Board Thread:Wiki Discussion/@comment-1370845-20141227162737/@comment-25309944-20141228000546

I would also strongly call into question the logic of the idea that having blogs around is worsening the editing habits of our users. I am not denying that the purpose of Sporewiki is partly to serve as an objective and factual wiki about Spore, partly to serve as a community who want to build on top of it. After all, if making universes, species, and stories isn't in the spirit of Spore, I don't know what is.

However, I personally disagree with the idea that any of us can dictate for others what "good editing habits" are except in the mainspace, where we have an objective way to measure their validity. Everywhere else, in all of the non-mainspaces, there is so much open for individual interpretation that there is no objective way of looking at it. We can impose those criteria on ourselves, but to do so on others is not a healthy way to run a community.

It is true that Wikia's policies have changed to appeal more to a wider audience, drawing some to the wiki who aren't hardcore wiki editors. I sure wasn't, but I've since then acquired the coding knowledge and experience to navigate and edit wikis in a constructive way. I regularly edit Wikipedia, something I would not have been able to do at all if I had not been introduced to wiki editing through Sporewiki's more user-friendly features.

There is also the fact that the numbers are distorted. Wormy mentioned that a lot of our newer userbase is not of the hardcore wiki type, and therefore the quality of our staff has gone down. Both statements are true, but we need to remember that the hardcore wikiers have not gone away. They haven't disappeared, and they've been replaced at the same rate as they were before. The only difference is that we're getting a lot more people on the site, in part due to Wikia's new policies. I'm sorry to break it to you guys, but not everyone is a hardcore wiki editor, and I have a feeling that most aren't interested in becoming one. Most of our new users today, I have observed, are driven not by a desire to create a rich encyclopedia about a game they love (though there are certainly people like that, I've seen), but by the promises of the fictionverses that we've created. We've drawn roleplayers, storytellers, writers, artists, aspiring video game developers, and who are we to say that they are not valuable members of this community? Who are we to say that their contributions are incorrect, sloppy, or of low quality? As long as they stay away from the mainspace, I would say that we have no right, especially due to the "make it whatever you want" mindset we've proudly imprinted on the fictionverse.

Technobliterator wrote: I...find it incredibly hard to believe you did not know that Special:RecentChanges did not exist. It is fundamental to any wiki. If blogs are removed, I need to seriously raise the publicity for it in that case. Anyway, to respond to you. To someone not familiar with Wikis (like I was years ago), it is fairly well hidden. I agree, there should be more publicity around the fact.  Technobliterator wrote: It is not a matter of preference nor opinion. The threads are, in fact, objectively superior in that they are much better designed with MediaWiki software. That does not matter to you users, and to most of you, it is a matter of preference. However, when preference is called into question, that is when we turn to the community. And so far, the majority are voting against it, as they feel it is redundant. This means that the general personal preference of the majority is that the blogs are useless. So you would impose the will of the majority on the minority? I agree that the will of the majority should have a strong say in Wiki policy, but we have to be careful that it doesn't royally screw over a minority opinion. Otherwise, democracy is just two wolves and a lamb trying to decide what to have for dinner. Using that logic, you could justify killing thousands of members of a minority because that is the will of the majority. In this case, I would argue that a compromise can be reached: the majority believes that the blogs are useless and serve no purpose, but, the minority uses those blogs and believes that they are actually very useful. It would not hurt the majority to keep the blogs, but it would hurt the minority to remove them (even though the majority believes otherwise). Wouldn't the reasonable compromise be to keep them, then? Technobliterator wrote: Also, "it's not hurting anyone" is not a reason to remove redundancy. We have to do spring cleaning, and make the wiki look neat and tidy. A simple "it doesn't harm the wiki" is often not true. By such logic, we should not delete any vandal-created page, or move any creature page created in mainspace, as afterall, they do not "harm" the wiki either. Such an attitude is absurd, it's just neatness and tidiness, and creating a clear, concise method of communication. In this case, however, as has been stated on the forum, it is hurting the editing habits of several users. At a risk of sounding condescending, not knowing that the RecentChanges exists demonstrates the detrimental effect blogs have on newer users who are not used to them existing. You make an excellent point, but I would not compare the existence of blogs to vandalism. One is a useful feature which, like any other, can be abused; the other is a willful act by a troll to mess with our content.