Directory:Wikia
Wikia (originally "WikiCities") was co-founded in 2004 by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley. They hoped to capitalize financially on the working model presented by Wikipedia. In fact, it has been said that Wales' ambition was to take the success of Wikipedia and "commercialize the hell out of it."
At one time, 60% of the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees were simultaneously employees of Wikia.
Using Wikipedia as an external link farm
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The only period when external links from Wikipedia to Wikia were in decline were the two months prior to October 2006. Immediately after Jimmy Wales blocked one of his leading critics from Wikipedia, the link expansion continued unabated. As of December 2009, there are over 21,300 external links from Wikipedia to Wikia.com sites, which are funded by Google AdSense and other advertising revenues. So, the more links, the more traffic; and the more traffic, the more money in Jimbo Wales' pocket.
Wikia was the Wikimedia Foundation's landlord
For the better part of 2009, the Wikimedia Foundation was paying rent to Wikia, Inc. on a monthly basis, using a tax-advantaged grant from the Ruth and Frank Stanton Fund. Did Wikia offer the lowest-priced rent solution to the Wikimedia Foundation? Not at all. After a frantic back-and-forth attempt by different agents of the Wikimedia Foundation to explain how this level of self-dealing was allowed to happen, Wikia's CEO Gil Penchina finally revealed (a year later, January 4, 2010) in a personal e-mail:
They [the Wikimedia Foundation] approached us and asked if they could rent space on a temporary basis.. and I think it ended up being 4-6 months give or take. I thought about giving it to them for free and I wasn't sure which was worse... getting accused of bribing a non-profit for giving it away, or getting accused of stealing for a non-profit for charging... so we ended up asking them to get competitng (sic) quotes from other landlords so that THEY could feel comfortable with the decision.
First there is a request to rent space from a hand-picked bidder, and only then a suggestion to get competing bids from other landlords? It sounds like someone at the Wikimedia Foundation wanted to make sure that Jimmy Wales' for-profit company had the inside track on that bid, worth many thousands of dollars. This scenario describes a failure in ethical accountability.
Wikipedia as a staffing source for corrupt Wikia employees
A wave of problems began with a decision by Jimmy Wales to hire a 24-year-old college dropout named Ryan Jordan to work at Wikia. The hiring decision was made, even though Wales apparently knew Jordan had been passing himself off to the Wikipedia community (and to The New Yorker magazine's Pulitzer Prize winning Stacy Schiff) as a tenured professor holding multiple advanced degrees. Further aggravating the issue, Jordan (whose Wikipedia screen name was "Essjay") was soon appointed by Wales to the highest volunteer adjudicating body within Wikipedia -- the Arbitration Committee. So, this was another instance of a Wikia, Inc. employee holding an exclusive position of power on Wikipedia.
When The New Yorker outted Ryan Jordan's academic fraud, their editors contacted Jimmy Wales for comment. Wales was quoted with the now infamous, "I regard it as a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it." This set off a firestorm of criticism, both within Wikipedia and external to the world's largest encyclopedia community. Especially damaging seemed to be the numerous administrative cover-ups that attempted to hide the historical wiki record of Essjay's actions and the community debates that followed.
A "completely separate" organization
Despite all these connections, Jimmy Wales nonetheless has the audacity to declare on his Wikipedia user page that "Wikia [is] a completely separate organization, unrelated to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation."
Wikia Wikia, Inc. Jimmy Wales Jimbo Wales Angela Beesley Angela Starling Gil Penchina Ryan Jordan Essjay Self dealing Form 990 Wikia Search Google Killer Failure Smoke and mirrors Wikia, Inc. 500 Third Street Suite 405 CA US 94107 727.388.6691 San Francisco San Francisco California Find and collaborate with people who love what you love.
