User blog comment:Brandon Rhea/Wiki domains will be changing from wikia.com to fandom.com in early 2019/@comment-4568327-20180817015418

"FANDOM" should really have been spun off into its own separate website entirely. "Wikia" started as a wiki farm to allow people to write content wikis that hosted information for others to read; "FANDOM" is more geared towards fans of a particular subject or topic in the entertainment industry to allow them to get together and talk with like-minded folks. These two goals are completely different to each other and you need to stop trying to mix oil and water together. I'm here to build an encyclopedia, not read articles on an entertainment site with clickbait titles.

"What about non-pop culture wikis? Although our brand is primarily focused around entertainment fandoms, communities on all subjects are supported and will always have a home on FANDOM." No, you are not supporting them with this change! The name "FANDOM" completely ruins communities who are trying to build an informative encyclopedia. Instead of being a wiki farm for general use that covers a vast array of topics, the decisions you are making are shifting the service to an increasingly entertainment-industry focused site. You are essentially creating a slant, a tilt, a bias, towards communities that focus on this kind of stuff, without regard to the fact that your service also includes wikis that cover a whole bunch of other stuff as well. The name "Wikia" worked well because it didn't imply a bias towards anything and indicated the service as a wiki farm that anyone could use for any topic (within the ToU of course). The name "FANDOM" gives the wrong impression to anyone who is looking for a source of information; they are looking for a content encyclopedia, not a half-baked entertainment site that's more rumours and theories than fact and evidence. Imagine if Wikimedia, the organization that hosts Wikipedia and all of its sister projects, whose primary purpose is to "bring free educational content to the world", renamed themselves "FANDOM" and started publishing or hosting articles about celebrity gossip and people's opinions on things. It would be completely contrary to the purpose of the organization, and people would no longer see it as a place to get information from. "FANDOM" is a misleading name and doesn't reflect what many communities are here for.

I'd like to see a Staff response from this, and I don't want another silly cookie-cutter comment. This is quite honestly the last straw for me. You guys have forgotten what made you great, let alone exist, in the first place. You are no longer providing a neutral platform where editors and communities can decide what colours go on in their wikis, but are instead forcefully choosing the colours of paint that they must wear. A white canvas is the foundation where things come to life, and because it is a white canvas, anything fits on it. What would artists do if the canvas was a rainbow-colour instead? The canvas has already decided what it is going to be. You guys need to remember that it is us, the editors, the artists, that write pretty much ALL of the content that exists on the wiki farm now. Wikia succeeded because it provided a blank slate, a white canvas, for the editors to work with, and the result was a brilliantly diverse selection of communities, each governed by its own set of rules and its own set of users and admins. Why is your focus no longer on maintaining this idea of the white, blank canvas for people to cast their own ideas on? And if you're going to respond to this comment with more nonsense about how this change is doing exactly that, then forget it; you've completely missed my point. The only thing I can think of that will justify this change is that you are no longer a wiki farm and that you're throwing your original mission and goal away. In which case, you may very well want to start deleting the wikis that aren't entertainment-based in any way.