Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-35818881-20180717211823/@comment-1038387-20180717233917

Fregian pedant here: it was not added to FANDOM; that concept didn't exist yet. It was an attempt by Wikia at giving communities a place to grow and socialize in a way the old forums never could. If you think that somehow devaluated your wiki experience, you're entitled to that feeling though I find it cheap. It's very easy to just keep editing and ignore chat. I've been doing it for years.

Some wikis don't have chat, some have empty chat, and some have a lively chat (or, by now, Discord). there are plenty of wikis large and small that saw their community grow thanks to the social aspect. It's by no means perfect - downtime, lack of logging, lack of oversight - but it was what many wikis needed.