User blog comment:Sarah Manley/Beyond the Encyclopedia - A Wiki for Everyone/@comment-168424-20100831010044

Unfortunately Wikia is also alot about non-communities.

What do I mean?

Well, there are many, many one person wikis that are basically personal playgrounds with almost no intention of encouraging or inviting other participants. There are also many wikis run by an oligarchic group of insiders that faithfully revert and re-edit anything that doesn't fit their fancy. There are also strange wikis like Wikianswers that appears to be administered directly by Wikia, but doesn't appear to want to acknowledge feedback from the community attempting to form (see the ghost town that is w:c:answers:Forum:Index).

Wikia needs to practice more of what it preaches.

What can Wikia do?
 * 1) Have a regular dialogue with the community. Not mostly one-way blog posts that have the rare response to a comment.
 * 2) Respond to requests in open conversation rather than the secretive workings of the Special:Contact channel.
 * 3) Have a dedicated representative for the Community Central Forum (it doesn't have to be a paid position, it can be a volunteer that can speak for Wikia).
 * 4) Focus efforts on enabling content creators, not anonymous content consumers.
 * 5) Improve your help pages! Make it easier for the community to help improve them.

I'm sure I'll think of more things, but that's it for now.