - that's probably just their Google AdWords costs. And besides, they're not counting our AdWords costs, which are actually more. :-) GreenReaper 22:54, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
It certainly wasn't $5.74 million! It seems a silly thing to quote considering how many factors it isn't taking into account. Angela. 02:29, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Could you ask Gil how he got that number? I took it to mean advertising for Wikia Inc, not any of the projects, not public relations, not any of the equipment used in creating the advertising. Would that be correct? -- Zanimum 17:44, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I could, but an email from Gil wouldn't be a reliable source for this article, so I don't see how it's relevant. Angela. 23:23, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
It doesn't matter how much Wikia spent. The article, correctly, reports what they said they spent. If you find a quote from a some expert that calls that a lie, you can put it in. Superm401 - Talk 07:08, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Doesn't matter if it's true as long as it was written in a newspaper. Oh dear. Angela. 20:28, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Now you know how we feel. ;-) GreenReaper 22:51, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
When I was asking for clarification earlier, I was intending to write a two paragraph blurb on Wikinews about Wikia announcing how low its spending was, and use that as a source. -- Zanimum 14:51, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
We have a little policy here called Verifiability, not truth. It means you don't say things just because you think they're true. The article doesn't, and shouldn't, say the newspaper is right. It also shouldn't say it's wrong just because the figure doesn't make sense to us. That's called original research; it's not allowed even if the original research sounds right. Angela, if you really want to clarify this have Wikia put out the updated figure in its next press release. Superm401 - Talk 07:55, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Funky international wikilinks

I removed the following interwiki links from the article:

  • [[fa:و�Oeک�Oeا]]
  • [[ru:�'икия]]
  • [[yi:�·�·יקיע]]

There are some seriously bad characters in these links, causing them to be visible (at least in my browser, Safari). Can someone with more international experience than I have go to those editions of Wikipedia to help fix the links? EVula // talk // ☯ // 06:46, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

...and nevermind, a bot just fixed it.[4] Hot damn. EVula // talk // ☯ // 16:04, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

How is OpenServing different from Wikia

Just now I came across info on OpenServing from http://www.openserving.com/ and http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Openserving and it seems quite similar to Wikia which also provides facility to create Wiki Format web site on Wikia Servers, so how are they are different, can anyone pls list the differences. Vjdchauhan 13:26, 20 February 2007 (UTC).

Location of Headquarters

Can someone clarify the location of Wikia's headquarters? According to this [5] the company moved from St. Petersburg, Fla., to Menlo Park, Calif. Since then it seems that the company has moved again, a few towns north on the San Francisco Peninsula to San Mateo. When did this occur? Also, it doesn't seem that there is more specific information about the location of the offices. I suppose that as a private company, there is no reason for them to divulge this information, but Alexa does seem to have the location of the original offices (which may or may not still be valid) [6]:

200 2nd Ave S, St Petersburg, FL
(727) 388-6691

-71.202.62.11 09:38, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

The exact location is private information that has no place in an article. 2nd Ave S is not an office address and Wikia never owned an office in Menlo Park. The move to San Mateo was approximately November 2006, but please don't use this talk page as a source. If that's not been written elsewhere, it shouldn't be added to the article. Angela. 04:03, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
No worries, it's been written here. GreenReaper 21:38, 8 March 2007 (UTC)