User blog comment:Brandon Rhea/Wiki domains will be changing from wikia.com to fandom.com in early 2019/@comment-1142365-20180815205155

While it was clear from the start of the rebrand that this would eventually happen, what is unclear is what wikis are truly regarded as by FANDOM. What are they? Perhaps, what is their primary purpose? If the primary focus was to be a wiki, namely a place where information on a subject matter is collected and presented to readers, then why the total move away from wikia?

The big thing that always stuck out to me about the whole rebrand was insensitivity to wikis that are not about games or TV shows. While usually smaller wikis with lower readership, there are plenty of wikis for whom the "FANDOM" moniker does not work. The usual response given to this conflict is that these wikis are always welcome on FANDOM. I don't doubt that for a second, but giving them URLs that don't make sense doesn't exactly give confidence to that sentiment. It is a disservice to those smaller wikis with often very dedicated editors.

Perhaps this is an extreme example, but there does exist a wiki for diabetes. As there exists a wiki for cancer. Both of these wikis, along with other wikis on medical topics, make a genuine effort to inform and help not only those who want to learn about these topics, but also those who are actually suffering from these illnesses. It is a really bad look on FANDOM to rename these sites as "diabetes.fandom.com" or "cancer.fandom.com". Regardless of whether or not a redirect exists.

Please make sensitive decisions with the URL rename. It is not a bad thing to have branding consistency, so this happening isn't inherently bad, but just keep things in perspective and don't overlook FANDOM's position as a wiki farm for any topic. Perhaps limit the change to wikis in certain categories? Like entertainment and gaming?