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.

Non-Oasis example of Wikia being a poor host for GWiki
It occurs to me that an even better example of how Wikia is not a good fit for a large, established wiki is the removal of the Special:Watchlist and the introduction of Following. In brief, Wikia took an important tool away from contributors to replace it with a tool designed to enable certain types of social interactions. Later, they nerfed it; Following now fails to serve anyone very well.


 * Watchlists are a key tool for frequent contributors to keep track of articles of concern.
 * They make it easy to find updates.
 * They make it easy to see what changed in the most recent update.
 * They make it easy for non-admins to help revert vandalism (and/or unfortunate edits).
 * The Following widget, as described by Wikia staff, was not meant to replace the Watchlist but meant to catalyze better community interactions.
 * When introduced, privacy was opt-out, meaning anyone could see your Followed pages unless you took action.
 * After realizing concerns, Wikia changes this to opt-in, which neutralizes any claimed social utility.
 * They have never addressed the lost functionality.

Oasis is a good thing, but not for GWiki
Oasis looks like a really good thing. Wikia deserves props for organizing a beta test on the scale that they have (a lot of other organizations do not).

However, I fear that Wikia isn't learning from its mistakes. If they really wanted what was best for the community, they need to begin collaboration before changes are designed and are halfway to implementation. They should want to take time to communicate with large communities here (and a few enthusiastic small ones) and to do so using tools native to wikis (rather than forcing the discussion to the new tools that have yet to be fully integrated). I don't see any evidence that it even occurred to the company that this might be useful (let alone important) to do so.