Wikia. The #1 Free, Hosted Wiki?

(part 2 of 7) Wikia, Wetpaint, PBwiki, Google Sites, and Versionate. There are literally hundreds of different wikis available, each offering unique online experiences and presenting different interpretations of what it means to be wiki. Within this series we explore and discuss the top 3 most popular, free, online wikis and 2 (of very many) notable up-and-comers — and, in the end, announce the winning wiki experience.

Website: Wikia
Briefly: Wikia was found to be the #1 free, hosted wiki, based on Alexa popularity ranking, in April 2007. (read more)

Enjoyable

Wikia is the most popular free, online wiki, today. One of the direct benefits to the Wikia user, of this huge popularity, is Wikia‘s equally huge community (support) and user generated content (consumer choice).

The inclusion of dynamic widgets provides access to fast and useful wiki information.

The full content of any wiki, regardless of administrator, can be downloaded and ported to other platforms. (link: http://www.wikia.com/wiki/Database_download)

Disappointing or Unsatisfying

The interface through which wiki content is created and edited is critical to increasing adoption and lowering its intimidation factor. Here, Wikia, as is common to many other wikis, does not provide a WYSIWYG interface, but one that requires use of their special markup language.

Creating a new wiki cannot be directly accomplished. To create a new wiki, the user has to submit a request for a new wiki, and await its approval.

Wikia only supports the management of public content. While administrators can control whether or not a page can be edited, they cannot prevent any page’s viewing.

In the next post of the series I will be exploring the #2 popularly ranked wiki, wetpaint.

Think & Share…

What would change about the Wikia wikis?

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