User blog comment:BertH/Layout and navigation updates coming October 3/@comment-4839035-20120921153945/@comment-5209426-20120923061821

Wikia's had a change of direction since 2007 and it hasn't sat well with everyone in that time (*cough*Wowwiki*cough*). What they're doing is trying to get people to stay within and move around inside of their content network (adrevenue++), i.e. make it easy for people who mainly hang around on Wiki A to randomly visit Wiki B and know where all the tools are and how all the features work without having to learn anything. As such, every wiki has the same skin (Oasis) and customisation is limited by ToU. It's not a terrible idea but it does rob each wiki of having much in the way of individuality, although there are exceptions.

I suspect that Wikia has learned from all the problems it had with Oasis and isn't going to suddenly launch a new skin, this change is likely the first in a sequence of slow mutations (the constant references to "making future changes less disruptive" is telling). Instead of springing a new skin on us, they'll slowly mutate Oasis into something else one small change at a time. Each individual change will cause the usual complaining about changes but an outright user rebellion is much less likely.

As far as ads go, you can always cough up $20 a month instead.