Forum:Closing down Wiki Chat

This one's a pretty simple one. I'd like to propose that we close down the on-wiki chat feature. Chat is dead, plain and simple. I think keeping the chat feature open on the wiki might confuse new users, who could go onto chat without realizing that no one else uses it. The Sims Wiki's Discord server gets much more active participation and is much more regularly monitored and moderated.

In addition to closing down Chat, this proposal would also see the removal of the Chat Moderator user role. However, The Sims Wiki only has four Chat Moderators (excluding Administrators, who hold Chat Moderator privileges automatically), and none of those four moderators has edited the wiki in over a year. Along with this, we would need to scrub current policy and wiki pages to remove references to Chat (except for archival purposes).

Thoughts? --  LostInRiverview talk · blog  ·  contribs 01:38, April 3, 2019 (UTC)

Support Chat has had its day. It could've been a really great feature, but Wikia just never really invested much effort into developing it, so it largely stagnated and fell behind. AFAIK it's no longer being actively developed, whereas Discord has a lively and active development team behind it, and Discord is much more widely used. Frick, Wikia Chat never even managed to top IRC, as IRC still retains its own small community of users, whereas Wikia Chat has virtually no one left, save for the occasional lost user poking their head in. Wikia Chat, dare I say, was a failure, not from the start, but by negligence. While there's no real cost to us keeping Wikia Chat alive, the one cost that we do have to endure is having this useless feature still being shown to users, who may join and be dismayed to find no one else there. As such, we should shut the feature down so we don't need to worry about moderating or maintaining it, and so lost users at least won't find themselves sitting in a dead chatroom waiting for someone to come and talk to them. — k6ka  🍁 ( Talk ·  Contributions ) 02:56, April 3, 2019 (UTC)


 * Weak Support - As much as I hate to say it, I don't really see any purpose in keeping chat on this wiki. Since no one seems to use it anymore. While chat was useful at one point, it does seem to have outlived its use. If there is ever a popular demand for chat to be reopened, I would be supportive of reopening chat then. But otherwise, I don't see how closing it would do any harm.


 * I do have one question though. If this proposal were to pass, what would happen to the current Chat Moderators? Would they be demoted, or would their rights stay in case chat is reopened? ― C.Syde ( talk  |  contribs ) 04:05, April 3, 2019 (UTC)


 * The chat moderator user group doesn't get removed, but it does become pointless. If chat were to be reopened (in the rare case that this occurs) then the right can simply be regranted if it was ever removed. — k6ka  🍁 ( Talk ·  Contributions ) 12:50, April 3, 2019 (UTC)

Conclusion
I've disabled the feature and archived the relevant pages. — k6ka  🍁 ( Talk ·  Contributions ) 16:27, April 18, 2019 (UTC)