User blog:LostInRiverview/Community Chat 2: November 25, 2015

Welcome to the second installment of the Community Chat blog. I want to thank everyone who read last week's Community Chat Blog; if you haven't read it yet, please read it before reading this blog, as much of what I want to talk about now expands on last week's entry.

Although this blog is not intended to be a "news blog", I do want to include relevant community news and initiatives that I've put forward as the Community Director. In future Community Chat blogs, you can expect to see this section near the top of the blog, detailing any new features I've been working on or have rolled out. Please feel free to leave any feedback, suggestions, compliments, complaints, etc in the comments below.
 * Current events

This week, the sole item I wish to highlight is the redesigned community portal. You would be forgiven if you forgot that The Sims Wiki had a community portal, as it has never been used for much. I have tried to make the community portal more useful to our needs, and I've made a couple additions as a result:
 * Community tasks: I've highlighted a few ways in which every user can help improve the wiki. The Focus Article feature is already highlighted on the weekly news blogs, but I felt it useful to include it on the portal as well. I've also included lists of ways to help cleanup articles, improve our files/images, and improve stubs and short articles on the wiki. My hope is that these tasks will be regularly updated, and that listing out what needs to be done here will encourage more users to branch out to these areas and help us make the necessary improvements.
 * Bulletin board: One thing I've noticed is that the wiki doesn't really have a good place to highlight issues that other users might want to be aware of. Administrators can utilize community notifications and other wide-ranging features to get your attention, but regular editors don't really have anywhere to turn if they want to pass along information across the wiki. To start to correct this, I've added the Bulletin Board. This is meant to be a largely unregulated space where ANY EDITOR (yes, ANY EDITOR, including you) can add bulletins or other information that they think others would find useful. Please use this resource fully, and check up on the bulletin board regularly for new information from other editors.

Last week, I asked for an answer to the question of who we are. The comments that were received tended to be a little depressing. It seems that the answer to the question is: We are scared, quiet, and less active.
 * Identifying issues

It is all too easy to write a blog bemoaning the many ways that our wiki could improve. There are several things that could be changed, after all, and it is my goal as Community Director to implement the changes to push us in that direction. However, I feel it is more important for us to take a step back from how things are and to instead consider how we'd like them to be. I think I would want to echo what K6ka said in comment last week: we want editors who are "engaged, willing, patience [sic], intelligent, interested, and most importantly, active." But this brings about another question: what do we want out of The Sims Wiki?

I want to stress that I am trying to put us on the road to solving the problems that exist on this wiki. I say 'on the road' because this is a journey. Fixes will not be instantaneous; everything takes time. The journey, I believe, should start with us collectively having a good idea of what we want the destination to be. Certainly we can all agree that our travels will be much smoother if we have one destination in mind.
 * What do you want?

I'm talking about a collective mission for the wiki community; a set of goals, based around shared values and ideals. A simple idea that we can all understand, accept, and point to to guide us in making decisions and making improvements that will ultimately move us to where we want to be. Once we decide a general mission, we can start setting individual goals, making specific changes, implementing detailed plans to make it so.

That's where you all come it. I need your help. The wiki needs your help!

This week's homework, which you can submit in the comments below, is simply this: help us define The Sims Wiki Community's mission. To do this, consider answering the following questions:
 * Making a mission


 * Do you think the wiki is currently successful?
 * Where do you want to see the wiki in a year or two?
 * What areas are we strongest in, and where could we improve?
 * What should the core mission of the TSW Community be?

The comments from this blog will come together to help formulate a "mission" for the community. This mission will be a creed that we can all adopt when we edit, something that we can look to to guide us, something that shows us what we want to be and determines our actions moving forward.

I want to stress again that the ideas I've been discussing are an ongoing process. Like any long journey, we won't arrive at our destination overnight. I want to encourage you to participate in the process; it is an important step to take, and we should all take it together. Please don't be afraid to use your voice, leave your opinion, give an idea, make a statement, or anything else! I named this blog "Community Chat" for a reason!!
 * Closing thoughts

Until next time,

 LiR talk • blog  •  contribs 05:47, November 25, 2015 (UTC)