alt Hacker NewsTheir growth people emailed me again and again and tried to do the same with StrategyWiki decades ago.
Here's one of their emails:
> [Redacted] mentioned that your site was very cool - and that you're heading off to college. As you may know, Wikia is founded by Jimmy Wales (of wikipedia fame) and we are trying to become THE resource for all gamers
> I was wondering if you'd consider moving over to wikia now that you're going to might have less time with your studies. As an incentive I can point to a few things that might make the move easier
> 1. We have cool new software - gaming.wikia.com lets users do more blog-like contributions in addition to wiki editing - new social networking tools on the wiki - see our test server at http://sports.box8.tpa.wikia-inc.com/index.php?title=User:[R...
> 2. We could also hire you to help moderate the strategy wiki and other wikis if you need some beer and pizza money :-)
> 3. or we could offer to pay all the hosting costs and share some of the ad impressions/revenue with u
> If nothing else, I'd love to chat by phone and get to know you better.
> Let me know if that'd be ok :-)
Replies
Ugh, this sits very close to ‘exploiting cheap labor’, and if the ads didn’t, it makes me want absolutely nothing to do with the site.
It’s so upbeat too. I can totally see someone that doesn’t know better being taken in.
Cripes, that sounds creepy and exploitive. I'm pretty sure it would have raised more than a few red flags in my mind, even as a teenager about to head off to college. (Granted, I was a wee bit uptight at that age.)
We would like 2 squeeze what u made until all the money runs out + underpay u :-)
> As you may know, Wikia is founded by Jimmy Wales (of wikipedia fame)
And Jimmy should be ashamed about being involved with Fandom/Wikia. Then again, he's also not ashamed about begging from third-world people and others much less well off as himself.
the way this is phrased reminds me so much of IOI from Ready Player One
This is basically an offer to buy your business for $0 and we might hire you as a contractor. It's a bad deal. I mean Jimmy Wales himself wouldn't have accepted this for Wikipedia.