User:Gmartin1122/Wikia

Wikia was launched on October 18, 2004, under the name "Wikicities" (which invited comparisons to GeoCities),^[4] but changed its name to "Wikia" on March 27, 2006. ^[5] In the month before the name change, Wikia announced a US$4 million venture capital investment from Bessemer Venture Partners and First Round Capital.^[6] Nine months later, Amazon.com invested US$10 million in Series B funding.^{[citation needed]}

By July 2007, it had more than 3,000 wikis in more than 50 languages.^[7] Over time Wikia has incorporated formerly independent wikis that joined Wikia, such as LyricWiki, The Vault, Uncyclopedia and WoWWiki.^[8] Former CEO Gil Penchina described early Wikia as "the rest of the library and magazine rack" to Wikipedia's encyclopaedia.^[9] The material has also been described as informal, and often bordering on entertainment, allowing the importing of maps, YouTube videos, and other non-traditional wiki material.^[10]

By 2010, Wikia communities were able to be created in 188 different languages.^[1] In October 2011, Wikia announced that Craig Palmer, the former CEO of Gracenote, would replace Penchina as CEO.^[3] On February 8, 2012, co-founder Beesley Starling announced she was leaving Wikia to launch a startup called ChalkDrop.com.^[11] At the end of November 2012, it was announced that Wikia had raised another US$10.8 million in Series C funding from Institutional Venture Partners and previous investors Bessemer Ventures Partners and Amazon.com.^[12] Another $15 million was raised in August 2014 for Series D funding, with investors Digital Garage, Amazon, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Institutional Venture Partners. The total raised at this point was $39.8 million.^[13][14] On March 4, 2015, Wikia announced its appointment of Walker Jacobs, who was the former Executive Vice-President of Turner Broadcasting System, to the new position of Chief Operating Officer.^[15] On January 25, 2016, Wikia launched a new entertainment news site named Fandom.

Wikia communities primarily consist of online reference works, each one specialized in a particular subject or theme. Although Wikia allows almost anything to be the main focus of a wiki, the most common interest of Wikia internauts is in popular fiction franchises of books, films, games and other media,.

The main purpose of articles in a Wikia community is to cover information and discussion on a particular topic in a much greater and more comprehensible detail level than can be found in other reference works (such as  Wikipedia articles).^[16] Other examples of content that appear frequently in Wikia include topics of video games, detailed instructions, gameplay details, plot details, and so forth. Wikia also allows wikis to have a point of view, rather than the neutral POV that is required by Wikipedia (although NPOV is a local policy on many Wikia communities).^{[citation needed]}

Wikia requires all user text content to be published under a free license;^[17] most use the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, although Memory Alpha and Uncyclopedia use a noncommercial variant and some use the GNU Free Documentation License..^{[nb 1]}

As of August 2015, Wikia uses a heavily modified version^[18] of MediaWiki software, based on the version 1.19^[19] of MediaWiki, which was officially marked as obsolete in May 2015..^[20] It has more than 250 extensions installed,^[19] most of them created by Wikia’s own staff of developers, to add social features like blogs, chat, badges, forums and multimedia,^[21] but also to remove features like advanced user options^[22][23] or skins other than their default custom skin and Monobook (available only for personal use),^[24] which are often used by advanced users but that new users may find confusing.

Wikia communities have complained of inappropriate advertisements, or advertising in the body text area.^[35] There is no easy way for individual communities to switch to conventional paid hosting, as Wikia usually owns the relevant domain names. If a community leaves Wikia for new hosting, the company typically continues to operate the abandoned wiki using its original name and content, adversely affecting the new wiki's search rankings, for advertising revenue.^[36]

Wikia, Inc. is based in San Francisco, California.^[44]The company was incorporated in Florida in December 2004 and re-incorporated in Delaware as Wikia, Inc. on January 10, 2006 ^{[citation needed]}

Wikia derives income from advertising. Wikia additionally gains income from various partnerships in its Wikia Fan Studio and its API.

Wikia has several offices around the world,^[45] including Germany, Poland, Tokyo, London, Chicago, Los Angeles, Virginia and New York.

Wikia has over 300 employees with several contractors and fan contributors.