User blog comment:Craiglpalmer/Wikia is now Fandom powered by Wikia/@comment-20644-20160930175246/@comment-4189499-20161001035906

Hi Brandon. Thanks for taking the time to respond to the feedback. Your post does address most of my concerns, but I do still have some concerns not discussed, or not discussed adequately in this post. I apologise if they have been raised before, but there are a lot of comments to read and most of them aren't providing constructive feedback and so I don't have the patience to read them to weed out the good bits.

My main concern that hasn't been addressed at all by the looks of things is the fact that "fandom" is a generic term. It is widely used in a way that's not associated with any brand. You can't claim generic terms. If another company popped up and called itself "Fandom" and provided the exact same content, you can't sue them because "fandom" is a generic term. I think it's a rather ridiculous idea that you name yourself a name you can't own, especially a company as big as Wikia with many people who would try to pretend to be you to steal your sizeable business and reputation.

My second concern which I don't think was adequately addressed above is the non-fandom wikis that will have to reside under the Fandom name. Wikia hosts wikis on world wars and religions, on cocktails and carpentry, and everything in between. Just yesterday I got help from the Vim Wiki, and I wouldn't call Vim a fandom; Vim is a tool. It just sounds utterly ridiculous to put any of these wikis under the name Fandom. Don't hurt your Lifestyle wikis like this.

The perception of casual information searchers from seeing the word "Fandom" beside non-fandom topics is likely to put them off clicking a Wikia result. Let's say you were looking for apple pie recipes and saw a result from the "Recipes Wiki|Wikia". First impression/assumption: a recipe produced by a wiki, a wiki being a collaborative project. It's probably going to be a good, easy recipe that somebody loved enough to post. Now, let's imagine it come from "Recipes Wiki|Fandom powered by Wikia". Now what's your first impression/assumption going to be? Oh, it's a recipe by people who really, really love cooking. It's probably going to be way too hard for me to do. See the problem here? Similarly, imagine researching information on more divisive topics such as history or religion. If you're thinking of it only in terms of wikis, a carry-over perception of impartiality from most people's knowledge of Wikipedia will only help the result, whereas believing the wiki is run by fanatics generally means that it will be very biased. I can't see at all how having the word "Fandom" in a search result from these non-fandom wikis will help them.

And finally, there are negative perceptions of certain fandoms. Not necessarily the idea of fandoms in general, but certainly there are certain fandoms out there that some people would not want to be associated with. For example, I absolutely love the Doctor Who fandom, but the Sherlock fandom makes me embarrassed to say that I really enjoy the show. Don't even get me started on "SuperWhoLock". Sticking the words "Fandom" in search results from the Baker Street Wiki would make me think that wiki was more Johnlock than Conan Doyle. This is the negative side of fandom that you do need to be aware of, since again it is something that will affect some wikis more than others. Again, Wikia is a neutral term which does not negatively impact any wiki in any way.

Thank you for listening to my points. I just really hope you've considered all the benefits and hindrances this change will make, because flip-flopping on this will get a much worse reaction than flip-flopping on the whole "wiki -> wikia" thing. The admittance that "changing wiki to wikia wasn't the best idea ever" and that you yourself held reservations about it while advocating for it does not inspire confidence in this new decision, although I do appreciate the honesty (the term change truly was a ridiculous decision as many people pointed out at the time). I've been a part of the Wikia community for over 5 years now and really don't want to see any wiki suffer from a bad decision make without considering all the consequences. Good luck with it.