User blog comment:Dopp/Giving User Profiles Some Love/@comment-2022446-20110707161026/@comment-3388044-20110707234506

I do think that Jäzzi does raise a good point regarding the differing philosophies between wikis and social networking sites. Social networking sites tend to have a more inward looking, more self-oriented approach. In constrast, wikis are more outward looking, more community-oriented. This is why wikis — of which Wikipedia may be the paramount example — tend to discourage interaction soley for social puposes, but rather focus on interaction to the end of improving the wiki; that is, the social interaction is a means to an end, the end of achieving a stellar wiki. Social networking sites, on the other hand, have social interaction as the end in and of itself.

Having said that, I do not think the new userpage “profile” format being proposed will move Wikia so much towards social networking that we will lose sight of our ultimate purpose: content production. Remember, at Wikipedia users often create quite detailed profiles of themselves on their userpages. What Wikia is hoping to do is to merely facilitate that profile creation for new Wikia members not so well versed in wikitext and HTML formatting.

Thanks!