Forum:Wikia mainpage portal idea

I'm not sure if this was an email that was sent to specifically admins on The Sims Wiki or if it was also sent to other administrators across Wikia. Regardless, I received this email yesterday from User:JAlbor, a Staffperson on the Community Development Team:

Greetings!

This is Jorge from Wikia’s Community Development Team. As a part of our regular efforts to bring fans (especially Wikia admins) together with the developers of the games they love, Wikia has been brainstorming ways to bring exclusive events, opportunities, or assets directly from creators to you.

One idea that has garnered some interest is a temporary window or portal for content right from devs/pubs. This is still a very early idea, but we were hoping to reach out to some large Wikia communities and see what the interest is for opportunities like these and listen to your feedback about the idea.

Here’s the basic idea. We would create a module that would act as a sort of window or portal directly into the content the devs/pubs would want to offer and promote. This would live somewhere on the wiki, preferably on the mainpage or game page, somewhere folks will see it prominently. This placement is still up in the air, can depend on what the folks want to offer, etc. The size is also up in the air and totally negotiable. This would live on the wiki temporarily, likely 10 days to a month’s time, in which the content could change depending on the event or asset they want to show off..

A couple of important notes:


 * None of these would be done without explicit approval from the wiki admin team. How this would work/look like is very much up to you.


 * We would only want to do this with news/giveaways/assets/events/etc. that are relevant and valuable to your community. If you don’t think your community is interested in something in particular, then no one benefits by having it up there.


 * After a given month, this would go away and any future placement would have to receive your express approval again. We want to be sure you always have an opportunity to turn down this window into their content.


 * This is still just an initial outreach, so please just keep this among yourselves. We don't want folks to think this is some inevitable thing or to get their hopes up for something that might never happen.

Anyway, this is still an idea we are floating around and we would love to hear from you. Do you think this is something your community would find interesting? Would you and your community be willing to consider such an idea? In what ways do you think something like this could work for you? What things would you want to see and not want to see? We don’t want to reach out to publishers/developers until we know this is something that could be right for you.

I’m hoping by asking you all directly, we can come up with some good ideas about ways to connect you all directly with the folks making and producing the things you love. Any thoughts you’re willing to share would be incredibly useful. Let me know what you think, and if you have any questions, at your convenience.

Thanks so much! Jorge

-- Jorge Albor Community Development Manager - Video Games

What does everyone think of this idea? Wikia Staff have proposed efforts in the past to connect wikis with game developers. In our case, these efforts have so far not come to fruition. So, we can support his idea in the hopes that this time something results from it, or we can pass. Personally, as long as we have the main page space to spare, there's no harm in going along with something like this. Especially with the recent release of The Sims 4, any way that we can improve our access to game information and knowledge is, in my mind, a plus. But, I'd like community and admin input on this, and some differing opinions and ideas might be good here. In any case, we would also need community support before we move forward. --  LostInRiverview talk ~ blog 02:32, September 7, 2014 (UTC)


 * Haha, I glossed over the bullet points on my first read and didn't realize we were supposed to keep this hushed up. However, I think that only dedicated community members ever bother to read these discussions, so there's probably no harm in leaving it here. The e-mail specifies that they want sysop/admin approval, but I don't feel comfortable forging ahead on something like this without input from our regular users as well as admins. So, I'll leave this here and trust that everyone who reads this will realize that the idea is tentative and may not happen after all. So, yeah. --  LostInRiverview talk ~ blog 02:36, September 7, 2014 (UTC)


 * I support the creation of this portal idea. The release of TS4 has given the wiki increased activity, but that will eventually digress. This could be a great plan to keep user activity steady. Ѧüя◎ґ (talk) 19:36, September 13, 2014 (UTC)