{"id":315,"date":"2006-03-28T14:39:15","date_gmt":"2006-03-28T18:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/2006\/03\/28\/wikicities-ii\/"},"modified":"2006-03-28T14:39:15","modified_gmt":"2006-03-28T18:39:15","slug":"wikicities-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/2006\/03\/28\/wikicities-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Wikicities II"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a1239'><\/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<br \/>\n&#8220;wikia.com&#8221;), a name which you may recall fromits former life, adorning<br \/>\na 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; <font size=\"2\"><br \/>\nPerhaps we need a live ticker&#8230;&#8221;MediaWiki.&nbsp; Powering 3.00001542% of the world&#8217;s public web pages.&#8221;<\/font><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><\/span><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><span style=\"font-style: italic;\"><\/span><\/span><br \/>Anyway,<br \/>\nWikia has been getting better this past year.&nbsp; Unlike every other online community aggregator I&#8217;ve seen to<br \/>\ndate, they really understand the need for free licensing, the<br \/>\nimportance of linking projects together and avoiding redundancy, and<br \/>\nthe utility of guiding communities towards producing meaningful lasting 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<br \/>\nother hosts, but I have little patience for any &#8216;wiki&#8217; whose default<br \/>\nstate is not world-editable.&nbsp; For crying out loud&#8230;&nbsp; why should every<br \/>\nsite need a &#8216;wiki password&#8217; you must know to edit it? &nbsp; I&#8217;ve stopped<br \/>\ncounting the number of pbwikis I&#8217;ve been foiled from editing, and I&#8217;ve<br \/>\nstopped 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":[206],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-la-mod"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315","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=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/longestnow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}