Forum:Caption contest feature spin-off

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A month ago, I brought back the "caption contest" through The Sims Wiki Weekly News blogs. The game has been dubbed "Caption This!", and looks to consistently receive a handful of caption comments and several votes during the weekly voting periods.

I started Caption This with a couple ulterior motives. First, I wanted to get away from having a poll in the weekly news, since they are often hard to come up with and aren't terribly interactive. Second, I wanted to see if we could find a new community feature, one to possibly replace the flagging Monthly Question blog. Caption This has reached a point where I feel it could be spun off of the weekly news blog and could stand alone as its own feature.

I do not see the removal of Monthly Questions to be a bad thing. By introducing a new feature and retiring an old one, we're ensuring that our main page and our community features remain fresh. Additionally, I think that moving CT off of the weekly blog could open the door to having other "trial runs" of new features in the weekly news blogs in its place. I already have a few ideas in mind for what we could use this space for, but I hesitate to put them in now because I don't want to overload people with too much stuff in each weekly blog.

So in short, I'm proposing that we replace the Monthly Question blog on the main page with "Caption This," and open up the weekly news blogs to new features. - LostInRiverview ^{talk • blog • contribs} 02:15, August 21, 2015 (UTC)

The Monthly Question blog seems to have died rather quickly, so I would indeed like to see a new feature surface and to keep our main page appearance crisp. Recycling old, unused, and unpopular features is a must to make room for new stuff that people will actually care about. --I am k6ka ^{Talk to me!} _{See what I have done} 02:25, August 30, 2015 (UTC)

I also suggest we archive past results, much like the battles are archived after each round. --I am k6ka ^{Talk to me!} _{See what I have done} 02:58, August 30, 2015 (UTC)

I think this would be a good idea. We've currently had the same Monthly Question since May, and participation still isn't great (I know I haven't bothered answering). The caption contest strikes me as somehow more accessible and it seems that people are finding it easier to come up with new ones. Vpetmad (talk) 10:08, August 30, 2015 (UTC)

I agree with this proposal, for all reasons stated above. — The Tim Man ^{(TSW • AH • MGW • Contribs)} 04:39, September 15, 2015 (UTC)

Bump to attract more responses. I'd also like to ask the following questions and see what the community thinks about the answers for them:

• May users leave more than one caption? (And if so, is there a limit?)
• Should captions left by indefinitely banned or blocked users (including users commenting in violating of their block) be kept?
• Should users be notified when one of their captions are declared the winner?

--I am k6ka ^{Talk to me!} _{See what I have done} 00:29, October 21, 2015 (UTC)

In response to those questions...

• I think it should be limited to one caption per user to keep the odds of winning fair, but you should be able to replace your caption if you come up with a better idea.
• I would say that if the user commented before their block it should be kept (assuming the caption itself isn't block-worthy) but if they violated it should be discounted.
• Notifying users seems like a good idea - it's easy to forget to check things sometimes, and I personally would hate to miss out on a win!

Vpetmad (talk) 19:01, October 21, 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Vpetmad's reply and the justifications for each point. -- LiR ^{talk • blog • contribs} 20:05, October 27, 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, this page didn't appear in my watchlist for whatever reason. And @Vpetmad: For your first response, we'll need to come up with a solution for IP users, since they cannot edit their own comments (and if the IP address is shared, it becomes even more problematic if two users on the same dynamic address try to leave a caption, and only one gets counted). It may just be something we'd have to deal with. --I am k6ka ^{Talk to me!} _{See what I have done} 20:30, October 27, 2015 (UTC)

One way around the issue of comment editing is to not use blog posts for this feature. It could be a system similar to how we handle Battles. -- LiR ^{talk • blog • contribs} 21:07, October 27, 2015 (UTC)

I hadn't even noticed that the Monthly question blogs weren't being updated. I guess that's an example of how much popularity and interest the feature is lacking. Overall I'm fairly supportive of the proposal to retire the Monthly question blogs — as they haven't been attracting enough participants from what I've seen and heard — with the caption contest feature.

Yeah it would be problematic if two users of a shared IP address were to try and leave a caption, because many users would be inclined to assume that both captions were left by the same person, hence the shared IP address.

If IP users wanted their comments edited, aside from re-posting the said comment, the only solution I can think of would be for the IP users to ask an administrator to edit their comments for them, or delete the first comment, so they can re-post their comment. But that would be rather tedious and frustrating for IP users, since a lot of them don't have the interest or patience to ask for that kind of assistance.

But that solution wouldn't very effective, and in any case, I'm far more supportive of the solution to not use blog posts for this feature. ― C.Syde (talk | contribs) 05:42, October 28, 2015 (UTC)

Conclusion

The Caption this! page has been created. Further discussion should go in a new thread, or on The Sims Wiki talk:Caption this!. --I am k6ka ^{Talk to me!} _{See what I have done} 00:48, November 3, 2015 (UTC)