Template:Wikia.com / Fandom.com

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Revision as of 01:40, 1 January 2012 by Hoof Hearted (talk | contribs) (updated entry, tidy page display, wikilinks)
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Template:Wiki FarmTemplate:TOCright

Wiki size: 139 article pages see stats

(As of: 31 December 2011 — stats are for the administration of the Wikia project)

Description

Wikia is a collection of over 12,000 wikis (a WikiFarm) run by Wikia, Inc, and founded by Jimmy Wales, one of the founders of Wikipedia, along with Angela Beesley in October 2004. In 2006, Gil Penchina became the CEO, and hopes to take Wikia to a new level as he did with eBay.

Wikia is based on the MediaWiki wiki engine, but is different from regular MediaWiki sites in that it has its own custom skin complete with embeded advertisements. Wikia offers free hosting for a community to build a free content wiki-based website. New wikis can be created instantly at http://create.wikia.com. Hosting and 24-hour customer support is free, in return for advertising placed on the pages, but users have little say over the advertisements their website displays. Support on both the technical and community aspects of running a wiki community is provided.

Wikia staff and helpers have sysop powers throughout all Wikia wikis, as well as several types of automated detection and blocking tools to help deal with vandals and spam on individual wikis. This can be helpful for controversial wikis like Liberapedia that attract vandals.

Users with new messages on any Wikia wiki they will get a note about the message on any other Wikia wiki where they have a window open. If a user has different usernames for different Wikia wikis then logging into a different account for one can change the account for all.

Stats

Problems between Wikia and its users

For those having problems logging into Wikia, a solution is to disable scripts from Wikia then clicking on "Log In" link which will send you to Log In webpage.

Advertising

Wikia offers free MediaWiki hosting for a community to build a wiki-based website, in return for the display of advertisements. Some users complain that they have little say over the placement or content of advertisements their website displays.

Logged-in users don't have to see the advertisements unless they choose to. Users may set their preferences to see advertisements on Wikia in order to see how a page looks to logged-out users. A prominent advertisement is placed at the top right hand side of most pages, but when there is also a picture on the top right hand side of a page the layout for users who see the advertisement can be poor especially on short pages. Logged-in users may not realize this when they add pictures.

Wikia currently uses the following types of ads on pages:

  • A banner at at the top of the page.
  • A large square ad in the sidebar which may often be a video advertisement.
  • On large pages a tall skyscraper ad is placed inside the end of the sidebar.
  • On large pages two large (or three slightly smaller) square ads at the end of the page before the footer.
  • On various content pages Wikia also sells "Sponsored links" which are a section of links that look like an "External links" page content section but are placed below the category bar.
  • Wikia places a floating social bar at the bottom of the screen for anon users. A square ad may pop out of the left of this bar.
  • Occasionally Wikia may make use of take-over ads which replace the background image.
  • They rarely show up, but have been more common recently, Wikia has tried placing in-text advertising in page content occasionally.

Wikia is worth an estimated $8.11 Million USD to the advertisers, with a daily page view of 3,703,703, since all three have exactly the same figures it must be for the whole of Wikia. [1][2][3]

Skins

Until recently, people who understood how to use preferences could choose which skin they used, but even this choice will now stop.

Monaco

The default skin for Wikia wikis used to be called 'Monaco', more colorful and customizable than the standard Monobook skin that Wikipedia uses. While individual users could view Wikia sites using the Monobook skin (by choosing it in their preferences), Wikia did not allow it to be chosen as a default skin for all wiki visitors, which was frustrating for some communities. Wikia says statistics show that Monaco encourages new users by making editing easier. As Monaco is being phased out, it becomes clear that some users really did like it.

Oasis

Wikia has introduced a new 'Oasis' skin, which is widely unpopular with users, see To the people complaining about the new look. The new skin is now compulsory for all users. Because of this change, many Wikia users have now left, often taking their wiki with them.

Criticism

ComplaintWiki has been set up expressly to look at problems that Wikia users have, and includes comments from communities that have left Wikia hosting, as well as other critics of Wikia and Wikipedia.

Facebook

This section requires expansion with info on the Facebook Connect plugin which Wikia is now using.

List of wikis

Here is their list, for the fan of WikiIndex to add from!

Ten largest wikis

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