EmailA question of confusion has no simple answer, as shown by an argument over the names of wiki-based sites dedicated to providing answers to questions. Wikia Inc's "Wikianswers" site is answers.wikia.com. Answer.com's "WikiAnswers" site is wiki.answers.com. And if you're confused, you may not be the only one. These sites work on the digital-sharecropping model of having someone create a page asking a question, and then user-generated content (that is, unpaid labour) gives a reply. Given the possibilities of broad appeal and high search engine rankings, there's potential for significant revenue.
Chris Whitten founded FAQ Farm in 2002. In November 2006, having "over 12m pageviews per month" it was sold to Answers Corporation for $2m (£1.35m) in cash. Its name was changed to WikiAnswers by January 2007. Answers Corporation has applied for a trademark on WikiAnswers. But its application has been refused for the term being "merely descriptive" and not having "acquired distinctiveness".
Wikia Inc's Wikianswers site was started in November 2004 by Hemanshu Desai. But it apparently languished in obscurity. A January 2008 snapshot shows only a very small amount of activity over more than three years. However, Wikia is an atypical company. It was created by several high-level people involved with Wikipedia, notably co-founder Jimmy Wales, to commercialise similar concepts. The for-profit Wikia and the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia's owner) have no major financial connection. But a halo effect from Wikipedia's prominence and widespread recognition can be an enormous benefit to Wikia.
In January 2009, Wikia relaunched its site. The similarity of names did not go unnoticed. Arguments revolved around the relevance of first use of the name by what had essentially been a dead site. Further, in a blog post, Answers Corporation chief executive Bob Rosenschein wrote: "We are admirers of Jimmy Wales but must set the record straight about the recent statement on Wikia's site that he is the 'founder of [...] Wikianswers'. ... Wikia is creating market confusion by associating its Q&A category with our market-leading WikiAnswers domain and site."
Additionally, on Wikia's site, an odd edit was made by Wikia's chief executive, Gil Penchina, to the page for the question: "When was Wikianswers launched and who by?" He added: "Because all wikis are on Wikia - which is founded by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beasley, Jimmy is de facto a co-founder of Wikianswers." That sentence has since been removed. But the absurdity of a company co-founder potentially claiming automatic prominent co-foundership of every single project should be manifest. It is especially ironic in view of Wales's efforts to deny Wikipedia co-founder credit to the seminal Wikipedia creator Larry Sanger. The lesson here is another example of the commercial value to Wikia in general, and Wales in particular, of the mental associations with Wikipedia. That advantage is not about small incidents with the appearance of conflict of interest, which may excite some critics. As I tell them: don't think small. Rather, the goodwill and social capital that can be harvested is an immense business asset.
If any other wiki company (and they do exist) had launched such a confusingly named site, they would likely have been harshly mocked and derided as trying to be a parasite off the name recognition of an already existing site. But the journalistic impulse to frame so much involving wiki sites through the prism of Wikipedia and its hype helps to insulate Wikia from an appropriate analysis of its actions as a startup business. And monetary imperatives have a way of overriding everything else, especially in recessionary times. What's legal is not the same as what's ethical. Trademark law is not the same as morality. In my opinion, Wikia's relaunch of its site using the name Wikianswers is sleazy and unethical in the face of the far more well-known and successful Answers.com.
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