Board Thread:Support Requests - Getting Started/@comment-24.237.192.87-20170321101348/@comment-9605025-20170321161005

I agree with Noreplyz. Using Patreon and/or implementing a similar system is contrary to the basic concept of wikis. Why would I pay to curate information for someone else? Even if contributing were to be free, why would I provide content that others pay for but for which I receive nothing in return? The whole concept of a wiki is the free and open exchange of information (although potentially subject to legal requirements). Additionally, Wikia is maintained by an entire team, not a single person or small group of people.

That being said, it does take a lot of money to maintain the servers required to provide such a service; especially on the scale that Wikia does. To this end, there are two options: ask for donations (like Wikipedia), and sell ad space. Given the number of Wikia sites as well as the popularity of at least a few of them, the add revenue is probably much larger than you are thinking. I am guessing, at the very least, it is large enough to maintain Wikia's cost of operation. In the nearly 4 years I have been using Wikia, they have never had to run a donations campaign and they even annually give to charity.

On the other hand, there are a lot of users that agree with you regarding the viewing experience (I am one of them). However, as Noreplyz already mentioned, Wikia is working on improving the ad experience for readers. Also, as Ciencia Al Poder noted, you can also create an account rather than using Wikia anonymously. Doing so greatly reduces the number of ads you will see and also limits the quantity of those annoying, really large, video ads. Since you have been using Wikia's wikis for years, creating an account would also offer other benefits such as being able to track your own contributions. Here at community central, you can even view Special:UserActivity which allows you to track your contributions across all Wikia wikis.