Board Thread:Wiki Discussions/@comment-25075055-20140331114355/@comment-25075055-20140331172954

Omnibender wrote: The reason I supported enabling the chat was specifically so people who want to engage in background noise chatter could be pushed there and not litter the forums with it. I never had any intention of actually participating in the chat. I thought I made myself very clear at the occasion. I also said that if forums were to be used for chatter, that it would be one thread per chapter/episode/character/etc, with draconian rights reserved to close and remove as I see fit, which I recall others agreeing with. Enabling the chat was the "roam free, away from me" alternative. Sadly, it does not seem like most people are interested in using the chat and it lies dormant most of the time. The "background noise" is really just a select group of users refusing to look at the bigger picture about the purpose of the forums: you do realise that the entire forum should not just be exclusively for discussion of the wiki as a whole? That's what the talkpage I linked to is for, the entire forum should not just be wiki only discussions, there is no point whatsoever in the forums if that is all you plan on using them for. If I contacted Wikia about this, they would likely agree with me that the forums should not just be used for wiki only discussions.

It's exceptionally clear that the forums are generally dead when we continue to stifle these discussions. I have talked to many people and they agree that this isn't good for the site. Heck, if Narutopedia didn't contain hard liners who refused to change their position and prevent the forums from being a place where people could quickly ask a question or discuss Naruto, we wouldn't have Naruto Answers (I talked to UltimateSupreme and the only reason NA exists is because of stupid rules here that are hindering the wiki's ability to be a better place).

TBH, you admitting to wanting to close every single thread that you do not like does not help us at all. All you are doing is scaring users and preventing people from actually contributing. Like I said: people are more interested in a convenient method to ask a question and what better way than to just create a thread ? If I were a new user looking to ask a question and saw the chat, I wouldn't be bothering in the slightest to load the chat: instead, I'd be creating a thread in the forums, because that's the quickest way to get answer. Plus, if someone was looking for a similar question, they could easily find it without trouble.

The wiki needs to start taking steps forward, instead of taking many steps back. The problem is: posts like yours Omni only hinder the wiki, they don't improve it. If you guys do not want a "community" (as that is what Wikia is meant to be about), download a copy of the database from the page where you can get it, set up MediaWiki on a web server and have no such community. As long as Narutopedia stays on Wikia, it should be making the effort to create a community.

To be quite frank, a lot of the decisions and rules on here just seem like they were copied from Wikipedia &mdash; or they follow Wikipedia's line of thinking, where a wiki is not a community. Sadly, this is Wikia and Wikia is about creating wiki communities.