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

I think we need to talk.

I have, for every single year I've been on this wiki, strongly supported the removal of the user blog namespace. This means no user blogs hosted. In the past, I did not bring this idea up due to lack of popular support, but I do think things have changed. Let me explain why I want blogspace removed.


 * 1) It is redundant due to userspace and the existence of these forums. If anyone wants to use blogs as a personal announcement, to recount events or anything of the sort, user subpages can equally be used. If anyone wants to have a genuine discussion, it should be brought up with the entire community, not tied to the blog of a single user.
 * 2) It's a poorly constructed feature. Every blog post counts as a new page, and it is horribly inconsistent with the rest of the forum features. It does not come with many instructions. The feature is outdated.
 * 3) The convenience makes users lazy and it chews up user edits. It is much easier to have your edits be chewed up by continuing to make blog comments not knowing that over half your edits are blogspace edits. Furthermore, with how 'convenient' and social network-like blogs are, it makes people lazier than they should be.
 * 4) Personal blogs can not only be replicated in userspace, but on IRC. The IRC chat allows events that used to occur on blogs to take place. The only genuinely useful blogs I can see are ones such as the Q&A ones and personal announcements. The former is a long, long dead trend, the latter can be replicated on userpages. Also, the amount of "I quit" blogs are detrimental (I know, as I have posted a few of them, which I sorely regret.

I strongly support the outright removal of this redundant space, and we have to bury this antichrist. However, I offer an alternative. As I said in the post, the only use I see for these blogs is for personal announcements and Q&A. If we regulate blogspace instead of removing, this can happen. But I still feel such a thing is utterly useless when it can be done elsewhere.

If anyone can give me a single reason we should keep blogspace, I will hear it. However, there has been a feeling that the namespace is redundant. And indeed, there have been an incredibly low number of edits to it. 