Forum:Eliminating theories

I'd like to propose that The Sims Wiki eliminates Player Theory subpages (i.e. Bella Goth/theories). My reasoning for this proposal is as follows:
 * Theories added to these pages are often unsigned, sparse in content, profane or unacceptably hostile. For example, I stumbled on one theory that consisted of: "'hello. stop posting this trash and garbage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! our father works for Maxis and our mother works for Electronic Arts. so we know everything about SIMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! anyway our parents caught sight of these rumor pages and called the police to remove it. so we were mad and said that we would answer your questions so they woould not take it off and so you don't have to put rumors anymore.'" This was added as a theory over a year ago it basically constitutes trolling, which is unacceptable in its own right.
 * Theories are near impossible to moderate (see the above example) due to their size.
 * Most users do not contribute to these pages anyway - most of the theories were written by anonymous users who decided not to stick around.
 * Like the player stories situation, users wanting to perform maintenance on these articles are being caught up by the AbuseFilter because of the high levels of profanity on these pages.

Given that there's not a large number of these articles, I don't think we need to worry too much about how we are going to, if we choose to, delete them - a bot or even a user could do it.

Please discuss below. 10:25, September 22, 2013 (UTC)

Discussion
I don't think that we should eliminate them, but we should remove things like one you listed. Mate1234 (talk) 12:00, September 22, 2013 (UTC)
 * The problem we have is that there are a lot of theories like the example I listed that picking them out one by one is going to place a heavy burden that if we're going to do anything at all, we may as well eliminate them completely for the reasons I listed above. 12:10, September 22, 2013 (UTC)
 * I support the elimination. As Lab said, the theories are lacking in detail and in content and it is tricky to moderate all theory pages. Beds (parlare - da leggere ) 12:53, September 22, 2013 (UTC)
 * I see... There are a lot of theories, and some of them are made by the person who thinks that his/her parents founded Maxis. In this case, remove them, and ignore my first comment. Mate1234 (talk) 12:59, September 22, 2013 (UTC)
 * I recently archived the theories. Honestly, I only skimmed and corrected the layout without actually checking the contents. I must've missed a lot there because the Abuse Filter detected profanity, at which I asked for Lab's help to find where the profanity was. I also missed the example Lab gave above.


 * Now, I'm pretty sure we that while we discussed about eliminating Player Stories, we mentioned some things about whether removing Theories or not. Maybe it's somewhere between the lines, but I couldn't find it. I didn't remember what we talked about Theories in the discussion either. I guess I said that we could keep it because Theories weren't as abundant as Player Stories; only certain Sims actually had Theories, not all; and Theories might have had less traffic than Player Stories, so it would be less difficult to moderate, though Bella's theories is an exception.


 * I'm unsure about my decision now. While on one side, the Bella theories (the longest theories in the wiki, followed by Olive Specter's, Lolita Goth's, Don Lothario's, and Kaylynn Langerak's) have been archived, it can now be started from scratch and moderated all over. But this might not last forever, or even, for long. I also can't say much about existing theories, since there might be even more trolling theories. We might be able to wipe all theories out and start moderating it from now on, but like I said, I fear that we won't be able to overcome it. I would tend to support to eliminate the theories, though.  Nikel  Talk  –  Vote!  15:05, September 24, 2013 (UTC)
 * One of the biggest reasons I supported the deletion of player stories was their volume, and the fact that so many of the stories pages were empty stubs. This isn't really the case with theories, though. But, other valid points are raised about them. Ultimately, I'm undecided. --  LostInRiverview talk ~ blog 15:21, September 24, 2013 (UTC)
 * I am neutral to what we do with them. I kind of see them as related to Player Stories, but I don't see any problem with leaving them there. Also as a suggestion for if we do decide to get rid of them: maybe in their place, we could add a whole slew of Theories userboxes, so that Users can still state their opinion without the Theories page being around. 17:00, September 27, 2013 (UTC)

Voting
This thread has been sitting largely unresolved for a couple weeks. In order to reach some conclusion, I'm starting a week-long vote. -  LostInRiverview talk ~ blog 04:12, October 16, 2013 (UTC)

Question: Do you support eliminating Theories pages on The Sims Wiki? Please answer with "support," "oppose," or "neutral." This vote will last for seven days. Time remaining:

Support --Frostwalker Talk to me! 04:18, October 16, 2013 (UTC)

Support -  LostInRiverview talk ~ blog 04:34, October 16, 2013 (UTC)

Support - Beds (parlare - da leggere ) 09:33, October 16, 2013 (UTC)

Support - as proposer. 11:09, October 16, 2013 (UTC)

Support -  Nikel  Talk  –  Vote!  11:56, October 16, 2013 (UTC)


 * Wow, this vote was completely forgotten. Still, the result was in favor of deletion. I'll be writing a news blog post shortly to explain the situation. In the meantime, I'll keep this thread open to discuss any other eventualities --  LostInRiverview talk ~ blog 15:09, October 25, 2013 (UTC)