Board Thread:Special Admin Messages/@comment-26318250-20200114194501

Hello everyone,

the post by Deadlock about deleting the wiki has spawned quite a discussion. I remain opposed to the idea of deleting the wiki. However, I make this to propose a new "program", that, if finished, would help first clean the wiki up from old junk that has accumulated over the years, and eventually transform the wiki into a community oriented more around general Minecraft stories.

What is it?
A multi-stage, long-range project that incrementally improves and transforms the wiki, hopefully pulling it out of the current period of stagnation and helps improve it into a more general, thriving wiki for Minecraft stories and fans to write, read and discuss their favorite topics.

What are the stages?
So far, I only have one stage planned out, one that definitely needs to happen before anything else. Remember, this thread is for DISCUSSION - this is just an idea that hasn't been fleshed out of anything like that.

STAGE I: The Cleanup

The purpose of this stage is to clean the wiki up, flesh it out, and get ourselves a solid base to build upon. Currently, the wiki is in a quite poor state. Unused images, unused templates, unused redirects, unused this and that. Bad articles, unfinished articles, placeholder articles, it really is a mess. This stage would fix up all of that.

Stages should preferably be divided into smaller sections, which will be finished one by one, to help us focus on one topic while the project continues.

1. First cleanup

The more basic cleanup. During this time, we would delete and clean up all dead, trash, unfinished, placeholder articles, trollpastas, and general nonsense found in the mainspace. We would also clean up the categories, removing too specific, too small or too useless categories.

2. Rule overhaul and guidelines

During this section, we would overhaul the rules, removing bad ones and creating new ones as needed. In addition, a series of guideline pages would be created, providing new users with tips and information on how to write and how to format articles properly.

3. Staff overhaul

Demoting inactive staff, including the dozens of discussion and chat mods, promoting new ones, and generally fixing things up.

4. Second cleanup

A more deep, thorough cleanup. Deleting unused files, double redirects, unused and pointless templates (there are dozens of those), and such. For future admins.

That would be Stage 1 finished, leaving us with a presentable wiki with good organization and no years of built up trash.

But what then?

STAGE II: ???

This is up for discussion.

My proposals would be to eventually expand the wiki to include other Minecraft stories, not just creepypastas. One of the reasons the wiki is declining is due to the decline of the creepypasta genre. But Minecraft remains popular, and storytelling will never be unpopular. This would expand our scope, allowing fresh new users to enter and bringing the wiki up from its knees.

Other related changes could include a potential theme change from the dark, gloomy one to a more neutral (if the expansion of scope occurs), and addressing the discussions/forums problem with an alternative to the forums (unless the community wants to use discussions...) There is a lot to do and a lot to possibly do.

That's where everyone else comes into play.

This thread is just a discussion thread. Nothing is set in stone. Maybe nobody wants this, and it gets scrapped. The purpose of this thread is DISCUSSION of this idea, and whether it is appropriate or not. You could also suggest changes and additions to the current and future stages of the project.

Thank you for reading. I hope we can, together, bring the wiki back up.

Prism 