Board Thread:Support Requests - Getting Started/@comment-24398890-20140120193412/@comment-5558012-20140120221510

First of all, a single wiki cannot enforce a policy prohibiting the creation of a duplicate wiki. Anyone can create a wiki so it seems they are out of their enforcement range.

Some reasons for duplicate wikis consists of users not knowing a wiki on the subject exists, they do not like the current Admins, their policies and enforcement or lack thereof, don't support the direction of the wiki (common for canon vs fanon), would like to expand the topic in a specific way, or they think improving the existing wiki is too difficult so they start over. Some users just find it too difficult to work with the existing community so they attempt to create another.

I'm not a fan of duplicate wikis. There are ways around problems to avoid doing so. Regardless, Wikia doesn't delete wikis just because they are duplicates, though they don't encourage their creation (Help:Duplicate Wikis). Duplicates have many disadvantages including confusion to editors, possible tension between wikis/users, and can hurt SEO if many pages contain the same content.