Solving This Mess - Brainstorm Ways to Fix It

Yes this is clearly a good idea ^^
In fact I could make a bannerr of sort.

haha, make an event out of it and invite Marlon Wayans to host it

That would be a good idea.

Another thing I know AJ is working on is trying to make the wiki more open to newbies.

I'd say the #1 reason why sometimes new people have a rough entry into Felarya is that they make characters or ideas that don't really fit with the world because they either didn't know the wiki existed or ignored it because it was too long.

I think AJ was also thinking of making some sort of animation similar to Extra Credits that would help newcomers get used to the guidelines and how the setting works.

Hm that's interesting, but I'm not exactly sure how I see that working...

The idea of making things more newcomer-friendly could be very helpful. I like the idea of making notices on updates, so everyone will be aware of things like the species' sizes being redefined.

Also, newcomers should be directed to the guidelines so when they begin with their characters and ideas, they know what the rules of Felarya are. Always in a friendly and helpful way, so they can feel integrated.

Maybe some kind of "user guidelines" then? Just basic notes here and there. Like how nekos can't breed with nagas, so no neko/naga hybrids, most giant predators don't exceed 140 ft or so? Stuff like that so that people can be "oh okay". Not that we don't want them to read the wiki - but walls of text one after another might scare people away.

You know how people of this day and age prefer pretty graphics XD

Archmage_Bael wrote:

Maybe some kind of "user guidelines" then? Just basic notes here and there. Like how nekos can't breed with nagas, so no neko/naga hybrids, most giant predators don't exceed 140 ft or so? Stuff like that so that people can be "oh okay". Not that we don't want them to read the wiki - but walls of text one after another might scare people away.

You know how people of this day and age prefer pretty graphics XD

See

Sean Okotami wrote:

I think AJ was also thinking of making some sort of animation similar to Extra Credits that would help newcomers get used to the guidelines and how the setting works.

and

Jætte_Troll wrote:

That would be a good idea.

Another thing I know AJ is working on is trying to make the wiki more open to newbies.

I'd say the #1 reason why sometimes new people have a rough entry into Felarya is that they make characters or ideas that don't really fit with the world because they either didn't know the wiki existed or ignored it because it was too long.

What I'm doing will also include THIS. Something that all of you should read regularly incase you forget something. I've talked to some people and they didn't even know that existed.


On a side note this is my 2000th post.

I still don't understand why anyone would freak out about someone writing something non-canon or why someone who wrote something would throw a hissy fit because someone told them something in their story wasn't canon.

Make the rules for said world, let people write about said world, select people to decide what stories fit in said world, divide into two piles. Canon and non-canon. If someone gets something wrong tell them why politely. If they throw a fit ban them, because they are childish. If they fix said wrong thing(s) and you still won't accept then you are childish. Anyway, that's how I see things.

Now on a more serious matter, I don't recall bagels having any rights and as such, one should not be able to claim it "needs to be heard". You might "need" to be lathered in butter but you certainly don't need to be heard.

Grave wrote:

Make the rules for said world, let people write about said world, select people to decide what stories fit in said world, divide into two piles. Canon and non-canon. If someone gets something wrong tell them why politely. If they throw a fit ban them, because they are childish. If they fix said wrong thing(s) and you still won't accept then you are childish. Anyway, that's how I see things.

Oh no no no no no NO, that is a gated community, my good sir! A hostile environment, if you will! We can't have people thinking that we have, of all abominable atrocities, STANDARDS!

What I said is more or less how it seems to work now, except people criticize harshly and arrogantly when they shouldn't and don't swing the hammer when they should.

Grave wrote:

people criticize harshly and arrogantly when they shouldn't

See, it's like UFOs: I keep hearing about it, but I just... don't... see it!

People like Warrior, CauldronBorn, AJ, they all give fair critique. I don't get where this "people on the forum are brutal savages who wank to the cries of the newbies they willingly humiliate" is coming from. Yes, I do see some unconstructive things here and there, but I don't see hostility here on the forum regularly; not anymore, and when I do, I call them out.

To AJ: congrats on your 2k'th post! Also I knew that existed, it's not on the DA group though, and that's where Felarya started. Also If people didn't know it existed that means we should do something about that.

To AisuKaiko: Yes I know. Unfortunately a lot of people were treated bad in the past and that leaves a lasting effect - especially if they go and tell others about the potential hostility of this forum. That's the result from not quickly banning trolls way back in the day. Not naming names - that was years ago and I would prefer it to stay like that.

Jerks are everywhere, it isn't something that only exists here in the forum. And it's true some people have been harsh here, but others have been pretty constructive.

And I've tried myself to be constructive, never destructive, to help people to see what's wrong with some ideas and how they could be improved - mainly because I've gone through the whole make an idea/get criticized/understand what's wrong/fix/thank. If I've ever been destructive, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it.

We've all had those moments Fead. Believe me.

I'm still suffering from my little dispute as we speak. And everyone is under the pressure of the figureheads at the top clashing.

At least YOU shouldn't worry. I still have issues to work out.

It's only recently that I've been trying to give criticism, but I've noticed that I rarely have much to say when something is good. I guess I don't have much to say about good points, unless it's particularly striking. However, when something that I think is bad, I can ramble on about it. I will however agree that I rarely see many long, deconstructions of characters or ideas. I try to avoid doing that since it doesn't really elaborate on what was bad, why it was bad, and what should have been done to improve the quality.

By the way Bael, at this point, it may be time you change the thread's title since we're now beginning to brainstorm ideas and your message got through.

Well, I'll try to get the ball rolling if feedback helps.
But not on this thread- you guys keep looking for other ways, m'kay?

Ok so I found my way over here. Ideas on how to fix this
1) Now that the forum hostility has calmed down it needs to be shown to the other community(s?) that everyone here isn't a complete ass as it has been suggested.
2) A guide for newcomers would indeed be helpful I'm glad to here that Anime-Junkie is working on one. I was actually starting to make my own before this thread started. Something that I hope you address in your guide AJ is how to take and give criticism as it seems to me that many of the newcomers to the forum come with an idea that they feel is as developed as it needs to be and refuse to take any type of criticism as anything but an attack against themselves and their idea.
3) Perhaps redesigning the wiki could help solve a lot of problems as when you you get to the very first page you are given a massive wall of text that is indeed intimidating to newcomers. The main page to any website should very short and give a synopsis of what the website is about. Links should be categorized into groups and subgroups to make finding information easier. Looking at the wiki as it is it appears to be a word document with some pictures and a massive walls of text linking to more massive walls of text.
4) Contacting the different communities (the only one I know of is dA) with updates could be as simple as a weekly/biweekly list of updates to regarding Felarya on dA (forgive me if I say something stupid I don't use it myself) just make another gallery tab named "updates" and locking it so only certain people may post in it. Each update should be dated and organized so that newest updates appear first. Titles of updates containing more important information might be named "IMPORTANT 14 March 2011". For the forum most people here seem to keep up on the going ons very well but for those who don't or can't visit the forum daily catching up on what has happened can be a daunting task. A sticky thread called "UPDATES" could be opened with the subject of each post titled just as they would be in dA. The thread should remain closed so that no comments are made in it so that the information can be found more easily and save space. Both sites would contain identical information. See easy no trying to make a new website just working with what we got.

Well that's what I got to say right now.

There could also be a section that mentions contacting a certain felaryan member(s) if they want to make another community, or that they know of one that isn't included. That might help us cover our basis more.

Grave wrote:

I still don't understand why anyone would freak out about someone writing something non-canon or why someone who wrote something would throw a hissy fit because someone told them something in their story wasn't canon.

Make the rules for said world, let people write about said world, select people to decide what stories fit in said world, divide into two piles. Canon and non-canon. If someone gets something wrong tell them why politely. If they throw a fit ban them, because they are childish. If they fix said wrong thing(s) and you still won't accept then you are childish. Anyway, that's how I see things.

Well, if there's something I've learnt from fanfiction in all these years is that many people ignore the 'logic' of the setting, creating absurd stories that make no sense and even make the original setting look pretty bad. That's my biggest concern when it comes to stories set in Felarya: not respecting the original setting in such a despicable way.

For me it's more a question of such respect rather than a question about canon/non-canon. Most stories are non-canon, most characters are non-canon, but they still fit the world they take place in.

The thing is that we all act adult-like, accept our own mistakes and be sure to know that people can fix their own mishaps.

buddha66667 wrote:

3) Perhaps redesigning the wiki could help solve a lot of problems as when you you get to the very first page you are given a massive wall of text that is indeed intimidating to newcomers. The main page to any website should very short and give a synopsis of what the website is about. Links should be categorized into groups and subgroups to make finding information easier. Looking at the wiki as it is it appears to be a word document with some pictures and a massive walls of text linking to more massive walls of text.

Mantaining a wiki is hard, editing it to be good-looking is even harder. I agree with you that walls of texts can scare newcomers. The wiki could be better structured, but for that we need people with tons of experience in working with wikis. It's a hard subject, but I hope that it can be solved.

Feadraug wrote:

Mantaining a wiki is hard, editing it to be good-looking is even harder. I agree with you that walls of texts can scare newcomers. The wiki could be better structured, but for that we need people with tons of experience in working with wikis. It's a hard subject, but I hope that it can be solved.

No, just web design training is sufficient. A wiki should follow the same design principles that other websites follow.

If you have suggestions on how to better structure a page in the wiki, I'll gladly hear them. You must just remember that the program that is used is Mediawiki. It's a solid and very reliable one, but in the other hand it allows a bit less fantasy than Wikia for example.

If anything what the wiki should have is that on the very first page there should be just the obligatory "welcome" stuff, and then have different links to lead you to basic information of the world, localizations, characters, etc..

What there is right now kinda follows on that, but then inmediately after starts giving you a lot of information. There's a good chance newcomers won't even bother to check that wall of text when it's shoved to their faces

One thing that would also be nice in the wiki is a link from each race to the locations that they inhabit. You go to any location it includes links to each race but not vise-versa.

karbo wrote:

If you have suggestions on how to better structure a page in the wiki, I'll gladly hear them. You must just remember that the program that is used is Mediawiki. It's a solid and very reliable one, but in the other hand it allows a bit less fantasy than Wikia for example.

I'll have to check and see how Mediawiki works. I'll be sure to get back to you after i have a better understanding of what Mediawiki is capable of.