Gil Penchina, CEO of wikia.com talks about his experiences with “Giving insane levels of control to your customers” at eBay (8 years) and now at Wikia. The difference between Wikia and Wikipedia, as Gil explains, is that WikiPedia is the encyclopedia and Wikia the rest of the library. By giving his user lots of responsibilities and freedom he found out that people are fundamentally good and will work together to make your service better. Watch the whole video for some great insights on how to ‘get more’ by ‘giving more’.
Blog hero Jason Calacanis has announced on Calacanis.com that his human-powered search engine Mahalo will embrace the Wikipedia idea of letting anyone edit any page at any time. He explains why:
Jason Calacanis and his yellow Corvette
This feature has allowed everyone to get involved, even if their contribution is bad. The brilliance of this move is that the bad editors grow to be poor editors, and then poor editors then become average editors, and over some period of time some small percentage of the bad, poor, and average editors become great.
The obvious threats
I’ve happened to see the CEO of Wikia, Gil Penchina, speaking at The Next Web conference. He said that “when giving away insane levels of control is done right, it is incredibly strong“. Though he did mention the obvious dangers of welcoming everyone as an editor. Calacanis has experienced one of this threats himself:
A month or so ago I had a huge political figure by my office and I was showing him how Wikipedia works. I change his nationality from Irish-American to Greek-American and he was stunned that the vandalism stayed up there for so long (five days). Of course, I had to change it back… so it’s possible that it could have stayed there for a month or a year.
Wikipedia 3.0
So the Mahalo CEO decided to adopt a Wikipedia 3.0 model: anyone can edit the page, but experts have the final say. These experts are Mahalo editors whose full time job is to check all the changes made by Mahalo users. Yes, I said users, because in order to edit a page, you’ll have to register first. Also, Mahalo allows companies and individuals to correct the facts on their own page.
All in all, Mahalo carefully gives their users not so insane levels of control. Let’s see how this works out. If it succeeds, more companies might embrace the wisdom of crowds while checking all of their users’ moves. It simply isn’t as scary as giving your users insane levels of control.
Gil Penchina, CEO of Wikia – the company hosting wikis -, was The Next Web second key-note speaker. He used to be the vice president and general manager at eBay and I’m sure that switching between these jobs must have been quite a cultural change for him. As Wikia is, as we all know, giving its users insane levels of control.
Sure, I know that giving away control is hard and that it requires some faith and persistence. But when Penchina told that Wikia users sometimes change the design of his frontpage, I really realized how daring it is. And of course, it not always turns out right. For a few months there was this design online with colors that Penchina’s wife called ’skittle colors’. Moreover, Russian pharmaceutical companies tend to take over the homepage sometimes.
Also, on Wikipedia you can’t force volunteers to write about certain subject. They just write about topics they find interesting. If your users are into girls names, the girls names section will flourish and the boys names section will remain empty. Penchina: “Some topics take off and others don’t. You have to be patient. Eventually someone will care about boys names.”
“Yet”, Penchina said, “When giving away control is done right it is incredibly strong. Wikia helps to foster a movement that wants to share information and who are passionate about their topics.”. He explains that it is all about creating a self-regulating community. One with a culture and implicit rules about what’s ok and what’s not. So users can moderate the changes and block other users. You have to empower them with tools and resources.
Actually, now I think about it, there’s one distinct similarity between Wikia and eBay. It’s their mantra: most people are good. There just a few bad apples. So it might pay-off to listen to Penchina and change your strategy drastically. “It’s amazing what you can do when you give people power, trust and permission.”
Written on 19th June 2008
3 COMMENTS 
Written on 1st June 2008
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
