The Sims Wiki:Newsletter/12 January 2011

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2011 For The Wiki By BobNewbie

2011 started with a bang. The community showed their excitement by adding smileys to messages for New Years Smiley day. Most users were on the IRC while waiting for the big midnight amazement which is fireworks. Our Facebook page then started a series of hard guessing challenges, and is already getting brand new likes with the help of the new like box added to the main page.

New discussions started, including ones on changing the Infobox template, and to change all family trees to a new, more organized look, which links to each member.

Users started, ended, and restarted old projects. Some made improvements to the wiki, and others learned lesson which will be with them for the rest of their wiki-editing careers.

"We have no reason to think otherwise that The Sims Wiki will continue to grow this year"- User who wishes to remain unnamed.

We would like to welcome new users and give thanks to others. Without you, The Sims Wiki would never be possible. We would also want to thank our admins, who keep the wiki in a top-notch state, 24/7, 365 days a year.

We wish you all a happy new year, and hope you achieve more of your on and off wiki goals.

The Merge
By BobNewbie

The Sims Wiki has recently undergone a large discussion on if the wiki should merge with our sister wiki, The Sims Fanon Wiki. This discussion originally took place in April 2010, and after a month, it was decided that a vote should be held. The outcome was a 11-12 vote against the merge, with one user, Dharden, remaining neutral. One vote favoring merge from a unregistered user was not counted.



User Random Ranuan decided to re-open the discussion to merge, to address the decreasing activity. Certain users who were against the merge originally are now supporting it. An amount of users are still against the merge, but their points have been called into question. The point they make is that the merge will cause a great deal of trouble. Other users disagree, saying with proper planning and hard-work, the merge can be done swiftly and cleanly.

Another alternative to the merge is the creation of a fanon namespace, with "Fanon:" being put before users creations. Other idea's given include creation of a fanon portal, categorizing fanon creation with sub-categories relating to the creation, the appointing of 1-2 Fanon Administrators to help create the guidelines, policies and manual of style for fanon creations and a new special type of warning for creating fanon creations in the main namespace.

Currently the arguments for doing it outweigh those against it, and this makes the possibility of the creation of a fanon namespace very likely.

Community Tackles Decreasing Activity
By BobNewbie

After an observation was made by LostInRiverview, The Sims Wiki's community was made aware of the fact that activity was decreasing.

The decrease started at the end period of JoePlay's blog, in which users were awarded a special Platinum badge for commenting. Achievements were added by Wikia accidentally, and have since been removed. JEA13 mentioned a variety of things that may cause the decrease, including heavy schoolwork, less free time, more focus on real life, lack of further interest in the Sims series, and lack of further interest in Wikia.

Another possible factor mentioned is the change to Oasis, though this was left to be discussed further later if the cause (or causes) were not found, since most users uncomfortable with using Oasis decided to use MonoBook instead.

The community decided to raise activity in every way possible, and new ideas were put to the table. The Sims Wiki Battles began, and were a success if one looks at the amount of participants. A The Sims Wiki Mascot Contest is currently being worked on, and will start in February. Other implemented ideas and features include Top 10 lists, Emoticon's, a new logo contest, Event Days and a new community director, BobNewbie, being appointed.

Even though activity is low, The Sims Wiki still has a large amount of visitors. LostInRiverview has come up with statistics to help us realize the problem. Interesting statistics include that The Sims Wiki averages over 3,500,000 page views per month, and over 450,000 visits per month from a global audience. An estimated 108,000 visits come from the United States; compare this to an estimated 165,000 visits from the U.S. for TheSims3.com, 82,500 U.S. visits for ModTheSims.info, 93,000 US visits for thesimsresource.com, and (to put it in perspective) 129,300,000 US visits for facebook.com. We rank higher in (American) site visits than The Sims Resource and ModTheSims, but rank lower than TheSims3.com. There are 14,900,000 US visitors to the Wikia network per month, and 108,000 US visitors to TSW per month, putting us at 0.727% of total network traffic for the Wikia network (Fallout Wiki is highest). Looking at data from the past year, on average our activity here in terms of readership is at this point the highest that it has been all year (factoring out the odd jump or two). Aside from the current time, the wiki was busiest over the (Northern Hemisphere) summer months of June-August.

The Sims Wiki is currently still working on raising activity, and would like your opinion on it and how to fix the problem.

We Are Getting A Makeover
By BobNewbie

The Sims Wiki is currently in the progress of redesigning the Main Page. Currently, A morris ,LostInRiverview, BobNewbie, Random Ranaun and Pin Collector have given their opinions and ideas.

LostInRiverview has made several points as to why we should redesign the main page, including,"The New skin: I probably sound like a broken record by now, but I can't bring it up enough - our main page needs to serve as the lobby of the wiki and must offer ample navigation opportunities. From our lobby, you should be able to reach your end destination relatively quickly. Important links to content, community, development, and administrative pages and tools should be available on the main page, which should largely serve as a supplement to the drop-down menus." A morris and BobNewbie have also been working on a new main page in private sandboxes.

Currently, priorities are to change the main page to be a better navigation hub, and to link to both The Sims games easily and to the admin, community and development portals.

A project portal has been created, and it is meant to help with navigating through the central discussions.

The main page is not the only thing we plan to change. We also plan to possibly change the logo, background and portals. The community portal has already been redesigned.

If you would like to find out more, go to the Project Redesign page. If you wish to join this project, sign up at Project Redesign/Members.

User Opinions
Question: What s your favorite The Sims game?

Guilherme Guerreiro said: ''I prefer The Sims 3 because it has lot more to do, we can go outside, and we have much more activities and hobbies. Though it is excellent, I miss memories from The Sims 2. ''

Lost Labyrinth said:The Sims 3 because of the open neighborhood and opportunities.

Andronikos Leventis said: ''The Sims Series is a classic game series and many people today still play The Sims 1, so it is a safe topic. Many people prefer The Sims 2 from The Sims 3 so clearing out which game is the best is a very good idea. I often find myself wondering which game to play when opening my computer, and I end up doing nothing!''

Horoscope: Capricorn (Dec 22- Jan 19)
By BobNewbie



Please note that these horoscopes are based off real ones, but with a slight twist.

IRC day huge fail and success
By BobNewbie

The Sims Wiki hosted a IRC day on the 3rd of January. At the start of the day, only 2 users were known to be on, Lost Labyrinth and BobNewbie. Both left to rejoined later. BobNewbie, DarthCookie and LostInRiverview were on, though DarthCookie left soon after joining. A few minutes later, Lost Labyrinth rejoined. The 3 users were disappointed as hopes were high for IRC day to be a success. The 3 decided to sit it out, and wait for a while longer.

They were greeted by Bleeh and Monster2821 (now named CookieMonster888), both users who stated they may have problems joining the IRC, due to real life. This meant there were 5 users, which is actually common for the IRC that time of the day.

In a surprising turn of events, two users from the Call of Duty IRC also joined. Everybody enjoyed a few laughs. The conversation went from links to humorous Video Game covers, including, to if a country named Britland exists (the majority of users said yes).

While not as large as everyone hoped for, many agree that the IRC day was fun, and if that was the goal, it was a huge success.

We ask of you to join us next IRC day. The Sims Wiki will notify you when via the community portal.

You may enjoy
Here are some contests you may enjoy participating in:


 * The Sims Wiki:User Created Contest/Favorite Trait (The Sims 3)
 * The Sims Wiki:User Created Contest/Simvivor

Mascot
Who here has never heard of Walter? He's the community support teams little robot mascot! This got me thinking, should The Sims Wiki get one? Well, start your games, load Create-A-Sim and make your best Sim ever, because The Sims Wiki will be having a contest to decide their new mascot! Keep your eyes open for when the contest starts in February!

Impersonating thugs
By Simsgirl2010

It has been reported that people have been reported that people have been impersonating admins, and other important people on The Sims IRC channel. Such as someone, most likely a troll, impersonated user BobNewbie. If you happen to see a troll, insulting or harassing you, please contact an admin, and the user they were impersonating.

Positions Open For Requests
The Sims Wiki is currently looking for people to take on special positions. We encourage you to, if you have the time, skill and fill the requirements, to apply for one of these positions.
 * Real life writer- writes in-depth features about real life events related to The Sims series. Any user may apply (excluding those with a history of vandalism, or have been on the wiki for a very short time) on BobNewbie's talk page.

Positions users are nominated for:

 * Obudsman-Lost Labyrinth
 * Forum Moderator-DarthCookie



The newsletter has recently returned and is set to stay for a while. If you have any opinions on the newsletter, how its published, how users submit ideas or something you agree/disagree on, please go to the talk page.

- Happy Editing and Simming!


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