Classic WoW Wiki:Working with Wikia

This info and discussion is based on followup of the vote to not change WoWWiki's domain to Wikia subdomain at WoWWiki talk:Domain.

Intro
Wikia made a request to the WoWWiki community to help increase Wikia's revenue by changing WoWWiki's domain to a subdomain of Wikia (*.wikia.com), but the community voted against that idea. Wikia aid that they still needed to find more revenue generating opportunities, but would try to work with community representatives to come up with ideas, get feedback and hopefully avoid ideas that that the community would hate. As part of the domain vote, Fandyllic and Murph were voted to be the community's representatives.

On Tuesday (20-Jan-2009), a meeting occurred at the San Francisco Wikia office involving Fandyllic (at Wikia office), Murph (via Skype), Kirkburn (via Skype), Gil Penchina (Wikia CEO at Wikia Office), and other Wikia staff. At the meeting various ideas were discussed and will be detailed below.

At the end of the meeting we agreed to have followup meetings as needed, but most likely via conference call, conference Skype voice, or conference Skype chat.

Notes from January 20th meeting
''These are an edited version of notes taken by Gil, my memory of the meeting, plus any followup. -- Fandyllic  (talk &middot; contr) 5:01 PM PST 22 Jan 2009''

Guidelines
Guidelines for changes to implement new revenue improvement ideas.

Any changes will be evaluated to be trialed in two potential ways with the intent to help support Wikia and insure the future of WoWWiki:

TYPE A
On WoWWiki directly.
 * Usually in a limited fashion affecting a few highly trafficed pages or a subset of pages based on some criteria that will be announced.
 * These changes will be reviewed by community representatives as having minimal disruption or are unlikely to cause broad community discontent.
 * Feedback will be encouraged from the whole community.
 * Some of these changes may be trialed before going live to all Wikia wikis (with usual exceptions).

TYPE B
On a test copy of WoWWiki or some other test Wikia site for 1-2 weeks.
 * These changes may be more pervasive and affect all pages on the test site.
 * Community members will be encouraged to visit the test site and give feedback on changes.
 * Positively received changes may get re-trialed on the main WoWWiki site, if feedback is positive enough or a wider audience for feedback is needed.

Ideas

 * Future short term tests
 * Video
 * Most likely walkthrough type videos.
 * Install on a few high traffic pages on WoWWiki.
 * Test 15 second pre-roll advertising after


 * Ads within the content
 * Build first on the test site to see how they look.
 * Ideally have ability to control/tune the ads by page, or across the site
 * Ad typs will probably include: Killer Guides, Google ads with hints, and Pricegrabber ads
 * Target high traffic pages for the live site test after getting community feedback


 * Future Q &amp; A feature
 * Test question entry on skin at top or bottom of page.
 * This feature will probably roll out to all Wikia wikis or most.
 * More details to come.


 * Postponed ideas
 * List of commercial guides pages vs. directory of all guides should be a decision for the community ** Not a lot of revenue here.
 * Community to decide if this is something they want to do as a minor source of revenue for Wikia.
 * Community can work on policy/guidelines for what is acceptable.


 * Kontera links
 * Try on a test site if we do try it.


 * Interstitial
 * An add type that occurs while navigating between pages under certain conditions.
 * General agreement that unlikely to be positively received by community.
 * Try on a test site if we do try it.

These would likely not require immediate community feedback or involvement.
 * Other Wikia ideas
 * Reach out to Brady Games for a sponsorship?
 * Reach out to Fantasy Flight Games for a sponsorship?