User blog comment:Lancer1289/Wikia's New Skin, the countdown begins/@comment-2256917-20100928212824/@comment-2256917-20100928221601

Right, it makes sense. It makes so much sense as to illuminate the raison-d'être. If those new features were not essential to Wikia's intention, the "new bit" would not be added at all. If more evidence of this sort of thing were necessary, it pertained to the making of the Monaco skin as well (as you alluded to).

Advertising revenue is what they need. They just cast it in the language of "utility to the viewer" or "readability", etc., to distract the users into thinking that that is their essential purpose (also, as is perhaps likely, to justify it to their administrative team. Some of those new young women seem more concerned with the users than the maker).