Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-209674-20140225224507/@comment-8-20140314200044

Hi, I've been asked to look in on this. It's an interesting discussion!

We actually had a very similar conversation when we moved from an approval system for wikias (which did not allow more than one wikia on any topic) to a "self-service" system without pre-approval.

It was a difficult discussion in many ways. We had all the concerns mentioned here, and more. We had been used to a careful approval system that not only looked at what wikias already existed, but also at whether the topic was one we thought would fit well with Wikia and that we thought was likely to succeed.

But ultimately we decided to stop individually approving wikias, and open the system up. And time has shown that it was definitely the right decision :) As well as allowing topics that we probably would have rejected as implausible (but that actually did well) it's allowed anyone to try making a wikia.  It doesn't matter if it doesn't ultimately succeed, the point is that they can try and can have the experience and education in how wikias work.  Out of those trials, we sometimes get a diamond

Yes, this system means we have duplicates and near-duplicates (like Robin's examples of niche Nerf wikia) but we don't see that as a big problem. In fact, it can have advantages. As Dartmaster said, we sometimes encourage people to make a wikia if they can't work with an existing one. It's not because we don't care, but because it can be an outlet that stops disruption on a wikia, and because it can provide healthy competition for a wikia that is not being well run.

I also disagree that there should have to be one wikia per topic. There certainly isn't one traditional site per topic, there's room for many. Two Wikia communities on the same topic have the chance to develop in different ways (even if they start with the same content) and become healthy and active sites. Or one may simply fade away, which is also okay, that's part of the natural ecosystem of all websites  The remnants are harmless, they are unlikely to show up on search engines and compete with an active wikia, but the experiment in building a community is still valuable

So overall, we believe that allowing duplicates is the best route. We have room for them on our servers, they take little staff time, and they give their creators what they want from our service... a little space of their own to try and grow a community.

This has been a long reply, and I know there are points above I haven't covered, but I hoped to give you an overview of our position on this.