Wikipedia plans to become as easy to use as blogs and social media sites in order to attract users and remain competitive. Wikia co-founder Angela Beesley reveals more.

Wikis could take a trick or two from Facebook and social media in order to draw more contributors in the new year, says co-founder of Wikia, Angela Beesley, one of the keynote speakers at the upcoming linux.conf.au. She shares her thoughts on wikia, wikis and wikipedia as well as their place in the enterprise with Computerworld.

What will your talk at linux.conf.au be about?

I will be talking about the future plans of both Wikipedia and its parent organisation, the Wikimedia Foundation.

Where are Wikia and Wikipedia heading?

Both Wikia and Wikipedia will be very focused on usability in 2009. The Wikimedia Foundation was recently awarded a grant of $890,000 by the Stanton Foundation to make Wikipedia’s editing interface easier to use.

Wikia has recently launched a rich text (or WYSIWYG) editor for MediaWiki, the software that both Wikia and Wikipedia use. This means that new users can instantly get involved with editing or creating new pages without needing to learn complex markup. At the same time, we have retained the option for editors to switch to the traditional editing interface.

Wikia has also introduced a new skin making the site easier to navigate, especially for new users, and we will be refining this over the coming year, ensuring that people know they can edit and we will be making it very easy to add new content.

How has Wikia created a viable business model around wikis?

Unlike other tools, a wiki is not owned by a single person, so the model of selling something to the customer doesn’t work here.

The sort of public community-based wikis that Wikia hosts rely very much on group ownership, and we think that providing hosting or premium services via one person who is paying could upset that by implying that the individual is responsible for the site which decreases the motivations of others to build and maintain it.

Instead, Wikia is focused on the advertising-model, where we display ads from a variety of networks and directly from companies. This frees the community from being reliant on the person who pays the bills, and allows all members to have an equal stake in the success of their wiki.

Wikipedia will soon be easier to use, says founder.