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Community Portal Talk Page

This is the general discussion page for The Sims Wiki! Feel free to discuss anything you want regarding the wiki here or at the forums. Any questions regarding the gameplay features or modding for The Sims series should be taken to our Questions forum. Policy proposals should be made here.

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Contents

Noticeboard Most recently archived on August 23, 2012 -- LiR speak ~ read 00:38, August 23, 2012 (UTC) Notices for community discussions are placed here as necessary. Any user may add their notice. Please sign your notices! -- LostInRiverview talk · blog 08:55, May 29, 2011 (UTC) Archives 1 2 3 4 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 Fanon wiki merge (archive 5) Articles about unannounced titles Achievements discussion Fanon Namespace discussion

Attracting, keeping and engaging new users

The beginning portion of this discussion is archived here. After the discussion in the section below has concluded, it will be archived along with its parent section.

Moving on

Seeing as discussion has dried up, here is a list of what has been suggested above with the aim of attracting new users and improving the way the community engages with each other:

• More contests and games, such as in the off-topic forum
• Utilisation and branching out with social media
• Improving the Awards system to acknowledge a wide variety of things in addition to having an annual awards system
• Further promotion of the lesser used community features (such as contests, forums etc.)
• Improving the user welcoming system either by reshaping the automated welcome message, having administrators welcome the users manually or something like that
• More series-related engagement blogs, similar to this one
• Making the wiki seem appealing to anonymous editors via letting them get involved with games and such
• Reviving/revamping Featured Content, namely fanon for engagement purposes (although everything seems to be lacking but if someone wants to propose something about this then feel free)
• Talk page notifications of things one can do here (like a "subscription" thing or something like that)
• Trying to get users involved with IRC and Chat
• Reviving New User Adopting, which I was meant to do a while back based on an old proposal...

As you can see, we've got quite a fair few things we can implement and I'm very committed to making as many of these suggestions come to fruition as possible. If anyone has anything new to propose then feel free to add it to the main section (above this sub-section) and if it seems practical then I can add it to the above list. Finally before we choose to implement anything, if anyone has any comments/suggestions about the list regarding how to implement something, how to improve something etc. then don't hesitate to speak out. Lost Labyrinth • (c) • (b) 16:21, August 15, 2012 (UTC)

That's really a lot of options, though I'm not sure if we can keep all of them intact. In a quite different topic, perhaps we could add more admins... just a suggestion though. Nikel _{Talk – Vote!} 16:00, August 16, 2012 (UTC)

As things currently stand, all of the request pages (namely RfR, RfA and RfB) are open indefinitely to anyone who wishes to come forward provided they're eligible. I guess an easier way to handle this would be to decide which suggestions will probably be the most effective and whether or not it'll be practical to implement them. There is a bit of a variety there so we have a lot to choose from. Lost Labyrinth • (c) • (b) 17:33, August 16, 2012 (UTC)

I think some people just find there's a lot going on all at once. And, of course, that's not a bad thing. It is always good to have things that many different users can participate in, and can enjoy with others. I think it's one of the best things about this wiki, actually. However, I think some new users look at the main page and just think, "Wow, there is so much happening!", and try to pick as many things as possible to get into. And then tomorrow arrives, bringing homework and a maths test and anything else, meaning the user will not get to go on the Wiki that night. And then a few more days pass, and the user finally gets to go on the Wiki, and they realise the contest is over, the discussion has ended, the problem has been fixed, and the voting is closed.

I guess I'm just trying to say that maybe we should try toning things down just a little bit. It might not work, but it could be worth a try.

Also, I think some of the suggestions above are absolutely fanastic. I think the ones that give a more community, 'homey' feeling, as though no one is excluded and we are all friends. _{(I know I still need to get onto that IRC...)} ~ Waikikamukow (talk) 08:21, August 17, 2012 (UTC)

I'm guessing that could be addressed by trying to show that there is plenty to do without making it seem too overwhelming. Maybe promoting a feature in its entirety could be more effective than promoting say a "sub-feature" of something (by that I mean say promote the off-topic forum as a whole rather than just individually promote a few threads). If anyone has an idea about this, jot it down.

Also, I've dug out [The_Sims_Wiki_talk:Community_Portal/Archive_18#New_user_adoption the NUA discussion] from a while back which gained a positive response so I may as well get to trying to revive it a bit. Lost Labyrinth • (c) • (b) 12:08, August 19, 2012 (UTC)

Newsletter

With DanPin's sudden retirement from the newsletter, something occurred to me regarding editors and how long they actually last. The problem here is that principal editors, who seem to be the ones overlooking the production of the newsletter, don't really seem to last too long at all. With the fact that editors are often retiring, I think it would be best that we aim to make some changes to the system. I'd like to propose the following as a potential solution:

• We ditch the principal editor system completely and just have the process of producing the newsletter overseen by administrators - it doesn't need to be anyone in particular, just as a collaborative effort.
• Reiterating the newsletter being a collaborative effort, I think we should make it so that rather than have a group of users writing on a monthly basis, we give the community a chance to write something and as long as it's accepted by an administrator, it's no big deal. As long as the newsletter is written however often it is, it shouldn't matter who writes it and the newsletter belongs to the community anyway. After all, we've already got a setup for it...

I do have another idea but it's more of a later on kind of thing so I'll keep it to myself for now. Basically I feel this will be the best way to ensure the on-going development of the newsletter without putting everything on one person or one specific group of people. If anyone has anything they wish to add/change then feel free to mention it otherwise, what does everyone think? Lost Labyrinth • (c) • (b) 13:40, August 10, 2012 (UTC)

Actually, right after I made that announcement, WH came to me in IRC saying he could take over. This wouldn't bother me, as I trust him a lot and I know he'd be capable of the job. However, if the community prefers to go with one of GG's proposals, I think that 1 is the best one in my opinion. DanPin • talk • contribs14:42, August 10, 2012 (UTC)

Both of the things I said are one proposal. However seeing as WH is highly active anyway I wouldn't mind if he took over as the editor, so either my proposal or WH taking over is fine with me. Lost Labyrinth • (c) • (b) 16:48, August 10, 2012 (UTC)

Having a principle editor seems problematic simply due to work overload. However, it seems that there needs to be someone who is responsible for it, otherwise the work tends not to get done, get done on a regular basis, etc. It would be great if the columns were community-written, but I think it's necessary - even if not ideal - to have some lead editor there to make sure the project is on track and that the content submitted gets put in. Any ways to ensure that that editor doesn't get overloaded would be good, though. -- LiR ^{speak ~ read} 20:56, August 10, 2012 (UTC)

I don't know if this has been resolved, and I think I'm sort of too late. The major points have been pointed out, I guess. Maybe it'll be good if anyone wants to submit their ideas, but the newsletter is still under one's control. Nikel _{Talk – Vote!} 12:14, August 12, 2012 (UTC)

Proposal to merge with The Sims Social Wiki

Having patrolled an article I just tagged for cleanup, I noticed that The Sims Social Wiki, which obviously provides information on The Sims Social. Having looked over there, I noticed that their articles on the game are more detailed than ours and they have (at the time of writing this up) 2,025 articles on the game with the majority of them being fairly good quality.

The reason I'm proposing this merge is that from looking around, our information on this particular game, not to put too fine a point on it, is actually quite sparse in comparison. Furthermore, it's well known that TSW does have a high traffic rate (25K views a day before Wikia hid Quantcast, not sure about it now) whereas TSSWiki may only get a fraction of that per day.

I've gone and brought up the same thing on TSSWiki's Community Portal so if both communities are in support of the merge then it would be a case of their articles being imported here, where we can do whatever necessary sorting there is to be done followed by an administrator contacting Wikia with proof that both communities agree to the merger with TSSWiki's domain being redirected to here.

I can't see any negatives with this - the merge will be great for both our knowledge base, the quality of our articles and our readers who may currently come here to look for TSS information only to leave underwhelmed. What do you all think? Lost Labyrinth • (c) • (b) 00:05, August 17, 2012 (UTC)

Wait and See: The discussion of whether a merge should happen might be a bit premature, in my opinion. There's nothing wrong with considering the possibility and I am in favor of contacting their admins and their community to determine whether their community agrees to looking at the idea. After that agreement is reached, then I think it should be looked at in close detail the hows, whats and whens of the merger. After those points are determined, then an official drive for consensus could be made.

All that aside, I think that if the community of both wikis approves the merger eventually, that there stands to be a benefit for everyone in this merger. So I'm in support of looking into this idea. --- LiR ^{speak ~ read} 04:12, August 17, 2012 (UTC)

Neutral ~ While I can't argue that we'd get more info, we'd have to check all the articles to see if they are up to our standards and all that. In general I don't like the idea of wiki merges because of all the work it takes to fully make the two wikis one, but if we can make this work I don't see why not. Maybe we just become affiliated with them so they get a little bit more traffic or something? ―ฬђ ^talk 05:03, August 17, 2012 (UTC)

Neutral ~ I completely agree with the affiliates idea stated by WH. Combining two wikis is a big job, and I'd prefer if they were an affiliate. BakeryChaz ~ (let's have a chat!) 05:15, August 17, 2012 (UTC)

I realise my writeup may not have been the best in the world (maybe I should have 'discussed' before 'proposing') although the purpose of putting the same thing on both wikis at the same time was to try and see what both communities think. So far their wiki haven't said anything. I do realise that wiki merges haven't exactly been successful at all for us in the past, however if I didn't have faith in this then I never would have proposed it. Granted this is a wait and see measure for us provided that both communities are even up to the merge... Lost Labyrinth • (c) • (b) 10:23, August 17, 2012 (UTC)

As long they agree with this, I'm all in favor, but first the admins should be contacted and let's see what their response is. --RoseGui (talk here) 10:27, August 17, 2012 (UTC)

Their response

Although they haven't actually responded to the message that Georgie left, they have discussed it in a forum post and their community seems generally against a merger. Among other stated reasons:

• Their current set-up allows easy access to important information - if added to TSW, it would be more difficult to readily access information, and they would risk being lost in the crowd, so to speak.
• They already receive enough traffic from the Sims Social fansites, rank highly on Google searches, etc; merging with a bigger wiki wouldn't necessarily make much of a difference as to the amount of traffic they already get.
• They like having a wiki specifically created for covering The Sims Social.

They polled their Facebook followers as well and most comments have been unsupportive of the idea, stating it wouldn't provide enough of a benefit to their community. On the plus side, they were honored that we had recognized them for their quality, and were appreciative of our asking for merger rather than simply stealing their information. However, their community has spoken against the proposal and I personally can appreciate their reasoning in this matter.

All that said, I think this discussion now ought to turn from one of merger to one of affiliation. -- LiR ^{speak ~ read} 16:44, August 18, 2012 (UTC)

If they're not up to merging then I accept their decision and won't act against it. If however they're up to affiliating in order to reach a compromise/breakeven then I am not at all against it. Lost Labyrinth • (c) • (b) 19:10, August 18, 2012 (UTC)

Image maintenance project

Hey, so I'm thinking of kicking off a project aimed entirely at image maintenance. The aim is to ensure that all images have the correct licensing, categorisation, a suitable filename and to ensure there are very few to no unused files, duplicate files and Uncategorized files. The reason I'm proposing something like this is down to the high number of files we have here that are either improperly licensed/not licensed at all and have random/generic filenames and I believe it would be a good cleanup task for the community to do in general. As this may take a few months, I don't see any strict deadline. In relation to the "Attracting, keeping and engaging users" discussion above, I think giving out awards to users who do quite a bit of work with this project would also be a good thing.

However, there's a dilemma. Most of the tools that would be needed for this project are currently only available as part of administrator tools, when the aim of the project is for anyone in the community to help out as admins can't do it alone. I do have potential solutions to this issue:

• As seen at RuneScape Wiki and Call of Duty Wiki, we could request for the custodian user group to be added to TSW. It would let users who are given the right by bureaucrats delete files, move files and suppress redirects with files. As deleting files comes under the MediaWiki setting "deletepages", we would have to write a filter to limit custodian deletes to the file namespace but that's easy to do. I wouldn't say being a custodian should be a mandatory prerequisite for being an admin though I'm not sure whether or not rollback should be a prerequisite for custodian. If this turned out to be what the community opted for, I'd recommend an RfR style selection system.
• Alternatively I could upgrade my bot to deal with page moves as it already has administrator flags and support for image optimisation. An advantage is that it can deal with things quickly and any user could make use of it although the bot isn't on 24/7, which is a disadvantage, particularly compared to the custodian idea.
• Even both ideas could be effective, especially for large scale image moves.

I'd like to know what everyone thinks about the project idea in general as well as the solutions listed above. I myself don't have any real preference of what we opt for and if anyone else has any ideas, feel free to shout them out. Lost Labyrinth • (c) • (b) 20:50, August 19, 2012 (UTC)

Since these tools are only available for admin, I agree with the bot idea over the custodian because it would make things faster. --RoseGui (talk here) 18:10, August 20, 2012 (UTC)

FWIW, the bot isn't online 24/7 (I don't really want to pay for a shell) and relies entirely on my activity, meaning where it may be faster when I'm online, it wouldn't be when I'm offline. Just a heads up. Lost Labyrinth • (c) • (b) 18:24, August 20, 2012 (UTC)

Okay seeing as this has gone almost completely ignored, I've gone ahead and opted for the bot idea. It's still in testing though it appears to be mostly working. You can request quick image moves here. It will also change the file links on any pages containing the image to prevent redlinks. Lost Labyrinth • (c) • (b) 14:08, August 21, 2012 (UTC)

Revised Player Stories policy

Due to the recent deletion of Player Stories, I've altered our pre-existing policy on their creation. For sake of reference, I've included the old and new versions below:

Old Version

The Sims Wiki policy on Player stories. See also The Sims Wiki's Fanon policy for rules regarding fan fiction, and its placement in the Fanon Namespace.

1. No CAS player stories should exist in the main namespace of the wiki except for articles designated for player stories. If a CAS page has been created it should be moved to the user namespace, i.e. prefixed with "User:<username>". Users can write stories in their blog, on a user page or at Create-A-Sim/Player stories.
2. Player stories for pre-made characters and neighborhoods are to be placed on a subpage of the main article. The page should be clearly marked as a player story and a link should be provided from the character's, family's or neighborhood's page, usually in an infobox.
3. Writers should provide their signature (~~~~) after their stories.
4. Numerical ages are considered player stories as they are presumptive of information that is not cited and should not be included in Sim articles or infoboxes.

New Version

The Sims Wiki policy on Player stories. See also The Sims Wiki's Fanon policy for rules regarding fan fiction, and its placement in the Fanon Namespace.

1. No player-created character (CAS) player stories should exist in the main namespace of the wiki. If a CAS page has been created it should be moved to the Fanon namespace or, if it is in need of cleanup to meet Fanon namespace standards, to the user's namespace, i.e. prefixed with "User:<username>". Users can write stories in their blog, on a user page, or in the Fanon namespace.
2. Player stories for pre-made characters and neighborhoods are not to be placed on any article in the main namespace, or in an article talk page or an article sub-page.
3. Numerical ages are considered player stories as they are presumptive of information that is not cited and should not be included in Sim articles or infoboxes.
4. Due to a community discussion and consensus, as of 24 August 2012 Player Stories are no longer be hosted on subpages of main articles (e.g. 'Bella Goth/Player stories'). Reintroduction of Player Stories on subpages of main namespace articles must be approved by community consensus beforehand.

We can fine-tune the language of this policy if it needs it. I just wanted to make you all aware that the official policy has been changed to reflect the community's decision. Leave a message below if there are any issues here to be addressed. -- LiR ^{speak ~ read} 21:12, August 24, 2012 (UTC)

I'd say it's fine as it is. Lost Labyrinth • (c) • (b) 21:17, August 24, 2012 (UTC)

The only thing I see an issue with is the "User:<username>" part. It may be prudent to expand that example to "User:<username>/" or link to a user namespace tutorial page (if there is one) as well as link to a definition of main namespace as that is a frequently asked question. Perhaps a link to the fanon namespace for good measure. ^Talk20:28, August 25, 2012 (UTC)

So the policy has been updated, but how about The Sims Wiki:Player stories itself? I made one in its talk page... but seems like not really good anyway. Nikel _{Talk – Vote!} 02:32, August 26, 2012 (UTC)

The version on the talk page looks good to me. I've added it to the page itself. -- LiR ^{speak ~ read} 03:40, August 26, 2012 (UTC)

Broken Redirects

It has recently come to my attention that there are a LOT of broken player stories redirects that need to be addressed. I would suggest using a bot to redirect to the parent page in order to deter creation of player stories via the "this page does not exist" routine. If there is another way to deter player stories creation, then I'd be all for it, but something needs to be done. Also, feel free to move this section as needed. I just felt it should go under an existing player stories discussion. Thank you. ^Talk17:44, August 25, 2012 (UTC)

I'm on it. It might take me a while as a lot of what AWB is reading from the special page seems to be cached in addition to having to do a double cleanup (as I can only prepend an exact term rather than #REDIRECT [[<page>/Player stories]]) but nonetheless, it can be done. Lost Labyrinth • (c) • (b) 18:23, August 25, 2012 (UTC)

Would it just be easier to delete those pages instead? They aren't linked to from anywhere so I don't see the sense in keeping them. -- LiR ^{speak ~ read} 18:29, August 25, 2012 (UTC)

Hmm true. Seeing as I'm already listing the pages in AWB I may as well do the delete run while I'm at it. I'll check back after listing and before doing anything (there's about ~250 of them). Lost Labyrinth • (c) • (b) 18:49, August 25, 2012 (UTC)

LiRBot has deleted them. I'll check the Broken Redirects page again tomorrow to be sure I got them all. -- LiR ^{speak ~ read} 20:09, August 25, 2012 (UTC)

There seems there are still 34 broken playerstories redirects for some reason. ^Talk20:52, August 28, 2012 (UTC)