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NOTE: Please see User:SZL/Overhaul for a page similar in intent to this one, albeit touching on some different issues. |
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NOTE: Feel free to comment on this talk page. |
Smasher namespace and articles about crews
While I am not opposed to removing all crew and smasher pages outright, I believe that the best course of action is to implement serious reforms for both of these types of pages. First, I believe we should create a new namespace for crew pages. These pages should not exist in mainspace, which should be composed of information about the game, not its players. I would also like to propose that redirects from mainspace be deleted. I find the concept of a wiki with more mainspace redirects than articles an unattractive one; once everything is standardized, the concern of "lack of findability" becomes a non-issue, and so such redirects are unnecessary. Now, onto the smasher pages. I believe that a massive overhaul is needed in order to preserve the standard of quality that SmashWiki should strive to obtain/maintain. How this will occur, however, is a matter that requires concensus and discussion. My personal feeling are that is a complete namespace wipe occurs, so much time and effort are erased and even more time and effort will be spent reconstructing the section; however, I also believe that if we simply do nothing but implement a style guide, the desired changes will never occur and we may as well not have done anything. As for the style and formatting instructions, I intend to loosely follow GWW's Guild page policy; they have a Guild: namespace, similar to the Smasher: (and proposed Crew:) namespaces.
Talk pages and their (ab)use
Talk pages here are, quite frankly, abused to death. I honestly can not be bothered to use my watchlist anymore, because every time I check any important edits that I really should see (like edits to a policy page) are completely and totally snowed under by talkpage spam and other general uselessness. This is not a social website, this is a wiki. We aren't here to discuss everything from how much a speck of dust weighs to how many inches it is from the North Pole to the moon. Without naming anyone specifically, here are a few ratios I got from Special:Editcount. The ratios are considered with Main/Talk/SmashWiki/SmashWiki talk : User/User talk.
- 20.49% : 66.89%
- 16.54% : 71.84%
- 11.49% : 83.71%
...I could keep going, but I don't have to. Most of the users on SmashWiki have editcount ratios like this, and consider what this means for the whole of SmashWiki, in the short-term and long-term. Are we a repository of information about Super Smash Bros., or are we a social network? Will the user culture become so based on talkpage spam that it becomes unsalvageable?
I don't want people to get the wrong idea of my opinion, however. I have no problem with moderate amounts of general chatter, since it is a community-fostering activity, and it is my personal belief that if you work some, you should get to relax some. I wouldn't mind if ratios were kept at a general 50/50 of useful/chatter, even. But slippery slope is slippery, and we're starting to head in the wrong direction.
Forums and their (ab)use
Much like the arguments presented above, the forums are overused and many of the topics cover what should be covered on a talk page. Talk pages are there for discussion you know, and centralized discussion is centralized. Forum pages like Forum:Stop the Pictoquotes, Forum:Quietly deal with vandals, Forum:Public Apology from BNK, or even Forum:Smash Wiki: The Movie is here!!! are fine. Random forums that belong in the talk namespace such as Forum:Idea for a Better Link Recovery and Forum:Metaknight's hidden flaw (very well hidden indeed) are not. We don't need to 1) create a new page and/or 2) flood the forums everytime a lightbulb goes on in someone's head or they stumble across a glitch... just post it on the talk page.
Images
Cut it out with the external image linking. It is just a not-so-subtle bypass to get around the rules about image use here, and it's bad. External image linking can be disabled by having C.Hawk go ask User talk:KyleH or some other Wikia member to disable them.
...I personally disagree with the image use rules here, but that issue is one for another post.