Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-31256456-20190830060531/@comment-27575896-20190830140246

Pokechurin wrote:

Right before I begin this very very long rant that isn't actually all that serious and is more of me being slightly irritated, I will say that I apologize for being pretty irritating myself these past few days as I have posted so many of these "oh no pokechurin's nitpicking the wiki again and making dumb solutions to so-called fix the problem" paragraphs. This is the last one you're going to have in a few months. Promise ''(kind of). ''I will not name call

I'm slightly irritated with the state of this wiki. In a rant similar to my first rant where I basically complained without taking action (which is what I'm doing this time because I am too tired of thinking of solutions that never work lol) I will be listing the 5 problems that I think frustrate me the most on the Town of Salem Wiki. '''The difference this time is that I will not be pointing out the problems with the Wiki, I will be explaining what I don't like about the Wiki and why. They do not necessarily have to change, it's just personal things I dislike.'''

1. Inconsistencies in Role Reviewing

We have great role reviewers, like OnlyShots, RedDeathNick, Rasengan, etc. that help us grow our community. In many ways, role reviews are the best way to introduce new members to our wiki. I was introduced to this wiki through a pretty bad role review, in where SpicyJusticeLass was able to review my role with genuine criticism.

I have to say that Role Reviews have changed much for the better in terms of the way we review. No longer do we use the terms rejected or ridiculous reviews like "you should get a life and grow up haha so bad lol". We also have improved standards for what role reviews should be like.

However, the problem comes when we have no reviews on roles or role reviews that are extremely short. I am guilty of this, of course, so my frustration may not be justified- perhaps all I need to do is to go through every review that hasn't been done (which I was actually very surprised by) and try to review them to the best of my ability.

There are some roles that are reviewed very well. There are others that get no responses. And those are usually originally created by people who are the least likely to know about the mechanics of Town Of Salem and make roles that are considered poor. However, these are also the people that need the most help.

For some reason, we often ignore these people who have no reviews whatsoever. I recently made a list attempting to fix this problem. I understand that we are often on vacation and do not have the time or the effort necessary to do a role, however, it is strange that while we're all on Fun and Games and posting 1 sentence posts, there are roles that have no reviews whatsoever.

Why is this a thing on a Wiki that centralizes itself on Role Reviews? Again, I am still guilty of this, for I could do every single role review that hasn't been done yet or isn't reviewed completely yet, but it is very strange.

2. "Fun and Games only" 

I have never liked the Fun and Games board that much. I understand that everyone except me thinks it's a great board and brings this Wiki to life, and so I want to keep this, but at the same time, I am also quite frustrated with the fact that our Wiki has become so centralized to this board and "Off-Topic" stuff that we have very little activity on other boards. Remember that almost all of us went to the forum because of other people helping us. The reason why our activity is dying (yes, it's dying, I will admit this) is a combination of the fact that Town of Salem is dying and the fact that we don't welcome others into our community as well as we used to. We are tightly-knit into this Fun and Games board and I honestly dislike it a lot.

We have had many, many, many, excellent posts that are almost entirely ignored or only followed by a few certain people or staff. This to me, is insane. There is a lot of effort that is put into these posts made by many different users and the fact that they don't get any attention is just proof that we're going away from the Town of Salem concept. I still believe that Fun and Games is important, but I miss the time when there was Town of Salem related games instead of "person below is insulted" or whatever.

'''We had implemented a standard a while ago that moved game-based threads, ToS-related or not, to the DRRP wiki. I think that decision has finally caught up, as now only random stuff and tiny minigames are allowed/recommended to be posted.'''

'''And where? Off-Topic and Fun and ToS-related but usually not really Games.'''

'''It almost seems that this is like YouTube clickbait. '''And there's literally nothing I can do because they are the most attractive looking threads to post on for people. People like drama. People like meme-like posts where you can mess around and have fun. This is great, it's just I hate the fact that this centralizes over genuinely good content. Things such as good role ideas. New ideas for role reviewing (Check out RedDeathNick's My Role Reviewing Technique). '''And competitions like The Role. '''

'''I still see edits being something to look forward to. "Holy moly I just got 500 edits! Wow! 1,000 edits!" is still commonplace. When Rubik hit 13k, that was welcomed with a ton of support despite the fact 12,800 of them weren't quote on quote "useful". Mainspace, templates, utility changes. Just "board thread".'''

This is a genius concept with 6 upvotes, plenty of interested judges, and yet 3/4 of the community hasn't posted a single comment about it. I am the only one to have submitted a role, and this is by no means shaming anyone else who hasn't because the due date is 2 days later and there are plenty of people who haven't submitted who have shown interest, but this to me shows that people just simply don't care about Town of Salem related content anymore. Which frustrates me, given the fact that that was the original purpose of the Wiki. The purpose that it once had. Some threads start well with genuine TOS related content.. but get derailed into nonsense and memes again.

I get that I can't control people's interests, and I shouldn't. It's just me being irritated.

3. '''Townie of the Month and how it's about an award rather than good will. '''

''As a disclaimer, I am not going to mention any names, and I have the greatest respect for all Townie of the Month winners. However, this will not stop me from criticizing some of the frustrations I have with Townie of the Month in general. ''

Look, I don't know how to fix this at all, but I'm glad that the staff get to decide the Townie of the Month. This is a good thing. This allows the staff to make an informed decision about the candidates and make choices for who contributed the most not only this month, but deserves the honour of Townie of the Month.

Participants, after running for Townie of the Month and getting your edits checked, I would expect that the people running would be interested in making more insightful edits even if they do not win. And this is what does happen. There are active members who have Townie of the Month and continue to do mainstream edits and other useful edits. However, my frustration is targeted towards the people who simply run for Townie of the Month, and then don't make any useful/mainstream edits and disappear entirely.

Look. Townie of the Month shouldn't be given to the person who "racks up 1000 useful edits and then disappears to the Fun and Games board for the rest of their life". It should be given to the person who is genuinely doing it out of good will. There are some people who stay for a few months doing useful edits, and slowly fade away. This is fine, because it shows that you are contributing to help the wiki and not just for an award. There are others who rack up hundreds of edits just to disappear after they win/someone else wins. I'm not naming names, because I know that what I have said is probably really controversial and everyone's going to disagree with me.

'''Townie of the Month has become a loss of interest and mainly chore-feeling for staff. I am going to be open on this, but nearly every staff member is off doing something  else important or has lost interest.'''

'''Me: Still on wikia, has work outside of life. Pops in to check on wiki.'''

'''Hawaiian: Pops in to check on wiki. Still there.'''

Rocket: The staff discord has his alternate account, and otherwise he's just on Discord talking about games.

Yami: Work-related life, pops in every now and then.

Addfire: Migrated to discord, possibly somewhat active, not that I've seen.

Rexonator: Vanished/migrated to discord.

'''Ghosty: Migrated to discord. Votes on ToTM time to time, but nothing wikia-wise.'''

TheOneCloudMan: Migrated to discord (is actually contactable)

4. Lack of insight in posts

This is very objective and also something that is more of a personal pet peeve than something I will actually try to make change in. I'll give you an example of something that frustrates me:

Person A presents a 5 paragraph essay about a new idea about the Town of Salem Wiki. They propose organizing a game that allows people to show their creativity.

Person B agrees, and gives their thoughts.

Person C agrees as well, and gives their thoughts.

Person D posts a random irrelevant or unthoughtful comment that doesn't really help

and..... it derails into nothing.

Another example:

Person A presents a thoughtful "comment below" paragraph.

Person B posts below and gives an extremely thoughtful response.

this continues until....

Person F suddenly changes the tone by basically going "lol ya idk ok below person is now despicable me minion hahahhahahahaha"

Person G continues derailing....

Of course, I can't enforce speech. But since I am venting, might as well mention this. I hope that people understand that this is something I'm hoping to learn more about as well, because I also have a habit of derailing. But when it's something that's really important at stake, it might not be best to derail the whole thing, and try to put more thought into your comments.

5. wikia why r u so hard to use lol 

okay this is completely unrelated but seriously wikia is a nightmare to type with and the formatting is so hard to understand how do i do all these mainstream edits aaaaaaaaaaaa

That's it this is not finished