Board Thread:Wiki Discussion/@comment-1370845-20141227162737/@comment-1370845-20141227205719

Charles,

I must inform you that being a community is by absolutely no means unique to SporeWiki. Most wikis with IRC channels such as ours end up becoming close friends beyond wiki work. We are no exception to this rule. I must also inform you that blogs do not help with that "community" aspect, and lack of blogs does not deter from it.

That we are part wiki and part community does not mean we should ignore the wiki aspect, the very reason we exist. This is the problem I have with most of Wikia's new features announced. I have seen several wikis, in fact almost all wikis I have edited bar possibly the R&C wiki, where communication outside of the wiki has made them much more a community. However, features on the wiki itself played no part in that, and most were removed for being a useless distraction. I have also seen none of these "community members yet not active editor" people ever be upset when these features were removed.

While I do respectfully understand your desire to keep the wiki open and free in its ability to allow the wiki to continue to be a community, I do feel the need to re-iterate that the removal of blogspace will not hurt that ability. The ability to reply to a comment directly is actually unnecessary. As I am proving now, I can reply to multiple people making a single edit. I would have to make multiple different edits and have the conversation go all over the place were I to reply to you all individually. Honestly, the fact that they encourage different kinds of communication is actually one of their strengths, in my opinion.

I am not doing this to hurt your ability to communicate or enjoy the wiki, I am doing this to improve the overall community and editing habits of it. I am sure you will find blogs will not hurt your communication and you can instead use user subpages just as easily.

Tek,

What about blogs makes them more visible than forums or userpage edits? Both have equal presence on the SporeWiki Recent Changes. They both come up equally as announcements. If you edit your userpage, you can post the announcement in the edit summary. If you create a userpage subpage, you can similarly make it visible.

To everyone,

Blogs are an outdated mechanic. I do disagree with Hachi's statement that I should disable without community support, since while this is done for the benefit of the wiki and not for the benefit of the users, that does not mean they do not deserve a say. However, the majority seems to be in favour of the removal of blogspace. There also appear to be stronger arguments on the side of its removal. As Hachi and Wormulon have stated, they are highly detrimental to the editing habits of our users, which is very unfortunate. I could have chosen to be an asshole and say "I told you so" and outright removed them, but I have put it up with the community instead.

Should I receive more support/indifference outweighing opposition, I will allow any user to request their blogs be kept and archive them individually, then remove the namespace.