Quick Facts
Biography
Fandom, also known as Wikia (especially before October 2016), is a wiki hosting service and domain operated by Fandom, Inc. (formerly known as Wikia, Inc.), a for-profit Delaware company founded in October 2004 by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley. As of 2018, it is headed by Perkins Miller as CEO. Fandom uses the open-source wiki software MediaWiki, the same used by Wikipedia. Fandom, Inc. derives its income from advertising and sold content, publishing most user-provided text under copyleft licenses. The company also runs the associated Fandom editorial project, offering pop-culture and gaming news.
Most wikis are hosted under the domain fandom.com, but some, especially those whose focus is a subject other than media franchises, are hosted under wikia.org.
History
2004–2009: Early days and growth
Wikia was launched on October 18, 2004 under the name Wikicities (which invited comparisons to GeoCities), by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley Starling—respectively Chairman Emeritus and Advisory Board member of the Wikimedia Foundation. The name of the project was changed to Wikia on March 27, 2006. 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.
By September 2006, it had approximately 1,500 wikis in 48 languages. Over time, Wikia has incorporated formerly independent wikis such as LyricWiki, Nukapedia, Uncyclopedia, and WoWWiki. Gil Penchina described Wikia early on as "the rest of the library and magazine rack" to Wikipedia's encyclopedia. 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.
2010–2015: New management
By 2010, wikis could be created in 188 different languages. In October 2011, Wikia announced that Craig Palmer, the former CEO of Gracenote, would replace Penchina as CEO. On February 8, 2012, co-founder Beesley Starling announced she was leaving Wikia to launch a startup called ChalkDrop.com. 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. 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.
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. In December 2015, Wikia launched the Fan Contributor Program.
2016–2018: Fandom brand
On January 25, 2016, Wikia launched a new entertainment news site named Fandom. On September 26, 2016, Wikia announced that Wikia.com would be renamed "Fandom powered by Wikia" on October 4, 2016, to better associate themselves with the Fandom website. Wikia, Inc. would remain under its current name. At the time, the homepage of Wikia.com was moved to wikia.com/fandom.
On December 4, 2016, Wikia announced the hiring of Dorth Raphaely to be their Chief Content Officer. Previously Dorth Raphaely had worked at Bleacher Report as their General Manager. In mid-2018, following an investment by private equity firm TPG Capital, Craig Palmer was replaced by Andrew Doyle who assumed the role of Interim CEO.
On August 15, 2018, Wikia announced it would fully change its domain name into fandom.com in early 2019. Various Wikis were tested with the new domain during 2018, with Wikia confirming that the process would be completed by February 4, 2019, with the exception of wikis that focused on "more serious topics", which would instead have their domains changed to wikia.org instead of fandom.com. The process was delayed by a few weeks due to issues with Google adverts, but was properly completed on February 22, 2019.
2018–present: New acquisitions
On July 2, 2018, it was announced that Fandom had purchased Screen Junkies from Defy Media.
On December 12, 2018, Wikia announced that they had acquired Curse LLC, including wiki services Gamepedia, D&D Beyond, Futhead, Muthead and Straw Poll.
On June 20, 2019, Wikia announced that it will rewrite its core platform in order to use a newer version of MediaWiki software.
On March 12, 2020, Wikia announced that all wikis created after March 11 will be on the Unified Community Platform (UCP). The new platform has received mixed reviews, with longtime Wikia members criticizing the lack of many features that were carried over from the previous MediaWiki versions.
Services and features
Wikis
Wikia communities consist of online encyclopedias, each one specializing in a particular subject. Although Wikia allows almost anything to be the main focus of a wiki, the most common interest of its users is in popular fiction franchises of films, games, books, and other media, due to the considerable limitation of such detailed information by Wikipedia's notability policies. This contributed to the service being renamed to Fandom.
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 comprehensive detail level than what can be found on Wikipedia articles. For example, Spiteful Crow, an enemy character in EarthBound, may have its own article on the EarthBound 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; the Harry Potter wiki, for example, is written from the perspective of everything in the franchise universe being real, thus the article about the character Ronald Weasley starts describing the subject as "a pure-blood wizard, the sixth and youngest son of Arthur and Molly Weasley" instead of "a character in the Harry Potter series".
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).
The image policies of Wikia communities tend to be more lenient than those of Wikimedia Foundation projects, allowing articles with much more illustration. Wikia requires all user text content to be published under a free license; most use the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, although a few wikis use a non-free licence with a noncommercial clause (for instance Memory Alpha, Uncyclopedia and others) and some use the GNU Free Documentation License. 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.
Wikis are not owned by their founders, nor does the founder's opinion carry more weight in disagreements than any other user's opinion. Consensus and cooperation should be the primary means for organizing a community. However, Wikia may take decisions affecting the community even if there is no consensus at all.
Technology
The Wikia file store as of June 2011 includes over 8 million files stored on SSD.
As of August 2015, Wikia uses a heavily modified version of MediaWiki software, based on the version 1.19 of MediaWiki, which was officially marked as obsolete in May 2015. It has more than 250 extensions installed, most of them created by their staff of developers, to add social features like blogs, chat, badges, forums, and multimedia, but also remove features like advanced user options or skins. The personal choice of using the Monobook skin instead of their default custom skin was removed on May 25, 2018, alluding GDPR compliance.
In August 2016, Wikia announced it would switch to a Service Oriented Architecture. It has also removed many custom extensions and functionality for specific wiki, has created certain features to fill those needs.
Until July 2018,most of Wikia was only available over HTTP, although an upgrade to HTTPS with TLS encryption was planned and under development. Personal data, such as registration and login information, is already served over HTTPS. On July 12, 2018, Wikia switched over to HTTPS.
Entertainment news
In 2016, Wikia launched Fandom, an online entertainment media web site. The program utilizes volunteer contributors called "Fandom Contributors" to produce articles, working alongside an editorial team employed by Wikia. In contrast to the blogging feature of individual wiki communities, Fandom focuses on pop culture and fan topics such as video games, movies, and television shows. The project features fan opinion, interviews with property creators, reviews, andhow-to guides. Fandom also includes videos and specific news coverage sponsored or paid for by a property creator to promote their property.
In the same year, it was also announced that the entire Wikia platform would be rebranded under the Fandom name on October 4, 2016. A leak from Fandom's Community Council was posted to Reddit's /r/Wikia subreddit on August 12, 2018, confirming that Fandom would be migrating all wikis from the wikia.com domain, to fandom.com in early 2019, as part of a push for greater adoption of Fandom's wiki-specific applications on both iOS and Android's app ecosystems. The post was later deleted.
Wiki partnerships
Wikia has created several official partnerships to create wikis, vetted by the corporation as being the "official" encyclopedia or wiki of a property. In 2014, Wikia partnered with Roddenberry Enterprises to create the Trek Initiative, a Wikia hosted wiki community site that features video interviews, promotions, and other material about Star Trek to celebrate its 50th anniversary.In 2013, Wikia partnered with SOE (now called Daybreak Games) to create official wikis for several of their games such as Free Realms, Planetside 2, and the Everquest franchise. Wikia made similar partnerships with 2K Games during the launch of Civilization: Beyond Earth and Warner Bros Interactive for Shadow of Mordor. Wikia also has partnerships with Lionsgate Media to promote Starz and Film franchises through wiki content, fandom articles, and advertisements.
Questions and answers site
In January 2009, the company created a question and answer website named "Wikianswers". 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.
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 Foundation'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.
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).
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. 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.
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. The proposal became inactive in 2005. 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. Late in 2009, a new search engine was established to index and display results from all sites hosted on Wikia.
Controversies
Wikia 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.
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. 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, gamewikis.org from Phil Nelson in October 2007, and memory-alpha.org from Harry Doddema and Dan Carlson in January 2008, 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. 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. WikiFur moved likewise in August 2009; the Grand Theft Auto wiki moved in October 2010, the NetHack wiki in November 2010, and the Doom wiki in September 2011.
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. On May 25, 2018, Monobook was removed entirely from Fandom, and all wikis and users using Monobook were forced to switch to Wikia's default Oasis skin, causing disgruntlement from many users in the community. The company cited technical difficulties related to keeping both skins in compliance with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation.
Relationship with Wikipedia
Wikia has been accused of unduly profiting from a perceived association with Wikipedia. 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. In 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:
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.
Fandom, Inc.
Fandom, Inc. is headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company was incorporated in Florida in December 2004 and re-incorporated in Delaware as Wikia, Inc. on January 10, 2006.
Fandom has technical staff in the US, but also has an office in Poznań, Poland, where the primary engineering functions are performed.
Fandom derives income from advertising. The company initially used Google AdSense, but moved on to Federated Media before bringing ad management in-house. Alongside Fandom's in-house advertising, they continue to use Adsense as well as Amazon Ads and several other third party advertising services. Fandom additionally gains income from various partnerships oriented around various sweepstake sponsorships on related wikis.
Fandom has several other offices. International operations are based in Germany, and Asian operations and sales are conducted in Tokyo. Other sales offices are located in Chicago, Latin America, Los Angeles (marketing programming and content), New York, and London.
