{"id":313,"date":"2006-03-28T04:21:44","date_gmt":"2006-03-28T08:21:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/2006\/03\/28\/wikicities-joi-jlevine-wikia-mark-"},"modified":"2006-03-28T04:21:44","modified_gmt":"2006-03-28T08:21:44","slug":"wikicities-joi-jlevine-wikia-mark-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/2006\/03\/28\/wikicities-joi-jlevine-wikia-mark-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Wikicities + Joi + JLevine = Wikia, Mark II"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a1237'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Company Formerly Known As <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wikicities.com\">Wikicities<\/a>, the world&#8217;s largest provider of MediaWiki hosting (and employer of an increasing number of my friends), this month <a href=\"http:\/\/wikia.com\/wiki\/Press_releases\/March_2006\">closed a $4M round of series A funding<\/a> from <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Omidyar<\/span> and <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Bessemer Ventures<\/span> (whence new board member Jeremy Levine) and a few <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">lucky <\/span>individuals (including one-name <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stealth%20disco\">stealth disco star<\/a> and serial board member <a href=\"http:\/\/www.makezine.com\/blog\/archive\/2006\/03\/the_future_of_credit_cards_ear.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Joi<\/span><\/a>).&nbsp; Congratulations all around.<\/p>\n<p>Finding times when all board members are on terra firma at the same<br \/>\ntime may be difficult&#8230; but with modern technology, also increasingly<br \/>\nunnecessary.&nbsp; <font size=\"1\">(I look forward to a photoset from inside Wikia Force One.)<\/font><\/p>\n<p>The company is now known as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wikia.com\"><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Wikia <\/span><\/a>(sometimes &#8220;wikia.com&#8221;), a name which you may recall fromits former life, adorning a related search engine portal.&nbsp; It continues to host the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.uncyclopedia.com\">world&#8217;s drollest wiki<\/a>, and will hopefully be <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">yet another <\/span>channel for MediaWiki development, so that all those fine programmers still sitting on the fence about <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">which wiki platform to use<\/span> with can make up their minds with light heart and easy conscience.&nbsp; Perhaps we need a live ticker&#8230;<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><font size=\"2\">&#8220;MediaWiki.&nbsp; Powering 3.00001542% of the world&#8217;s public web pages.&#8221;<\/font><br \/><\/span><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><\/span><\/span><br \/>Anyway, Wikia has only been getting better this past year.&nbsp; If you&#8217;ve had a burning idea you want to turn into a wiki, think about hosting with them.&nbsp; Unlike every other online community aggregator I&#8217;ve seen to date, they really understand the need for free licensing, the importance of linking projects together and avoiding redundancy, and the utility of guiding communities towards producing meaningful lasting bodies of content, not just short-term attention sinks.&nbsp; <font size=\"2\">(I used to direct people at times to <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">pbwiki <\/span>and other hosts, but I have little patience for any &#8216;wiki&#8217; whose default state is not world-editable.&nbsp; For crying out loud&#8230;&nbsp; why should every site need a &#8216;wiki password&#8217; you must know to edit it? &nbsp; I&#8217;ve stopped counting the number of pbwikis I&#8217;ve been foiled from editing, and I&#8217;ve stopped telling people about the site.&nbsp; <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Sorry, David! :-\/<\/span> )<\/font><br \/><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Company Formerly Known As Wikicities, the world&#8217;s largest provider of MediaWiki hosting (and employer of an increasing number of my friends), this month closed a $4M round of series A funding from Omidyar and Bessemer Ventures (whence new board member Jeremy Levine) and a few lucky individuals (including one-name stealth disco star and serial [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[209],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-popular-demand"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}