User blog:Jackninja5DipperGravityFalls/Why Wikia Does Things You May Not Agree With

Wikia (now known as FANDOM) has recently made some decisions that have invoked negative responses from several users. Of course, I'm not taking sides in this but I personally do think I can get used to the changes, which I have for the most part. So why are the Staff making changes people don't seem to like? Wouldn't that hurt their number of users joining? Well, no and here's why.

Advertising
Advertising is understandably disliked as it gets in the way of things from watching YouTube videos, visiting websites and even makes its way on illegal websites from what I've heard. However, believe it or not, advertising does something good for the website as well: Revenue. Let's think of how you create an account. You just type in a username, password and email and get an account like that. Verification of the account can be done through email and four days is usually the minimum before you can edit semi-protected pages. You can also get promotions to moderator, admin and bureaucrat. In rare cases, you can also get global roles like Helper, Global Discussions Moderator and VSTF. However, none of these are given by money. The fact that the website allows us to use it freely without paying for anything extra is a nice gesture. However, when running a business, you need to make a profit. Wikia is no exception. While Wikipedia does have funds from users at times, Wikia doesn't really ask for any and asking for money can be hard when you didn't start off that way. That is why Wikia uses advertising. If they didn't, the company may become insolvent and the website we are using right now would not be up today. Advertising revenue is how Wikia makes its money.

Rename to FANDOM
Last year, a lot of us (myself included) weren't too happy with Wikia's decision to rename the site FANDOM (powered by Wikia). However, aside from a few logo changes and whatnot, there's ben nothing too different about that. The URL is still the same for example. The URL says "community.wikia.com/" not "community.fandom.com/". So what's the point in changing this name then? Wikia has a large number of fanbases which make wikis about the things they are fans of. It is a way to increase user numbers by renaming themselves FANDOM. Rebranding does not negatively affect Wikia at all unless you choose to make it so.

Non-intervention in corrupt admin cases
One thing people seem to make a fuss about is that Staff usually doesn't intervene when an admin seemingly abuses their power. However, while it is an issue if an admin is abusing their power for the wiki, Staff should not intervene as it is a community issue and it can be hard to determine if it really is an abuse of power or just someone complaining about being banned. Even some bans I've performed on wikis have been complained about but don't take my mention of this as a statement to say all of them are just complaints about bans. Staff will only demote a bureaucrat if they are inactive and the community requests it.

Discussions
In 2012, the forums were introduced to Wikia and have been quite popular among several wikis. Then, in 2016 or 2017, Discussions were introduced. As it may replace the forums due to it being difficult to keep the two, people weren't too happy about it to say the least. However, back when the forum was created there were some issues created that are extremely difficult to fix so they decided to restart it using Discussions.

You are free to have a different opinion however. I'm just saying this as a point for why they do so. I also do not want anyone attacking anyone in the comments.