Forum:New Forum ?

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While i am on the subject of getting my ideas (some good, some bad) into the open for debate i think we need a new forum for voteing on matters relating to the wiki (Such as the star wars wiki) allowing input from the comunity about decisions made Dark Lord Xander 13:48, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Ok but I see a problem here! As you pointed out in the forum discussion on absent administrators, how many members are active? and how would you organise a vote.Give it a deadline, and the most wins, or leave it open and come to no final decision. I think discussion is probably the best way forward to reach a compromise when something new is suggested. Highlighting the pros and cons seems to be working, unless you've got a strong core of dogmatic inflexible administrators - which we so obviously haven't!

Adding to what you said I too would suggest a third forum more simplistically dedicated to feedback. I would see it being not so much for discussion like the Panopticon, but more for the chance to invite quick comment and suggestions. (The Panopticon page actually says not for "general conversation" What is 'general'?(which I suspect is probably where we fall down on the community bit - the gadget by the way is cool if only everyone who is online adds it!) Acknowledging contributors pages, suggestions for format help, image sourcing, general quickies, that sort of thing.

By way of an example, I've recently been revisiting the Battles in Time pages and wanted feedback on how I was doing, before I went through the whole batch of pages. I asked Tangerineduel for his feedback and incorporated most of the recommendations, which was, I found very useful. Others may have had other comments to make, but I wanted to get on with it and appreciated a quick response which I probably wouldn't have got from the Panopticon, (or again rather its an issue as to how long you wait for any, if at all, constructive comments to be posted before you proceed).

If someone was redoing a whole series of pages, how much easier would it be if someone posted "I'm about to tidy up the categories on each of the TV stories, any other suggestions while I'm there?"The Librarian 15:38, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Here is an example of the vote system to see how it works on other wikis [1] naturally if we had one there would be two or three months for people to get used to it (perhaps via a message on there user page or at the top of the main page where some wikis post notes that they want all active users to at least see.

The Feedback is also a good idea so perhaps a third and fourth forum Dark Lord Xander 15:47, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

There is a slight difference in the size and scale of this wiki and the wookipedia. For now it's enough to get people participating on the two forums we have. --Tangerineduel 16:04, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Understood as i have said before just trying to get my ideas out there and generate a bit of debate and hopefully a outcome which is beneficial to the wiki Dark Lord Xander 16:07, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

"Voting" is a tricky thing on a wiki. As wikipedia/en makes clear, proposals aren't actually voted on, but discussed until consensus is achieved. It's quite possible for admins on wikipedia to close a discussion in favor of the minority opinion. Although consensus is generally measured by the majority of votes, it's not always so. If you get six people talking about a subject, and five of them have no previous contact with the question at hand, the chances are the majority won't know what they're talking about. Or perhaps the majority will argue for something which clearly contravenes the established guidelines of the wiki. Cases like this are where an admin really earns his/her position, because they've got to make a decision against the majority stick.

I don't know if just having another general forum is the best way forward. We could just as easily edit the words "general discussion" out of this board's description, cause the language is vague and unnecessarily prohibitive.

What instead I'd like to see is very specialized boards. One of the neater aspects of MemoryAlpha is the article deletion/renaming system. There, when you put up the equivalent tag to {{proposed deletion}}, a link is created to a board whose sole purpose is the discussion of whether the name and/or content of an article is appropriate. This centralizes this type of discussion in one place. A few minutes a week on this board and you've done your bit to clean up the joint.

They also, if memory serves, have a board dedicated to technical, coding issues, and one for wiki policy issues. So, if that's your bag, you can go there.

Their equivalent of the Panopticon is sorta just for contentual questions, like, "Are there any other appearances of the Gorn but in 'Arena'?", or "What is this a picture of?", or "Is this person really a recurring character since he's not named in all but one appearance?"

So, I"m all for creating other boards, but they should have very limited, clearly defined purposes. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 22:48, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Thats what i was trying to say by way of an example (votes) to get some new forums say template or html help, continuity, appearances as well as a general discussion area for getting this type of thing out there Dark Lord Xander 06:25, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

a continuity messageboard already exists here, namely the reference desk. --Stardizzy2 16:53, 16 July 2008 (UTC)