As I said before, scrolling isn't an issue if you use subforums.
Still iffy on the other Zelda sections, but future Zelda itself would streamline a lot of stuff that would make announcements and such less jarring.
First of all, never, EVER compare a giant to a dwarf. What works, or doesn't, for something massive and firmly established as Wikipedia is absolutely meaningless to something smaller. It's like saying that all a small corner shop in a small town needs to do to be successful is buy in bulk from asian sweatshops like Walmart does. It won't work. It's two completely different universes so don't compare them.
The point of the comparison to Wikipedia is that forums aren't essential. I further emphasized this point by bringing up a much more comparable situation to that of ZD Wiki in talking about ZI's wiki (both our old and newer one). Of course you're going to counter with "well this place has a board, that place has a board" yada yada. That's fine. But before they had boards, they had a Wiki, and before they expanded the Wiki to boards, the Wiki already had an extremely active userbase. Are you catching my drift there? Forums were born out of the activity level of the wiki warranting the need for boards to more easily discuss wiki matters. They didn't use the boards to build the Wiki. It was entirely the other way around. Zelda Wiki, among others, are just more evidence that forums are not the only way to build a wiki. Those that have active forums genreally had a successful wiki first.
You have this obsession with forums interlinked to Wiki and I get it. You see it at these other places and you keep thinking "that's what we should do" - but you're forgetting how those boards were formed in the first place and what their purpose was at that time. Most people that use bulbapedia's forums are wiki editors. Why? Because the boards were created to support the wiki editors. It wasn't like you're trying to do here - take an existing forum community and strong arm it into the wiki. You need to look into how to successfully build reach for a wiki and gain users outside of forums before you worry about forums themselves.
That's just my take here. Having launched my own successful wiki project absent forums, and then having another slowly get off the ground at ZI, I am well aware that forums are a non essential cog until you have an activity level and enough users on the wiki where the form of communication they offer is much easier than the talk pages. I'm not at all saying you shouldn't use the forums - there is a link to the wiki already right here. I am mostly saying that forums work the other way around at wikis. They exist because the wiki is so active it's more convenient, they don't exist to get a wiki going.
I have a lot on my plate at ZI, but if Mases ever wants to bring me on as a consultant to helping ZD's wiki explode in views and users, I am all the more willing to do it. But that's not what I'm "paid to do", and as much as I love helping with various projects, I do have a paid job I need to do first, plus a family. So it's hard for me to sacrifice the time at almost 30 with 3 kids and a full time job at ZI to help explain to you how to grow the wiki more organically instead of simply looking internally. Of course this is totally off topic. I suggest opening a more wiki centered thread to talk this over further.
And once again you're thinking way, WAY too much in the terms of how you want to see our network. How you wish to think of it. No one that I can see is disagreeing with how you want to look at things. Everyone I can see that even acknowledged it thinks it's a fantastic way to see things. But what you're not understanding is that your view is not everyone else's view. When they see the wiki as it is now, they're going to see nothing, it's dead. And if we move the front page responsibilities to Zelda Informer and move the forum there too, there will be NOTHING but the Wiki activity visible to the public on the Zelda Dungeon domain. Did you not just get done telling us over and over that people seeing dead sections will discourage them from participating in a forum? The exact same logic applies here.
No, it doesn't. Because you're forgetting the entire reason wikis exist. It's not to drive user editing things. It's not to even retain viewership perse. Wikis are purely informational. Sure, you want to encourage edits in areas that need it for sure, but Wiki's aren't like forums. They aren't predicated on that sort of stuff. They are predicated on where they rank in google search rankings and then once you are ranked, how useful that information is when someone searches for it. it's just like the walkthroughs at ZD. Once a guide is done, it's not relooked at or constantly edited. It's just there for people to use. That's what Wikis are for, with the encouragement that if they go to a page that's incomplete, they help complete it. Obvious through all this you can and should foster a nice community, but you can't force it. You cannot compare a wiki and a forum like you did by referencing what I said. They are not the same thing.
And as for other promotion, that is not going to work if all anyone sees is a dead site. They won't care what your higher ideals of togetherness are, however insightful and useful they are, they'll mean nothing. So we can do a billion different promotions, but the usefulness of the additions will be limited. Will it be a deathnail to the wiki? No, of course not, don't be absurd. It'll be enough to sustain it indefinitely. But it will not be enough for it to thrive, to truly exceed Zelda Wiki. It just can't do that without a community of its own. Even if that community is part of a larger whole, it does have to have its own organization and its own autonomy.
As one of the founding sites and main players behind Zelda Wiki before it ever mattered and anyone knew it existed beyond a small group of people, forums were almost a non factor entirely when it started from ground zero. It grew in large part because many Zelda sites decided to partner up and fee dtheir fans into it. They heavily promoted it. Today, the two largest Zelda sites in the entire world - far larger than all those small sites combined back in the day, can now feed their fan bases into a single wiki. It can be done.
Anyways, that's the last bit I am talking about the wiki in this thread. It's not really what this thread is about or for in the first place. I shouldn't really even be promoting this convo here.
Uhm, except no. On ZI terms, maybe. But not for ZD which has more forum activity. AND which also has a habit of merging section after section into world of Zelda. Topics being pushed to page two after a few days does not mean that overall activity has skyrocketed. As I've explained several times, all it means was that everything was dumped into one bucket to make it look like it was bigger even though in reality it's not. It's a parlor trick, a slight of hand. It looks impressive, but long term it's meaningless and unsustainable.
Not sure why you're repeating yourself. My solution counters all of your concerns really. Everything isn't dumped into a single board. No use repeating, I know you can read.
Trial and error? There has to be some kind of reasonable middle ground between no subsections whatsoever to subsections of subsections of subsections. That way we can condense and streamline things a bit without losing substance. We let it play out for a while and if one particular section doesn't work, then we deal with it as it happens. But some sections I think are too important to get rid of even if they dip in activity. Like all the general sections. And the FAQs section (as a rule that's there for reference and not activity anyway).
Never really said subsections can't exist. But you want to make the experience as fluid as possible. Take the tech and science boards. Moving them to a subsection of general doesn't help them, nor does it change the fact that people just aren't that interested int alking about that stuff save once in awhile, and once in awhile fits just fine in the overarching scheme of what a general board covers in the first place. Mafia is obvious a different beast. I don't mind it existing if we plan to use it. But when our Pokemon League died out we moved the boards to an archived format, noting if interest peaked again we would start the boards fresh so it's a fresh start not cluttered with years gone by. Worked really well. But again, I am fine with them as is, just want us to start using them. It's been months, is anything going to turn it around?
This forum becoming the ZI forum won't really compromise the Wiki. Mases concept will help out the wiki. If there are links to it on the forum still, links in this sites' guides, links on ZI frontpage, it isn't like the wiki gets pushed aside.
Essentially. Wiki minor promotion at ZI has already begun. Nothing huge beyond SEO helping. But, once I formulate a more long term plan for ZI promoting the wiki with Mases, it's going to explode. That and, forum merging really has nothing to do with hurting the wiki anyways. If anything, it draws a second communities' attention to it.
Can people who don't play mafia please stop trying to say where it should be located or if it should exist? With Mafia activity having died lately the last thing we need is for it to be a subforum under forum games. And I think the roleplay community would also be very offended by you calling roleplay a "game".
As I said, I am just talking about active versus dead boards. Not really what should happen to Mafia in general. As someone "brand new to this community" here is what I get the impression of looking at the Mafia board - NO ONE PLAYS IT. So when someone says "people who don't play mafia stop trying to say x" - no one is playing Mafia right no. No one. So...
Doesn't mean it can't be revived. but it can't just sit dead either. There should be a nice plan in place to revive it or move it, or scrap it. Etc. Maybe even replace it with Mafia 2.0, etc. Just food for thought. Keep in mind that I have no power to change things here. As I said, everything is staying as is as far as I am aware. I am just opening discussing possibilities.