Wikia is a wiki farm. If you haven’t heard about a wiki farm before then it is nothing but a single webhost stringing together many other wikis under it.
Just like a farm, a wiki farm is a collective effort…grouping many smaller web communities into a larger whole. Another feature of a wiki farm is that a user can log-in to multiple wikis using the same account username. Thus, an enthusiast need not limit himself to one wiki community but can hop from one community to another.
As we get into Wikia, a major wiki community portal, we will learn about the power and potential of the crowd driving the knowledge mines through wikis.
Wikia is all about passionate fans. So passionate in fact that it’s a wiki community portal with at least 50,000 communities on various subjects pulling in 30 million eyeballs each month. That’s what makes it a Top 100 web property.
Wikia should not be confused with Wikipedia. Both are entirely different web and creative entities. They are not even sister projects. Both though share some content and are based on the same MediaWiki software.
To clear the air, this Wikia page marks out what Wikia is and what it’s not.
A 50,000 strong community should cover anything under the sun. Wikia does; with communities as diverse as steampunk to the more unvaried ones like politics and sports.
The communities are arranged around Hubs which are akin to categories. Hubs are the broader collections…the big topics covering the many smaller but related sub topics. For instance, entertainment has movies, TV shows, and books under it.
All Wikia sites can be edited by a visitor. Creating an account is not binding but it does make one feel part of the community that’s behind the wiki. A Wikia account can be easily created by clicking the green Create an Account button that’s on the top right of all pages. The green Log In button is right next to it.
Searching for your favorite wiki is easy using the search box on the homepage. All wikis also have a search bar on the left hand side of the page below the wiki logo. A Search link also takes you to the Special Page for more specific needle hunting.
Some pages come with an Edit link which allow visitors to edit or correct any detail. Edits can be done via a text editor and updated instantly. Pages where the Edit button is not available are locked for changes. Wikia editing is simple using the markup language common to all wikis.
Creating a wiki in the Wikia community portal is as easy as planning out a topic, logging in and filling out a creation form. The creation form lists the wiki’s name, URL and category to place under. From then on, you can add your content.
Ultimately, Wikia is about the content. Thousands and thousands of pages of it. Consider the World of Warcraft page…said to one of the largest in Wikia at 78,000 pages and is also one of the top 1,500 websites in the world according to Alexa. The Wikia gaming page in all has ended up with 500,000 pages of content and growing.
Did you know that the word ‘wiki’ comes from the Hawaiian word ‘wikiwiki’ which means ‘fast’? It’s fast to setup or edit but with the huge amount of information; it certainly will be slow going for the reader.
Have you visited Wikia? Let us know your favorite wiki amongst the heap.
Wikia - A community portal
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