User:DarkJedi613/Conference

Policy

All Wookieepedians are invited to attend the occasional Wookieepedia mofference. Kindly don't be scared away by the name; we like to have all opinions at the meetings.

Next meeting
The next Mofference will take place -, - at 0:00 UTC. Please check the infobox on the right to see when this is in your timezone, and remember that daylight savings time may be in effect in your area.
 * North America&mdash; Eastern Standard Time, and Daylight Savings Time is not in effect.

How to join the meeting
IRC: irc.freenode.net #wookieepedia

For a list of clients, see IRC. Wikia provides web access to our IRC channel at irc.wikia.com/starwars.

(Hint: You only get 16 characters in your IRC nickname.)

Agenda

 * 1) At our next Mofference, I would like to discuss the Wookieepedia Knowledge Bank. The first time something like this was brought up: ,
 * it was shot down as a terrible idea. Not a month later this came about. I was against it from the start, and I'm still against it now, but the community was in favor of it, so I've kept my mouth shut and even used it once or twice in an effort to "give it a chance." Well, it's been more than a year, and, to me, our rate of return on this has been simply awful. The vast majority of questions asked are by users who only exist to ask questions, not contribute to Wookieepedia, which is what we had hoped, IIRC. If most of the questions weren't either wild fan theories, such as the classic "Who kills Jacen Solo?"  or "Star Wars republic commando 2",
 * or even, wherein an individual asks a question that could be found on DC-15A blaster rifle and related pages, then I wouldn't make a big deal out of it. Nor would I do so if there wasn't such rampant speculation on that whole domain. But, ladies and gentlemen, there is. We are an encyclopedia, no? Our articles should speak for themselves, and while in theory it would be nice to answer everyone's question individually, the fact of the matter is that it's a distraction and the majority of the questions asked are not of the type the KB was meant to encourage. Instead, they're open-ended, often poorly spelled, and occasionally even spell Wookieepedia without two e's. They're a distraction from our true purpose-which is to write articles, not answer questions. It's an additional headache for the admins to monitor. Often, new users/anons answer other new users/anons, and I know that some of those answers aren't accurate or factually based. Compared to our actual articles, the reliability is by-and-large atrocious. At least we maintain a pretense of citing sources in our articles. So, I propose we either eliminate the Knowledge Bank entirely, which is my preference, or impose a stricter set of rules to prevent it turning into a clandestine discussion board-which, for all intents and purposes-it is. Atarumaster88  [[Image:Jedi_Order.svg|20px]] ( Talk page ) 21:32, 12 April 2008 (UTC)


 * 1) *Counterpoint: Without an outlet for these sorts of questions, they wind up in the Senate Hall or on article talk pages.  I'd rather keep them all in a landfill rather than have the trash fill the streets. jSarek 11:56, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
 * 2) **Counter-counterpoint: And yet, somehow we survived before. I'd rather have us put the trash on trucks and ship it elsewhere than have it here, if I can play on your metaphor. By which I mean that it's a better idea IMO to redirect them somewhere else like TF.N, delete their SH posts, than foster this&mdash;at the risk of sounding cliche&mdash;"un-encyclopediac". At the very least, we need to establish some tougher rules on the KB that would allow administrators to delete "discussion board" topics. Last I checked, that was supposed to be a Q&A, not a "Well, based on the upward-twirling overhand parry-feint-lunge combo that Darth Kruhl executes, he must be a Vaapad user," type board. Because that's what it is, and I don't see how it helps the site. I'd rather we change the MediaWiki code from "talk" to "article talk" and throw Talkheader everywhere than put up with the KB. On the topic of deleting the bad threads, at present I don't feel comfortable stretching the bounds of admin autonomy without a consistent set of guidelines to back it up. Atarumaster88  [[Image:Jedi_Order.svg|20px]] ( Talk page ) 05:42, 15 April 2008 (UTC)