Okay, first a warning. I'm not in the best of moods so I might be a bit rough, I apologize in advance. I'm going to go into an extreme amount of detail about why I think this is suicidally stupid plan and what I think we should do instead and my reasons for them and my history that lead me to those conclusions. As in depth as I can get so there's no confusion. So prepare for a lengthy read. Here goes.
Hey guys - I want you to know that I have read every post in here. I do appreciate the passion and a lot of what is being said here and I am taking that to heart.
Honestly - I wish I could just control the messaging. I've done a very poor job of that. I did talk to the forum team briefly a few weeks back, and have talked with my team at ZI about forums. As things are still fluid and not exactly concrete, it's premature to make definitive statements. The thread that was here about the ZI acquisition had some of the private discussion spill over to the public, and similarly, a post went out at ZI explaining some potential changes. I would say that for a change that effects community, I wish I could have been ahead of the pack and controlled the messaging at both. I will admit that communication is not my best attribute. Rather than create mass confusion where it appears I am ignoring everybody, I wish I could have made the initial splash myself and got out front of the situation. Things are not changing overnight, I assure you of that. You will get a formal announcement and I would hope to clarify as many concerns as possible.
Mases, I'm sorry. I warned you that if you ignored my concerns and didn't discuss them with me, I was going to make my exact problem with how you're handling this public.
You've already made it abundantly clear in what you've already publicly said in this and previous thread discussing ZI issues that you are deadset on this action and absolutely nothing anyone says is going to have the slightest influence on what you're going to do. I very strongly suggest you discontinue that line of thought. I've known you for eight years, I'm no stranger to your quirks, habits, and idiosyncrasies. You are giving the finger to your entire community right now and you're not doing yourself any favors by doing so. Please, actually listen to what we have to say and please, please don't jump to conclusions about people's motives. You always have trouble really listening to people. There's a difference between merely acknowledging someone said something to you and actually taking time to process everything they've told you and consider what the implications are.
This is consistent with your previous behavior
EVERY. SINGLE. PREVIOUS. time this forum has had a crisis of any sort. Pretending it didn't exist until it unraveled out of control to a ridiculous degree when you simply could have nipped it in the bud in the very beginning if you bothered to
listen to anyone in the first place. By the time you actually come around to deciding to do something about it, either the problem people have to be forced to leave or you come up with some convoluted excuse to dismiss them that has absolutely nothing to do with any of their actual offenses. You ignored that there was a problem, even insisted there wasn't, wouldn't respond to anyone's concerns. And whenever people came to you with very serious concerns about an unruly staff member, you encouraged that staff member's behavior by telling them exactly what you heard and from whom, which made things worse in the cases of abusive staff members (made them even more abusive and determined to unfairly ban the people who you informed them was criticizing them, which we have had our fair share of. That you are ignoring our concerns and that you have every intention of continuing to ignore them no matter what happens is not in question. It's a given. Based on what you've done before and what you'd said already, what's going to happen is that people are going to fuss and moan about it, then you're going to give some empty platitude and say something like "however I already made my decision and we're doing it anyway."
You claim to be doing this for the sake of the ZI community, which you also insist is tiny to the point of being nonexistent (even though it does have a decent amount of firmly entrenched regulars who are very passionate about the place), all while completely disregarding this community here. No point going over how insanely hypocritical that is. What you just said in this post confirms that you think it would have been better if they were never told and one day the ZD forums were simply gone, moved to ZI without any of this community ever having a say. If that's not the case, you never would have said you regret how this has been communicated.
You don't like the forums, you never liked the forums. People don't joke about your thinking "DISQUS is the future!" for no reason. You don't exactly keep it a secret that you couldn't possibly care any less about them. You have no respect for them or the absolutely vital role they've played in making your site the success it's been. Without them, you never would have been in a position to acquire Zelda Informer. You only think about the forums in the narrow terms of anonymous visitor traffic. For a forum that is entirely meaningless. Modern forums do not exist simply to be forums to attrach people to come to the forums. (sites that attempt that fail). Modern forums are supplements to websites that are meant to maintain its established community, which is absolutely insane to compare to the massive amount of traffic something like news on a frontpage or an invaluable, highly sought resource like a well written guide gets. Forums are not about that. They breathe life into a site and help it grow and stay afloat. The most valuable long term contributors to any site like ours usually come from forums. It's the best place to draw reliable people who will be passionate, stay loyal, and that will deeply care about the fate of the site (recall that I had been a regular ZD forum member for two years before you started the wiki). People directly hired or recruited off site have a ridiculously high turnover rate and almost always leave within a relatively short amount of time so even if they're valuable in the short term, long term usefulness is limited. You severely undervalue the importance and utility of a forum and just how much of a vital resource it is for a site's long term survival.
Regarding the Wiki specifically. Matt - I honestly don't know if you actually believe what you are saying, or that you are really just passionate about these forums remaining at the Zelda Dungeon URL, that you are using the wiki as leverage. This latest iteration of the forums has been around since 2009. It has been around for the entirety of the Wiki's life period. Throughout the 4+ year life of the Wiki, we've come a really long way, but we are still a distant third place. I'm proud of where we are. There are a lot of pages on the Wiki that are extremely well done, and the Wiki gets a good amount of traffic.
I am completely serious about every single word. If you had listened to me the times I voiced my opinion about ZD to you for the last four years (and about ZW the prior four years), you'd see that. I've constantly raised concerns about how I thought the forum was being mismanaged and how I believed it was holding back the wiki. And... the wiki is still pretty stagnant now. It's got some success, of course. But it's got a long way to go. We need to bring activity up if we expect to be able to keep up with Zelda Wiki. Throughout all my complaining I've always been consistent about the source of my concerns. You're the last person who should assume I'm simply making it up to win a debate. Anyone here who's seen me for the last year can personally vouche for how hard I fought for the wiki's representation in forum matters.
I'm being passionate, and admittedly outraged, about all this right now, BECAUSE you're threatening to destroy everything I have worked to create in some ridiculously display of stubborn pride. I'm not about to sit back and let you ruin what I've invested four years of my blood, sweat, and tears helping to create.
I came on to help make your wiki in first place because I knew what I was doing. I've now had eight years of experience working on wikis as well as the knowledge obtained by communicating with people who work on other wikis (NIWA was a huge help in making those connections for me).
I'm not the rank amateur that the prior admins of this forum or our former associates of Zelda Wiki would have you believe, or even how you seem to be implying here. For crying out loud!!! We started a
NEW WIKI meant to rival and hopefully surpass two already established and firmly entrenched ones that already had a secure hold on many search rankings. You don't just try to create an equal competitor to an established brand casually. It takes a lot of work and I was determined.
Do you honestly believe I just jumped in and winged it? Don't you recall at the very, very first talks about you starting up a wiki? You suggested they seek my help, BEFORE I offered and after I had previously advised you not to make your own wiki owing to the difficulty you'd have in establishing yourself as an equal competator to Zelda Wiki. And initially I was skeptical about your chances of success. But you should also recall there was someone at Zelda Wiki I very, very desperately wanted to avoid for extremely good reasons (recall I begged for your help with her before you decided to leave ZW), so to get away I swallowed my reservations and decided to help you. To address my initial concerns, I did research. A lot of research. I spoke to a lot of people. I investigated other wikis. This was necessary to make sure our wiki didn't flounder at the start. Applying templates and coding was not my sole task. I busted my butt trying everything I could think of to learn how to help it. And for years every one of my suggestions to get it going again has been undermined, resisted, and disregarded. And look at it now, struggling with something like four people contributing to it a month.
I was on the inside of another failed wiki for nearly four years,
South Park Archives as its
only staff member actually there and not inactive at all for several months. Alone to manage the hundreds of contributions Wikia gets that were far more than one human being could handle. I was forced to abandon it in early 2011 (but didn't have anyone re remove my admin access until 2012) because of the overwork and changes forced upon me by Wikia that made all the work ten times harder, as well as a combination of personal issues (notably a death of a close family member). Fortunately they have a lost wiki recovery process that can revive failed wikis from death, and some brave people who had a better ability to navigate Wikia's disaster of a system managed to keep it alive after I left. Wikia is impossible to reason with. I'd make a request of them, and if they granted it, there was a literal 90% chance it'll be reversed in a few weeks. For instance I had to ask five times to have patrolling enabled and five times someone else at Wikia disabled it shortly after each request was granted. They didn't even listen to anything else I asked. I couldn't deal with it. They were unbearable. And after having had two failed wiki experiences come to an end that year, helping raise your wiki to be serious, threatening competition to Zelda Wiki was like a new calling that got me out of my depression that the wiki and personal life problems had been giving me. I dedicated myself to it. THAT is why it's so important to me and why it means so much to me and why I get so passionate every time someone threatens its survival. Stagnation is death. The wiki can't survive without growth and it needs it desperately.
I'm a veteran of this affair. I know what I'm doing. And I cannot stress enough what a monumental mistake your plans to move the forum are. And I would appreciate you not insinuate that I'm making this up to make a point. I'm dead serious about all this. I require an active community of people to be able to get more people. And since for the wiki itself that's a complete chicken or the egg problem, and your plans for the front page, that leaves the forum as the only active community left on ZD. I require that activity to be able to get the wiki's activity up. And I'll also need full participation from the forums. Meaning that they'll consider the wiki as part of them and not as some irrelevant side feature of no consequence as the previous round of administrators believed of the wiki and as you believe of the forums. Wiki staff shouldn't be made to be subservient to forum staff like has been tried in the past. They're equals.
Efforts should be made to engage the community in the wiki (while of course not making it mandatory - which would be silly). All of this is much better done with a ZD forum, ad ZD that is open to ZD's personal direct interests and needs. That is not applicable to the ZI forums. Their number one priority is their front page, as it should be. It's their strength, it's what they're good at, they excell at it, they're extremely impressive at it. If you forcefully inject ZD's very different community into ZI's existing small but firmly established community, you also threaten the very thing that makes Zelda Informer strong. If the people there feel threatened or invaded, they may retaliate and cause problems. Some may leave or be forced to leave. It can very easily spread to the front page. As you so adamantly insist you're doing this in the first place to appease the existing ZI people. You run a very real risk of undermining what makes ZI strong and successful. Can you promise us without any doubt that if everyone at ZI, absolutely everyone, forum community, social account crews, front page staff, all of them were replaced with ZD people that the replacements could do the same successful work that ZI is currently doing? I severely doubt it. You cannot hope to keep ZI's success without maintaining its current teams on all its aspects AND maintaining what forum community has, seperate from the ZD forums. If forums are such a trivial, non-important thing to you that you absolutely don't care about, why be so deadset on there only being one forum. Didn't you explicitly tell me you thought that a good leader should delegate duties to other people instead of trying to manage everything themselves? I very clearly remember you saying that. You are violating that advice by doing this to the forums. DELEGATE, let the existing teams manage them. And let the two communities intermingle at their own pace and of their own free will. We've been enemies for years. Don't deny that. I know I'm not alone in saying that there's always room to make friends with anyone no matter the history. But you can't make people do that. It has to happen on its own terms on its own time frame if you expect people to truly move on and work together in real, productive friendship.
The most successful independent, focused subject wikis have their own dedicated onsite forums that support it and help make them into unstoppable juggernauts (for instance Bulbapedia and Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages). If our end, long term goal is to surpass Zelda Wiki and Zeldapedia as massively as the two previous wikis I mentioned surpass their underwhelming Wikia counterparts, a dedicated on-site forum is necessary. So are social pages. If Zelda Informer takes over our front page duties, logically it follows that our existing ZD social pages ought be retooled to support the wiki more directly (as they won't have much else to do) and Zelda Informer can of course back them up by sharing their posts. That is just one example of a great way for the two sites to support each other.
As I've mentioned to you, with the changes happening at the front page, interlinking with the walkthroughs, moving smaller guides over to the wiki, networking with Zelda Informer, and utilizing social media, this will all help to grow the Wiki. Will we catch Zeldapedia and Zelda Wiki? I don't know. I don't even think so, but I think we can make headways. I feel that we can continue growing our Wiki, as well as providing a lot of unique content at our wiki that isn't elsewhere. I think our Wiki has a lot of value as it stands right now, and while I would like to see more activity, the value of the wiki is still there regardless of activity.
I already said I agree with the other stuff. They're good ideas. But they won't work alone. Any one thing alone won't work. They won't do what you are hoping they will if you go through with this plan with the forums. Trying to do all our other plans to promote the wiki while completely disregarding the importance of the forums is like building a state of the art car and considering it unimportant to bother to put tires on it. It
DOES NOT MATTER what else you've done to it if it doesn't have anything to get those parts moving. I'm absolutely sure about this and I am not saying it lightly, as I explained in depth above.