What happens when digital sharecroppers are not happy on the electronic plantations? A dispute (over the amount of space devoted to advertising) between the wiki-hosting startup company Wikia, Inc and the creators of the sites it hosts, is a case study of the conflicts between so-called community and commerce.
Wikia is a for-profit corporation which was launched by several high level people involved with Wikipedia, such as co-founder Jimmy Wales. Wikipedia has no significant financial connection to Wikia. But an enormous publicity benefit accrues to Wikia due to Wikipedia's fame: $14m (£7m) of venture capital has been invested in Wikia. Its business model is to have a "community" (writers who work for free) to build a wiki website about a topic, and then to sell advertising on those pages. In short, Wikia hosts sites in return for all the ad revenues.
At the start of June, Wikia's CEO announced that many changes would be made to the appearance of sites, mainly to have more advertising and for the ads to be more prominent. As Wikia's community development manager put it: "We have to change things in order to make Wikia financially stable. Unfortunately, Google ads in the footer pay pennies a click, and nobody clicks". He went on to explain that ads paying based on view count were needed. And that type of advertiser wants their ad to be displayed where viewers are sure to see it, such as within an article, near the top.
In reaction, various content creators made it clear they understood the needs of the company and had no objection to advertising per se. But putting ads inside content risked changing their material from articles into decorated billboards. The conflict between management and (unpaid) labour became acrimonious. There were declarations such as: "If Wikia does not resolve this situation to our satisfaction, then we will leave, taking our content, our communities' inward links, our established service marks and our fellow editors with us."
But it is unclear if these statements signified opposition with real power or just empty bravado. Though Wikia makes content open, which means anyone can re-use it (and hence copy a website), there's a possibility that Google's algorithm will have the effect of marginalising any schisming website. Google often automatically penalises or obscures sites which duplicate or are too similar to other sites, as such sites are often attempts by web spammers to gain viewers parasitically. In fact, Google has become quite vigilant about marginalising redundant sites, in part due to the horde of click-seekers who have all had the idea of making a complete copy of Wikipedia and slapping ads on it. Leaving may not be as possible as one might naively think.
However, at least one group - devoted fans of the shape-changing toy robots called Transformers - is determined to secede from Wikia. This site was used as part of the chief executive's initial announcement above, but now has a page of accusations against Wikia management. One member working on the move wrote on his blog that "the attitude towards the people generating the content they're making money off of has been to lie, pacify, misdirect or condescend".
Note that the planned new site, at TFWiki.net, will still have advertising. But, wrote one member, the ads "will be placed more tastefully than the current trend on Wikia ... it's when it goes into the article area that we get testy".
The typical digital sharecropping website is a capitalist's fantasy. The workers receive no pay and no benefits, have no rights and their only option to address a grievance is to quit. Yet given the very low profit margins, it's a difficult business. It can become a real-life version of the old joke about losing a little money on each product you sell, but trying to make it up on volume. Yet for all the talk of internet technologies making connections between people and fostering community, for a corporation, commercial imperatives must always have the final word.