User:Tennessee Ernie Ford/Rants/Wikia

Why this user no longer contributes to Wikia
When Wikia decided to figure out their new direction, they did so without any serious input from their long term customers. When they decided to impose a single design on all sites, they did so without providing any support for those wikis heavily invested in a custom design. When they decided to shrink page sizes, they did so without regard for the impact on knowledge-base style sites.

Wikia makes money primarily by selling space for advertisements. Advertisers buy space on Wikia sites because they believe their customers are interested in the content found within. That content is entirely written by volunteers, people like you and me with a passion for a hobby, a game, an idea, or perhaps a life style. The implicit contract between Wikia and its content-generators has always been: we (Wikia) will provide a home for your site (within socially reasonable limitations), you provide the content, and we will make money off that. They have only rarely broken that contract...until now.

The new contract says: we (Wikia) are allowed to impose requirements on your site whenever we see fit. We have no obligation to you, to your content, or to your design.

The original content was a fair quid-pro-quo; the new contract is not. Why would I want to work for a company that refused to offer me reasonable compensation for my efforts, from which they make their money?

Background
On or about 20 October 2010, Wikia imposed a new idea on all wikis within its control:
 * 1) Wikis must use the same skin, Oasis, which limits the size and shape of its pages.
 * 2) Wikis are no longer able to exist at their own domain name (e.g. joesgarage.com), but must exist within Wikia's universe (e.g. joesgarage.wikia.com).
 * 3) Wiki communities are no longer able to determine their own direction; Wikia can (and will) remove administrators and revert pages without warning for any reason sensible to them (To be fair, they do not impose their will arbitrarily, but they do so without regards to the community's voice.)

Wikia has long been having trouble making profit as a wiki-server farm. Consequently, they have had few resources to invest in staff, support, or making things easier for their sponsors. So, it comes as no surprise that they decided to save money by standardizing the look and feel, devote more space to advertisements, and branch out in directions beyond strict support of wikis.

I would have no objection had Wikia come to each Wiki and said:
 * Look, we know the new direction will impose a hardship upon your site. In the long run, this will be better for all of us (here's how). In the short term, we will offer to help your convert your new site to the new format, new domains, and how to make the new tools work for you.

We will also leave you free to run the site as you see fit for 3-9 months, as long as you don't use it to bash Wikia. If you choose to move your content, we will help you do so, in exchange for which you also promise not to bash Wikia at your new site. If you do bite the hand that feeds you, then we reserve the right to restore the content and run the refreshed site as we see fit.