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?
I'm not sure what happened (although I have my suspicions), but we appeared to 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. Outside of 2-3 people dedicated to particular pet projects, there are very few updates to this site, even though it is still missing content from War in Kryta (which concluded 6 months ago), Hearts of the North (one month ago), and changes to various holidays.

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, without at least a core group regularly contributing, this community now lacks critical mass to power those activities. Even our most popular feature, Guide to Item of the Week Farming, no longer has enough support to remain current and accurate. We can't be more inclusive if there are few people to include and we are falling further behind. With major changes expected in February, this gap will grow. (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.)

Back in the days before Wikis, I collaborated with other people to create various game guides. But, doing all the work (as I did for my websites and my colleagues did on theirs) is exhausting. It's also not self-sustaining; those sites no longer exist because their hosting providers have since died. I'm not keen on repeating that experience.

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. While that's true, what I'm saying is that a successful wiki needs more; communities require a core of contributors full of heart. We seem to have lost our way.