Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-20644-20141110180435/@comment-4189499-20141111053922

I don't like the change. It's confusing the brand "Wikia" with the thing "wikis". The thing is, although most editors can see the difference between Wikia and other generic wiki farms due to the extra features, casual readers, the ones who never get an account, just come for the info, and see all the lovely ads, won't see these differences and quite frankly don't care. You are just going to confuse them by making a mess of the terms, wiki, Wikia, and wikia. Wikia and wiki are easy to understand for newbies. One's a company, the other is the general Wikipedia-like format with content created by users. Note that I am not expressing what a long-time editor would think, but what the friends of that editor who may occasionally read a wiki and don't really understand why their editor friend keeps ranting on about things that happen on their wikis. The general public that editors are making information for know what a wiki is, even if only in relation to Wikipedia (it really irritates me when people use the general term wiki as a synonym for Wikipedia, which happens more often than you would think). They won't necessarily know what a wikia is. Actually, let me rephrase that. Unless they've been paying attention to Wikia before, they won't know what a wikia is. It is safer from a getting new reader standpoint to use the term wiki as people know what that is, and knowing what it is, are more likely to interact with it. Calling it a wikia, combined with the layout which is radically different from most other wikis (not that I'm complaining about the layout. I love the Oasis skin), will just alienate these people. If people don't recognise a wiki as a wiki, they are less likely to edit. By distancing yourself from the term wiki, you are turning away readers not already familiar with the Wikia brand. Keep things recognisable. Keep things simple. There is no need to create a new term to distinguish Wikia wikis from other wikis because people who are familiar enough with Wikia already know the difference, and the rest don't care. Wikia may be the biggest wiki farm, but wiki editing isn't a big thing to the general public, so the leap to using the brand as a synonym for the product doesn't work as well as it does for Band-Aid, Hoover, or Google. If you didn't already know what those things are, the brand name just distances you from the product. Wikia isn't well-known enough in the non-editor world to make this leap. Trust me; I am the only person I know who gives two hoots about wikis, and the rest just stare blankly when I discuss them.