Skip to main content

See also:

Wikia takes down "Squirtage" wiki

Gil Penchina at the Taipei Wikimania
Gil Penchina at the Taipei Wikimania
Craig Spurrier, under CC Attribution 2.5 Generic license

Wikia, Inc. is often known as the "commercial spinoff" of Wikipedia, as it was co-founded by the co-founder of Wikipedia, and Wikipedia's non-profit board of trustees was once 60% stocked with Wikia, Inc. employees. Situated in a secret headquarters location in San Francisco (the company cannot be found on Google Maps, nor do they list their office locations anywhere on their website), Wikia recently boasted of its 150,000 different wiki communities, and the domain now sees over 30 million unique visitors per month.

But with such rampant growth, editorial control of its content seems to be slipping through the grasp of Wikia's leadership. For example, on August 23, 2010, a new Wikia community was launched to cater to the unusual interests of "squirtage" fans. Many readers may not be familiar with this phenomenon, but the non-profit branch of Wikia does have a 57-kilobyte encyclopedic article about it, with over 90 reference citations and garnering about 375,000 page views per month. So, it is indeed a popular subject, even if you may never have heard of "squirtage".

On August 26, the system administrator of a popular wiki-focused discussion board discovered Wikia's latest wiki community about squirtage. He noted that this wiki fell under the "Health Care" category of Wikia's content system. The Squirtage Wikia, at the time, contained a rather disturbing set of questions and answers, with one example archived for posterity. Another example included:

Q: Can a female dog ejaculate?
A: Im not sure, but i will try to find its clitoris to see if it can be stimulated.

And yet another example:

Q: What age can a child squirt?
A: at any age for both boys and girls. how ever, boys wont make sperm. Also the fluid that girls make is uknown, but is comes from the urethra ( peehole). they both can orgasm from stimulation penis for boys, and clitoris for girls. remember all the organs are already made befor birth

Finally, on the afternoon of September 15, after three weeks of Wikia, Inc. doing nothing to address this out-of-control content, your trusty Examiner reporter e-mailed Wikia CEO, Gil Penchina, to ask if Wikia intended to keep this content published so that it might be further improved by the "crowdsourcing" technique.

Within that evening, the site was taken offline.

Penchina mockingly e-mailed back to me, asking if I would like to volunteer to be an "unpaid employee" of Wikia, Inc. Thing is, I would have to know where to report to work, and with Wikia's headquarters location being secret, commuting to work might be too difficult a task.

This wasn't the first time Wikia has been embroiled in scandal associated with user-generated content that trains its focus on children and sexual fetishism. But, we'll have to leave that story for another time.

Readers, what do you think? Your thoughtful comments are welcome below.

-----

If this story and others like it are of interest to you, use the "Subscribe" link above to be notified whenever articles from the National Wiki Examiner are published!

Comments

  • Squirtle 4 years ago

    Squirtle! Squirtle! Squirtle!

  • Patrick Nilewort 4 years ago

    I can summarize this story in one sentence.

    "Wikia finally took down the single worst wiki out of more than 150,000 Wikia wikis patrolled by fewer than 50 employees."

    Slow news day? Derp derp derp.

  • Profile picture of Gregory Kohs
    Gregory Kohs 4 years ago

    Emphasis on "finally", yes.

    I like the use of the word "patrolled", though, Pat. Doesn't look like much patrollin' goin' on here:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RDMHWTyyDg

  • Jon Awbrey 4 years ago

    But wait -- it's a Wiki, eh? -- doesn't that mean it's Crowd-Patrolled by gadshillions of eyes ...