Board Thread:New Features/@comment-26522807-20160208225359/@comment-168424-20160226171921

Pbeaudette wrote: Fandyllic wrote: The difficulty upgrading says something about Wikia's relationship with WikiMedia Foundation and it's not good. I'm not sure what it says. :)  I've been on both sides of that relationship, and can report that the WMF has nothing but respect for Wikia, and Wikia feels the same way about WMF.  Certain legitimate software design choices mean that the companies have gone separate design paths that have us frozen at 1.19 for now, but that's not a reflection on the relationship between the two.

Philippe

Senior Director of Community

(and formerly Director of Community Advocacy at WMF)

That's a pretty vague statement. "Respect" has very little practical value if it isn't reflected in action. So far from what I've seen, the synergy between WMF and Wikia is quite low and possibly getting less.

The situation seems very similar to what I've experienced with subsidiaries vs. parent companies, although the situation doesn't quite align. At least it's not obvious that WMF makes any demands or forces direction changes on Wikia. However, Wikia seems to have a trickle-down technology stack which doesn't seem very efficient, especially as the code bases diverge.