If you insult Wikia.com by pointing out its failure to make money in a graceful way, Jimmy Wales will be sure to arrive within 33 minutes to sweep, sweep, sweep it away.

I use Wikia as a temporary webhost. I suspect many people do the same. Probably the only profit they're getting is from Yu-Gi-Oh nerds and Star Wars fanboys who bother to update their precious failures of wikis. For heaven's sake, whoever designed the Wikia interface skin must have been trying to make it fail. It's a hideous lovechild of Wikipedia and Wale's beard.

Do you suppose that's also true of that poor little tyke in London?

I hope the dear thing doesn't have a beard

Bullshit. They make money from every ad impression.
It adds up, although how much they're making is still a biiig secret.
(Greg Kohs thinks they're losing their shirts, I suspect they're getting enough
raw traffic to keep investors interested, who then make up for the operating losses.)

And guys like you, who use Wikia to crosspost to/from Wikipedia, are part of the problem.
The more stuff gets posted on Wikia, the more gets posted on Wikipedia. Nerd crap,
mostly. Anime/manga, comic books, science fiction etc.

And I suspect this is a major reason why Jimbo wants more Wikipedia participation....
because he knows that more editing on Wikipedia means more traffic on Wikia.
And he makes more $$.
Fanbois post tidal waves of garbage on Wikia about K-On or Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha,
or what-have-you--then crosspost excerpts of it on Wikipedia servers.

The "nonprofit" "free" Wikipedia and the for-profit Wikia are more closely tied together than you realize.