Wikia - creating communities

I'm combining some comments from Talk:Featured Wikia and my talk page into one place below. Please add new thoughts on whether "Wikia" being the plural of "Wikia" is too much of a problem. Note that we don't own wikias.com, so using "Wikias" as a plural might lead to people using the wrong URL. Angela (talk) 09:58, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes "Wikia" gets used as though it is the plural of wiki. But, AFAIK, Wikia is the organization that runs this agglomeration of wikis. I know that we have to differentiate Wikia wikis from the general run of the mill wikis out there on the Internet, but wouldn't it be better to say "Wikia wikis," or "Wikis on Wikia?" Reason I ask is that there seems to be considerable confusion. People have taken to calling wikis "wikia" and it is sometimes hard to figure out what's what. Adding to the confusion, is that we have headings such as "Featured Wikia" and "List of Wikia."

I propose that we rename these two pages as follows:

• Featured Wikia --> Featured wikis on Wikia
• List of Wikia --> List of Wikis on Wikia

Comments? Michael 20:10, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Or we could rename this page "Featured wikis." It should be obvious that Wikia would feature Wikia wikis. Michael 17:55, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

To restate, in case the above wasn't clear: I think that we should differentiate between "Wikia" (an organization that hosts wikis) and "wiki" (a collaborative authoring medium used by a particular group). Michael 23:38, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you. The company name recently changed from "Wikicities" to "Wikia", and when that happened, it was announced that "Wikia" was the name of the company, the name for an individual wiki, and the plural form as well. I find it confusing, and I tend to ignore it in common speech.

I would much prefer it if we referred to each wiki as a wiki. -- Danny (talk) 19:02, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikis on Wikia are called Wikia. I think this will start to make more sense in future when Wikia starts to offer more than a simple wiki, and the distinction between the two is more obvious. It also distinguishes between simply any wiki on a topic and the ones that are here. The wikis featured on this page are very much featured Wikia, not just featured wikis, since we only ever feature ones that are hosted on wikia.com. Angela (talk) 05:07, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

No question that they are Wikia wikis. But you seem to be saying that there are three meanings of the word "Wikia." If I understand correctly, we have:

• Wikia - an organization that hosts Wikia
• Wikia - the entities hosted by Wikia
• Wikia - an individual Wikia on Wikia.

Thus one might say: "Each wikia is one of many wikia on Wikia." Have I got that right? Michael 05:56, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

One way of solving this lack of clarity would be to rename this page "Featured on Wikia." Thoughts? Michael 16:48, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

My concern is with the language. If we call individual Wikia wikis "Wikia," and also use expressions like "Featured Wikia" or "List of Wikia (plural), it seems to me that there will be three meanings of the word:

• Wikia - an organization that hosts Wikia
• Wikia - the entities hosted by Wikia
• Wikia - an individual Wikia on Wikia.

The following sentence, I think illustrates the lack of clarity that will ensue:

I participate in a Wikia that is one of many Wikia on Wikia.

Do you see the problem? As an editor, I think there may other ways of ensuring that Wikia wikis are seen as unique and special. Michael 14:51, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

To be fair, you did strive for maximum ambiguity. Clarity:

• Wikia - the company
• wikia.com - the host
• wikia - a Wikia wiki
• wikia - plural wikia (use 'Wikia wikis' if you need clarity)

--Splarka (talk) 21:12, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Strive for maximum ambiguity? Hardly. Rather my lack of skill in expressing myself clearly. However, I think you miss my point, which is that the word "wikia" is used in at least three different ways and that will be confusing to many. Michael 05:17, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

The only ambiguity is in wikia being its own plural. If it is the company, use "Wikia" or "Wikia-inc" (upper case, proper noun) and if it is the host use "wikia.com". --Splarka (talk) 01:47, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Michael is right. It's also very annoying when translating to other languages. I say we change the plural form to wikias. Sure, it's not the propper Latin form, but last time I checked, Latin was still a dead language. Yeh, you still have those crazy clerics, but I don't think the church will mind.--Rataube 16:39, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

So that would be: "I participate in a wikia that is one of many wikias on Wikia." Still sounds strange to my ear... Michael 17:52, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Here's a suggestion. Change pages such as "Featured Wikia" to "Featured on Wikia." That will make the Main Page consistent. I tried to do this, but was reverted immediately. People seem to be reluctant to discuss this, so I will leave it with this suggestion. Michael 15:10, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't sound strange to me now, any more than it would sound strange to have a company selling bonsai called "Bonsai". And as we get better known, I think it will start to sound normal to other ears too. The context generally tells you what the sentence means, although one with all three meanings will always sound a bit odd ("I went to Bonsai to buy a bonsai from their collection of bonsai") -- sannse (talk) 16:26, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikia seems good even for plural. Translations would be strange; Swedish: "Wikiaer"/"Wikior", Italian: "Wikiai", French: "Wikiaux"/"Wikias", German: "Wikianen" etc. When it should be obvious, I think i.e. "Wikia wikis" should be used, or just wikis. Smiddle 21:03, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Keep it Simple

Having one word Wikia for all three meanings is actually good. It makes things simple, and by the very fact that it's so unusual, it gets attention, and at the same time makes it easier for people to memorize the fact that the name goes for all three uses. --Yunzhong Hou 20:08, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

On the contrary, by being irregular and unusual it creates confusion. When learning words in any language the easiest to remember are always the regulars not the exceptions. One word - three meanings, that creats ambiguety, the opposite of simplicity. Once you alredy know it you'll remeber it easyly I agree, but it'll continue being confusing for newcomers.--Rataube 21:31, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reviving this discussion from a year ago

Sorry, I had been having conversations in the chat room about the word "wikia" and decided to try to make all the same points here...that's probably counterproductive, let me try something shorter.

At the top of this page, Angela requested back in August 2006, "Please add new thoughts on whether "Wikia" being the plural of "Wikia" is too much of a problem." There was a discussion and consensus of sorts, and DanTMan has offered this description of how people use the word "wikia" around here:

   * Wikia - The company hosting wiki.
   * Wikia wiki or wikia - Individual or multiple wiki hosted by Wikia.
   * wiki - The type of content being hosted by Wikia. 

There's no problem with this now, but I see a problem going forward...I could be wrong, but I'm very impressed with the guys over at Wikipedia who participate in MOS discussions, they may have a better ear for this kind of thing than I do, and we could pull them in if you like. I don't think anyone will think that the plural of "wikia" is "wikia" unless you tell them that it is. I think it doesn't sound right, on a variety of levels, and this means that once people outside of Wikia Inc are talking about wikia(s)...and that's the idea, right, you see yourselves becoming an integral and well-known part of All Things Wiki?...if "wikia" means "one of our wikis", we probably won't be able to keep people from saying "wikias". Angela mentioned above that she would consider this a problem, because you guys don't own the url "wikias.com".

But I want to alert you that I think there's a bigger problem than that. I learned this from my spouse, John Boddie, who's on the national ACLU board and an experienced and respected lawyer...however, he's not a trademark lawyer, so he thinks you should ask your own lawyers if you have questions about this. There's a general principle, when you're trying to protect the name of your company, that if other people start publicly claiming to be you, or to be making the same product that you do, that you have to sue them to get them to stop...or else lose your claim to legally control the word. Your lawyers may have told you something different, we don't know, but saying that you are Wikia Inc, a place where "wikia" or "wikias" are made, knowing that other people will copy your content, knowing that "wikis" are already popular and commonplace, and knowing that other people will start calling their content "wikia(s)" too if that's the cool thing to do, sounds like asking for trouble.

Even if your lawyers say that this is no problem, my (Dan's) experience is that business people would say it's a bad idea to start a company called X, call your product X, and make it easy for people to copy your product. It seems to be the opposite of what the business schools would tell you to do to best protect your product and control your branding and your reputation. I would think that it would be easier to protect your name if you insist that Wikia is a proper noun...Wikia Inc, Wikia.com...that there is only one, and that the "product" here is...well, "wikis" or any other name you want to choose, just not "wikia". — Dan Dank55 14:02, 19 December 2007 (UTC)