User talk:Tennessee Ernie Ford/Archive 06

No longer contributing to Wikia after 20 October 2010
Wikia's new direction is taking it away from core support of community-edited, encyclopedic bodies of knowledge (wikis) and moving it a new direction of social networking. They could have chosen to implement this for all new and opting-in existing sites. Instead they have chosen to impose their concept of wiki community on the rest of us. Since I have only limited time to volunteer, I see no reason to spend any of it supporting their top-down approach to hosting consensus-driven sites. The changes might be good for some wikis, but not for this one.

(Added later)

Wikia could have approached us early to say, ''look, we have to re-brand and standardize. It's just unrealistic for a business to continue functioning in this way. We realize these changes will produce a hardship on you, and we can't help that. What we can do, however, is to offer you short-term dedicated help to adapt your wiki to take full advantage''. Instead, our 100% volunteer staff has to figure out the impact on our own, second guess which features to adapt, which to force to fit, what to risk leaving alone. In the end, it's just less work to move to someplace where we have more control and/or our hosts depend on our success to flourish.

More importantly, Wikia has shown no particular enthusiasm for GuildWiki and therefore, I see no reason why we should feel any loyalty at all to remaining here. &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 22:12, October 4, 2010 (UTC)
 * I am also of this opinion, I have "loyalty" to the GuildWiki community, but I shall not be supporting Wikia (by editing their wikis, or affiliating myself with them). --  Random Time  22:15, October 4, 2010 (UTC)


 * Please apply your flowery language skills to . This will be the "tag" for userpages to be deleted after da moooove.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 04:12, October 5, 2010 (UTC)

Flattery will get you everywhere
Re this. I thought your quote summed up my feelings quite succinctly. It's not awful, it's the principle that we're slaving away voluntarily and they're trying to squeeze profit out of it at our expense. Although if it's a problem I can remove it. Gboyers talk 07:20, October 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm glad it was useful to you, I just had no idea anyone besides us Guild Wikians were looking :-) I wonder if all the groups thinking to move could work together to leverage more support from some potential host. Where are you guys thinking of going? &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 07:30, October 5, 2010 (UTC)

We've arranged to host ourselves, with the assistance of a large GTA fansite. This gives us complete control over everything, something we lack now. We might need some adverts to pay for the hosting, but they would be sensitive, and nowhere near as obtrusive as the Wikia adverts. I toyed with the idea of helping host other wikis, but if Wikia need that much money to run, we probably would too, and then we'd essentially be back where we are now. Gboyers talk 08:50, October 6, 2010 (UTC)


 * Awesome! And I agree: you're in the business of providing a good knowledge base for GTA; figuring out how to host other wikis isn't (at the moment) sensible.


 * However, Wikia's cash needs are different; they aren't trying to just host wikis anymore (and that's partly why they need to make more money). There are lots of hosting farms, a fair number of various sorts of wiki farms and they would like to create something that probably doesn't exist yet. In fact, it might end up being very cool, but it's not wiki hosting. Which is what GWiki needs, as well as GTA wiki etc.


 * Thanks for letting me know how you guys are doing. Good luck! &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 09:37, October 6, 2010 (UTC)

Re: Redlinks
Please do not create blank stubs. Redlinks encourage users to create content, blank pages look unprofessional. Feel free to create the page with a short description as a placeholder, however --  Random Time  18:17, October 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * Sigh. Had you waited another few minutes, you would see me remove the stub and put the content in. I can only work on so many things at once. (Plus, if you look at the article I was working on, you'll see that there are indeed some red links, exactly as you would have me do.:-) . &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 18:29, October 5, 2010 (UTC)
 * A case for GW:DID? ;) -- ◄mendel► 19:16, October 5, 2010 (UTC)
 * I suppose it was rather rapid. Sorry --  Random Time  19:20, October 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict) Perhaps GW:DIC; don't immediately create. Why first create a stub, and then replace the stub with content? To me, it would make more sense to just postpone article creation to add in the content on creation, but, I am not TEF; my brain works differently :p --Vipermagi 19:24, October 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * (edit conflict) Naw, RT was doing the right thing. GW:DID doesn't apply. (And, even if it did, RT didn't cost me any time; no harm, no foul.)


 * I think I was going back/forth between turning that page into a redirect or making it a tiny glossary page. was a reminder that I wanted something more substantial. But, it wouldn't have cost me anything big to have typed in a short   (or as RT suggested, even a short description).


 * tl;dr RT did the right thing. So, I really owe you the apology: RT &mdash; sorry. &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 19:29, October 5, 2010 (UTC)
 * Eh, it seems now that I think I was wrong, as I knew you were probably going to improve, and therefore I was being pragmatic about it. When I want something done, I bring the edit window into it's new tree, and wait to do it - but that's me. I was being unreasonable, where I could have easily not deleted and put a message on your talk. tl;dr, I was wrong, you were right. --  Random Time  19:37, October 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * Viper still has a valid point, though - creating an empty article, even if it is merely temporary, doesn't really serve any purpose (other than to confuse the admins). Our running-guide helper has it right, putting some content into new articles when he creates them, even though they're far from complete.  &mdash;Dr Ishmael Diablo_the_chicken.gif 19:41, October 5, 2010 (UTC)
 * I've understood the idea of GW:DID to be that people in the throes of creation shouldn't be focusing on how what they do looks to other people. There's time to do that when you're done with the job and sit back. To get stuff deleted under your fingers as you are putting something together, or to get sidetracked by talkpage messages hampers the creative flow. We don't want to do that, so it's better to tolerate something that's unfinished (for a short time) rather than disrupt the creator. When the creative urge seems to have run down is the proper time to "mop up" the pieces that fell by the wayside.
 * These kinds of situations don't come up very often on GuildWiki, mostly because the wiki is largely "complete". -- ◄mendel► 20:46, October 5, 2010 (UTC)


 * Erm, I thought I agreed that RT was correct to delete, and I agreed that Vipermagi was correct to suggest that there was little point to stubbing an article that I planned to add soon/soonish, and that RT agreed that there wasn't any rush to delete. Everyone involved acted in good faith, agreed that others were acting in good faith, and still agreed to adjust their behavior accordingly (given their agreement with the fundamentals). So, with so much agreement, what exactly are we now discussing? &mdash;Tennessee Ernie Ford ( TEF ) 10:04, October 6, 2010 (UTC)