Forum:Discussions, Message Walls, and other changes for the RuneScape Wiki

Forums: Yew Grove > Discussions, Message Walls, and other changes for the RuneScape Wiki

Hey everyone,

I'm a Fandom staff member, here to clarify a few things and to inform you of changes we're making on the RuneScape Wiki.

As most of you are undoubtedly aware, the community that originally built this wiki and made it the great resource it is has moved away from Fandom to a different host. As a result, this wiki was left without admins and largely without active editors.

As is Fandom's policy in such cases, the wiki here was kept, and we hope that new RuneScape fans will find their way here and become contributors, so a new active community can grow. To make that happen, we are working on some changes that we hope will open up the wiki to new contributors. For one, we are removing old userpages (not contributions!) for a clean slate. (Anyone who has been active here and would like theirs restored can request that, and we're happy to do so.) This is a pretty radical step, but the Fandom team feels it's necessary for a fresh start.

In addition, we are enabling Message Walls since they're easier to use (at least for beginner wiki editors) than talk pages.

The biggest change we're making is the addition of Discussions, to add a social space to this encyclopedic site. We've found that this feature helps wikis retain more visitors and gets them to contribute to the community. While most of them may not graduate to article editing, the wiki can still benefit from the energy and ideas these users bring. If you're not interested in socializing here and don't want to use this feature, be sure to set your landing page preference to something other than Community Feed.

I'd like to clarify one last point: After the departure of the wiki's original admins, User:Masuta Who has stepped up to take on administrative duties. He is not a Fandom staff member, but he is here to help this wiki thrive and he has Fandom's support.

Fandom as a company has taken some steps and made some feature changes in the last couple of years that did not put our communities and their needs first, and that understandably angered quite a few users. This was certainly at least partly the cause for why this wiki's original community left. Going forward, it's our goal to collaborate with the community whenever possible rather than dictate changes. We encourage anyone wishing to edit here to reach out and let us know how we can help! Mira Laime  (help forum | blog) 22:41, April 2, 2019 (UTC)

Edit: We have also decided to disable user blogs for the time being since you can share personal opinions, recommendations, etc. via Discussions now.

Discussion

Fandom as a company has taken some steps and made some feature changes in the last couple of years that did not put our communities and their needs first [...] Going forward, it's our goal to collaborate with the community whenever possible rather than dictate changes.

Let me get this straight. You acknowledge that you need to listen to the community, and then your first major act is to unilaterally delete all userpages? I guess it wouldn't have made much difference if you'd started a forum in advance, since there's no one here to read it anyway.

We believe that this action will rid the wiki of unused, outdated, and problematic user pages, while having a minimal impact on active users.

This is dumb as shit. These "problematic" userpages have sat there for a decade doing nothing. It's pretty clear that you're just trying to erase all evidence of the fork. You've not only deleted the forking thread without reasoning (I would like to hear one from you now), but suppressed the log entry to make it look like it never existed. And by deleting userpages and turning on Message Walls, which conceals old talk pages, you've effectively wiped all locations in which users may have had links to the new wiki.

You have no ability to keep up with game updates, you will never build a new community, and this site will eventually die off. --Masuta Poo (talk) 09:09, April 3, 2019 (UTC)

See, the problem is that you don't even make any sense. Removing user pages for a clean slate? Who needs a clean slate? For what? What are you even trying to accomplish? You know what, it doesn't even matter what you are trying to accomplish, because removing old user pages does not accomplish it. It's a ridiculous idea cooked up in the night by people who have zero idea of what they are doing. This is the type of thing that made the old community leave, Fandom doing random crazy shit that makes no sense and not listening to the people. Whiskey Straight (talk)

When we say we want to do a better job at working together with the community, we are referring to the community of people who want this wiki to thrive and any new users that might join it, not the community that has left and wants this wiki (which is now competition) to fail.

When a community forks, Fandom does indeed remove anything that could harm the remaining wiki's chance of attracting a new community. That includes deleting links to the forked wiki, debates about the fork, and blocking users who have moved to the new wiki but keep coming back to sabotage the wiki they've left behind. That may be irksome to those who have left, but it makes perfect sense from a business standpoint.

You can compare the user page deletion and other changes we're making to moving into an apartment someone else has moved out of, but left their things behind, and for which they've kept the keys. As the new tenant, you'd probably throw out whatever they left behind that you can't use, you'd change the locks, and you'd repaint the walls to freshen up the place. You wouldn't just move in and leave everything as it was when the previous tenant abandoned it. Mira Laime  (help forum | blog) 16:19, April 3, 2019 (UTC)

Fandom needs to make business decision, no argument there. You need to block vandals, no argument there. You need to remove links to the new site, yep, valid business decision. Saying that deleting old user pages is like painting an apartment for new tenants still makes no sense. You didn't change the wiki background pic, page layouts, formats, or anything else people actually see when they visit article pages. Very simply, it is an act of petty vengeance, and everyone knows it. If you want some petty vengeance, go for it. Just have the integrity to admit it. Right now your above reasoning sounds like Trump babble, and everyone stares and thinks "Is he serious? Does he think that? Does he expect people to believe that? There's no way..." Whiskey Straight (talk)

From our point of view, most are either very old and unused (in which case this is a housekeeping measure), they contain problematic content such as templates that generate redlinks elsewhere, for instance (also a housekeeping issue), or they were used to direct people to the new wiki (which we don't allow for reasons explained above). Those that are currently used for legitimate purposes or even just missed for nostalgic reasons, we're very happy to restore. That's also a way of taking inventory of people who are still/newly around and want to engage.

We may still change the background image or other more visible aspects of the wiki, if we see room for improvement somewhere. We're not changing everything about the wiki

Can you clarify what specifically about the user page deletions strikes you as petty and a pure revenge act? Mira Laime  (help forum | blog) 18:11, April 3, 2019 (UTC)

You realise deleting everybody's userpage + especially signatures is gonna create even more redlinks? — KelseW (talk) 18:23, April 3, 2019 (UTC)

You talk about business sense and tenancy as if bytes on a page are nothing but dollars in your pocket and that there's nothing wrong with that attitude. You talk about mistakes made but not lessons learned and unsurprisingly have no real idea why everyone left other than the vague notion of something in the last couple of years. This wiki built up an enormous amount of goodwill in the community over more than a decade, and now that said goodwill has been capitalised upon, you're down to enabling random features in the hope that it might inject some life into what is otherwise a sunken ship.

Deleting user pages is a bizarre reaction to the invented issue of maintenance - you now have hundreds of redlinks more than you did before. Unilateral, far-reaching actions do more to shine a light on the lack of community here than anything the former community could have ever attempted. cqm ^talk