Forum:New wikis

Since the number of new wikis started rocketing, I'd stopped reading through the lists (and I notice that we don't get one on the mailing list any more). On a whim I had a look at the new wikis page yesterday.

What crazy duplication, triplication, quadruplication!!!
 * Three of them are Tolkien wikis (quadruplicating the long-established w:c:lotr) and two of those have the same founder and virtually the same front page introduction written by him or her.
 * Then w:c:lyrics2 - undermining our biggest wiki and starting by copying and pasting one of its pages (with only a hint of acknowledgment, mixed up in a lot of code).
 * The new World History wiki can't have broader (and its name suggests it's not aiming at narrower) scope than the established w:c:history wiki.
 * Several new gaming sites seem to be merely duplicating effort put into parts of our rather successful Gaming Wikia.

I haven't kept detailed notes as I trawled through the successive blocks of 500 items, but there seem to be several WOW wikis in English and several of various others, such as GTA and Runescape, that I'm sure we already have perfectly good Wikia sites for.

Digging a little deeper I see that we have about ten English-language Wikia sites called "Grand Theft Auto Wiki" and a similar number called "Gta Wiki" or "GTA Wiki" in addition to the original Grand Theft Wiki.

Does anybody care? Do the hard-working creators of the wikis being undermined even know about the duplications/multiplications? Isn't there a serious risk that the good name of the established ones will be lost if feeble imitations manage to get viewers who believe that that's all there is and never look again, thus missing the chance of finding the original and possibly telling their friends not to bother?

Doesn't Wikia, Inc, have any way of prohibiting at least the duplication of wiki names for wikis nominally in the same language?

Puzzled and concerned — Robin Patterson (Talk) 06:30, January 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * You're not the first to post comment like that and the short answer is that Wikia changed his policy some month ago and now permit wiki duplication with almost no restriction.
 * They have already explain why a dozen times on this forum.
 * But, many Wikia users share your concerns. It does indeed split community efforts and might also give bad impression and reputation like you said.
 * Wikia is aware of our feeling about this. So the community began thinking maybe Wikia is only doing this for profit; to have more pages to show ads on.
 * I think i was one of the firsts to report on this forum the duplication of the content of fr.guildwars into a newly created "private" wiki some month ago (duplicating but not copying). At that time, i felled a bit like victim of a backstab when i dicovered that wiki as they had more users that the original french Guild Wars wiki and instead of comming helping us, they were wasting their time duplicating our work. If they wanted they own wiki, it was their right, but they could have used interwiki linking to pages of the french GW wiki instead of reproducing them.
 * So, at that time i had a fight with that wiki founder. That is when i discovered that Wikia changed their policy, in fact, right after my post in this forum, Wikia made an annoncement about it.
 * Today, tons of empties wikis are to be found on Wikia even though they set up way so people requesting new wikis on a topic where there's already one get a warning about it. They even made redirection from several URL to existing wikis.
 * It seems there's more to do. — TulipVorlax 07:55, January 9, 2010 (UTC)
 * Agree that this creation of loads of similar/duplicate wikis is not very helpfull and may be counter productive. I had a look abit back and found loads of almost completly empty ones. It appears to be a policy of Quantity over quality by wikia to claim more sites (or am i just cynical?). A cull / merge of some of the abandoned stat ups would appear to be a solution and direct users to active wikis covering the same subject. As a test I created one for a sub subject that is covered by 'my' tractors wiki which covers several vehicle types. I did wonder about creating several to cover other related subjects and redirecting them to the existing one. Some existing related wikis that are inactive i've added a note pointing to my 'tractors wiki' as an alternative for interested potential users but wonder about the ethics of solicitiong users on other wikis ?
 * I have in the past worked on some other inactive wiki and revert vandalism but decided i had not got the time to actively develop / work on them and tractor wiki and wikipedia plus visit forums effectivly. The site of abandeonded / inactive wikis populated by rubbish is damaging to wikia sites as a whole as casual visitors ill get the wrong impression of wikia sites and not stay round unless they find a decent site that interests them. IMHO - BulldozerD11 03:04, January 13, 2010 (UTC)


 * Normally, staff can redirect (new) urls to existing one. I'm sure using Special:Contact we can ask for this. — TulipVorlax 00:21, January 14, 2010 (UTC)


 * I think it is Wikia is looking to expand the, as was said above, "quantity" of wikis they have. It looks much better to show "60,000 wiki fansites!" rather than "500 wikis" on the main page. Their counter argument to this would probably be that having a lot of wikis is drawing attention to Wikia which will then increase the userbase. But honestly, I think this is doing way more harm than good. How I see it, a very good comparison of Wikia today could be a garbage dump where some things people will find which are very useful and helpful (a well-known wiki with more articles and users). Although, the majority of stuff is garbage that is no use to anyone (abandoned, bad-conditioned duplicate wikis, covered in spam) because there may be a better version in a better condition. And that useless garbage is starting to cover up and hide the things actually worth something... A strange, but in my eyes, true analogy. Cheers, 13:17, January 17, 2010 (UTC)