User:Tennessee Ernie Ford

Tennessee Ernie Ford is the nom de web of the author of RPG guides. No relationship to the fantabulous gospel singer of the same name is intended or implied.

Opportunity lost?
We have missed a critical window. This wiki moved...and then ceased to be the vibrant, take-all-comers, fill-in-the-gaps-left-by-GWW community it had been not all that long ago. There are more updates to the site now than recently, but we are still behind the curve (War in Kryta, Hearts of the North, changes to various holidays, Vanguard quests in pre, mercenaries, as well as other changes).

Long before I joined 2 years ago, this wiki stopped being fact-for-fact competitive with the official wiki since there are far more people there who contribute to main space articles. However, this wiki served three important functions: it was more inclusive (notably, it was more accepting of non-expert contributions and contributors); it was better at serving players by providing useful information (instead of just raw data), and it has been more innovative.

Unfortunately, the core group powering those activities is small and lacks critical mass to sustain itself. We aren't as inclusive as we used to be, we spend a lot of time on meta-issues that distract from the core purpose, and we have trouble maintaining our most popular features (e.g. Guide to Item of the Week Farming). (Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of the 2-3 people dedicated to pet projects, this wiki still has areas where it's more informative than GWW.)

I am still interested in helping the wiki evolve, but I'm not keen on treading water. Some will say (reasonably) that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy: if everyone who is half-hearted stops contributing, then, of course, the wiki will struggle. Well, a successful wiki needs more than good intentions; communities require a core of contributors full of heart. We seem to have lost our way.