User blog comment:Brandon Rhea/Wiki domains will be changing from wikia.com to fandom.com in early 2019/@comment-25240518-20180826175111/@comment-25646820-20180826212344

I guess most people pay more attention to URLs than you do.

I don't think your miraheza analogy holds because obviously in cases where it can't make any sense, people do not parse URLs in their heads. Conversely, when there is a clear and obvious even if unintended meaning, people will parse it that way. That's why people fight and pay lots of money for particular URLs, because they are meaningful to the readers. It's why domain squatting is a thing. If nobody cared how a URL read, none of that would happen.

So I think there are two real causes of unhappiness:


 * The name Fandom itself, it's appropriation of a particular subculture and it's inappropriateness for a number of wikis either based on our current, serious encyclopedic tone which is the opposite of the fanon tone or on sheer tone deafness like the Holocaust wiki.
 * Yet another fait accompli by Wikia, like Monobook and videos, where despite huge opposition from the content creators, Wikia just goes ahead and forces it down our throats. The hypocrisy of wanting Communities, but refusing to listen to them is nothing short of stunning.